Dream Maker (Dream Team 1)

Fabulous.

She tipped her head back and showed him her pretty face was still pretty, even red and wet with tears.

“They’ve got the drugs, Danny.”

“I’m gonna sort it out,” he told her.

“How?” she cried. “They’re gonna hurt Mick.”

Someone was gonna hurt Mick, and he had no issue with this.

In fact, he wanted to be first in line.

Before he could say anything, she tore from his arms, taking two steps back, shouting, “God! It doesn’t matter, does it? It just doesn’t matter!”

“What doesn’t matter?” he asked quietly.

She threw out both arms wildly. “Anything. Anything I do. How hard I work. How low I have to go to crawl out from under the piles of shit life lands on me. Do you know what my dad’s solution to this problem was?”

“No,” he answered cautiously, though he knew by her face whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.

“Take that bag to his house and he’d unload those drugs. Eighty-twenty split. He gets the eighty, of course,” she said snidely.

Yeah.

He didn’t like it.

Jesus.

Seemed like her dad was worse than her brother.

“Evie—”

She rushed him but not to get close or fall back into his arms.

To nab the shot of Fireball.

Once she tossed it back, in their current scenario, he really did not want to think about how cute she was when she breathed out dramatically with her eyes going big, but it had to be said, she was cute.

She slammed the glass down on his counter and looked up at him.

“Okay, that didn’t work. I don’t feel very smoothed out,” she announced.

“Evan,” he whispered.

Her face started crumpling, but she drew in a sudden breath through her nose and shook her head angrily.

“Right so…right,” she began confusingly. Then, unfortunately, she said more words, ones that made sense, just not ones he liked hearing. “So I’ll go to Smithie’s and I’ll slither all over his stage and stick my ass in strange men’s faces and earn their bills. I’ll ask if he’ll give me another shift, maybe two, every week, and after, oh, I don’t know, a year of that, I’ll be able to replace my furniture, my TV, my dishes. But enrolling for summer semester is out of the question. Again.”

For the first time, he wished he hadn’t unloaded all his crap after he bought Mo’s. He’d had a couch. And a recliner.

At least she’d have somewhere to sit.

“I need to…to call Smithie, tell him I’m gonna be late,” she declared.

“You can’t go to work tonight, Evie,” he told her. “You’re in a state.”

And you might be in danger, he did not finish verbally.

“You saw my place, Danny. I can’t not go to work.”

“Yes, you can, because for the time being, you’re gonna be staying here.”

She blinked.

It just came out of his mouth.

But now that it was out, he liked the idea.

A whole lot.

If she was close, he could keep an eye on her.

“I’ll talk to your apartment manager. Get you out of your lease,” he said. “Mo’s bed is still in his room. If you don’t have rent to pay, you can save to set yourself back up, and you’ll have a TV you can watch and a place to sleep.”

She stood unmoving and stared at him, those brown eyes again huge.

And cute.

“Now, I’m gonna call Smithie and let him know you’re not gonna be in tonight and why,” he continued. “You’re gonna get hammered if you want. Or I’m gonna get whatever food you want delivered and you’re gonna eat yourself into a food coma. Or, if you got more crying to do, you can have at it. Or all three. But you’re not stripping tonight. You’re lookin’ after you ’cause I’m gonna be looking after you.”

“I can’t move in here,” she said.

“You can and you are,” he returned.

“Danny, I…well…” She seemed at a loss for words before she found some. “That’s very sweet. Incredibly sweet. And I don’t want you to take offense, but it’s also crazy.”

He didn’t want to remind her that Mick wasn’t the only one fucked now that those narcotics were in the wind.

And he didn’t want to say what he had to say next.

But he picked that one.

“Your bedroom was worse than your living room.”

For a second, she didn’t move.

Then she did.

To reach to the Fireball and pour herself another shot.

She threw it back and winced a little but recovered faster and put the glass down.

“Okay, now I’m feeling it,” she muttered. “My belly’s getting warm.”

She called her stomach her “belly.”

And her brother probably knew that, and still, he put her in this spot.

To cover his own ass.

He could not focus on that.

He had to focus on her and her brown eyes.

“We’ll go to your place tomorrow, get what’s recoverable, bring it back here and plan the cleanup effort,” he stated. “Tonight is about mentally dealing. With me?”

Evan shook her head that she wasn’t with him.