“Thank you.” I pop off the lid and breathe in the aroma.
Making herself at home, she steps inside, plops down, and leans back on her elbows. My gaze snaps to her chest. She’s wearing an ice-blue thermal shirt that hugs her breasts as they tighten in the cold. My dick throbs angrily. First the dream. Now this. I’m in agony.
I shut my eyes tight and take a long gulp of scalding coffee.
“So,” she says, breezily. “We have company.”
I choke on my coffee. “What?”
“Your friends and their daughter?” Smiling, she tips her head and peers at me curiously. “She called you ‘Uncle Ax.’”
Christ. I clear my throat and take another deep drink of coffee. If Parker and Bennett are here with Skyler, I’m going to need all the caffeine I can get.
“Greetings, earthlings!” An alien mask echoing with Skyler’s voice pops inside the tent and startles me so badly, I spill coffee all over my sleeping bag. “You okay, Uncle Ax?”
“What the hell kind of mask is that?”
“Ooh, bad word. I won’t tell them you slipped.” She rips off the mask, revealing dark springy curls and mischievous brown eyes. “Daddy and BiBi let me watch a documentary on aliens that changed my life, and they said if I kept my room clean for a week, I could get an alien mask, so I did, and it’s awesome, isn’t it?” She takes a deep breath after that marathon and smiles. “We made cinnamon rolls. Daddy and BiBi said this was an e-germ-ency so we brought you some.”
“Emergency.” I snap the lid on my tumbler and set it aside. Clearly, this is not my time to have coffee. “Get out, E.T. I’ll put on some clothes and be there in a minute.”
Skyler looks at Rooney. “Your name’s E.T.? I thought it was Rooney.”
Rooney laughs. “It’s an old movie about an alien, and another word for ‘alien’ is ‘extraterrestrial,’ or E.T. for short. He’s calling you that.”
“The takeaway,” I tell them, “is that you both need to leave. Out.”
Skyler tumbles out of the tent, followed by Rooney, their voices blending as they walk away. I flop back on the sleeping bag, letting out a long, pained groan. This is a terrible development.
I change quickly into the clothing that I shoved in my duffel bag last night. Jeans, a flannel, socks, and boots. Then I step out of the tent.
And there sit Bennett and Parker, Skyler, and Rooney around a campfire, mugs in hand, talking like old friends.
“There he is!” Park calls. “Speaking of the handsome devil.”
I glare at him as I cross the clearing, then drop onto the tree-stump seat, coffee thermos in hand. Skyler smiles up at me, icing on her cheek and the alien mask tipped back on her head. I gesture at it with my thermos. “Aliens, huh?”
“It’s Parker’s fault,” Bennett says, offering me the platter of cinnamon rolls. “She’s obsessed. Brought you two without icing.”
“Uncle Ax doesn’t like sugar,” Skyler tells Rooney around a mouthful. “Maybe that’s why he’s so bad at Candyland.”
Rooney snorts a laugh. “Ouch.”
Grumbling, I take an un-iced cinnamon roll and fill my mouth with a bite. If I talk, nothing nice is going to come out. Might as well fill it with breakfast.
“Sure you don’t want one?” Parker asks Rooney.
She shakes her head. “No, thanks. I’m not very hungry.”
“She’s gluten-free,” I say around my bite. “She’s just too nice and doesn’t want you to feel bad that she can’t eat it.”
Rooney gives me an alarmed, wide-eyed look.
Parker smiles, offering her the plate again. “Luckily, you can eat it. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned. Skyler has celiac disease, so our kitchen’s dedicated gluten-free, and these are, too.”
Rooney blinks from me to Parker. “Oh,” she says hesitantly. “Really?”
Sky nods, knobby-kneed kid legs and yellow rain boots swinging off her chair. “Yep. You got celiac too?”
“No,” Rooney says, shaking her head. “I’m gluten-intolerant. My stomach feels best when I don’t eat it.”
Sky nods. “Cool. Have one! These are good.”
“Took us months to perfect the recipe,” Parker tells her.
Skyler shudders. “Those early batches sucked.”
“Hey.” Bennett gives her a look.
“Stunk,” Sky amends, licking icing off her fingers.
Smiling, Rooney accepts a cinnamon roll, then takes a bite. Her eyes slip shut. Her head tips back, exposing the long line of her throat. “Oh my God,” she says on a sigh. Then she moans. Deep in her throat.
And then real estate in my jeans’ groin area is hard to come by.
Strategically shifting, I rest my elbows on my knees and drop my head as I visualize that time Viggo and Oliver put ice on my junk while I was napping and I woke up with my dick on the verge of freezing right off. That works wonders.
“Okay, Uncle Ax?” Skyler asks.
“Yep. Peachy.”
Rooney groans again and slides an icing-laden finger deep into her mouth to lick it clean. I shove the rest of the cinnamon roll into my mouth and decide if I choke, it won’t be the worst way out of this hellish situation.
“Well,” Bennett says, accepting the platter of cinnamon rolls from Parker and snapping a fitted lid over them. “We came to be helpful, but it seems we’re no longer needed.”
Rooney glances between us. “What do you mean?”
I try to talk, but my mouth is so full of cinnamon roll, the words aren’t remotely intelligible.
Parker frowns at her, and I already know what’s coming, but—mouth full of cinnamon roll—I’m helpless to stop it. “Getting this guy hitched, of course,” he says.
I choke on the cinnamon roll, eyes watering. Skyler smacks my back, which helps nothing. Everyone else ignores me.
Rooney leans forward. “Wait, what?”
“Axel called us in a bit of a panic last night about marrying to get his inheritance,” Bennett tells her. “I assumed that you and he had worked something out. But…you didn’t?”
“Inheritance?” Rooney tips her head. “Panic? What?”
This is the world’s largest bite of food ever. I’m trying furiously to chew and swallow, but I keep gagging. Goddamn gluten-free baked goods. This cinnamon roll is twice as dense as a normal one. It’s gluey sawdust in my throat.
“You know about the situation at the A-frame?” Parker asks.
Rooney nods.
“We’re ready to do the work,” he explains, “but Ax needs the money for it. If he marries, he can access the inheritance his uncle gave him. Then he can pay for everything the place needs.”
“We figured we’d come by with some consolation cinnamon rolls and brainstorm options,” Bennett says, glancing my way. “But then you were here when we showed up, and we just…assumed he’d beat us to the punch.”
“So, how do you two know each other?” Parker asks.
Finally, I get the cinnamon roll down my gullet. “Guys, ease up.”
Parker settles deeper in his folding chair and props his boots on one of the stones around the fire. “We’re just making conversation.”