Page 58 of Backup Plan

We have a text chain a mile long. We talk nightly before bed, and sometimes during the day, too.

He’s coming home tonight. It’ll be late, after the kids go to bed, and I want to do something special for him.

He changed his flight to come home a day early. He was supposed to fly out tomorrow afternoon, but he said he missed me and changed his flight to get back to me.

I swooned.

It feels like I have a crush on my best friend’s younger brother, so when her name pops up on my screen with an incoming call on Friday morning on my way to work, my heart starts to race a little faster as I try to figure out how to keep up the story.

“Hey, Ev,” I answer.

“Madden said the mansion construction is delayed, and I need to know how bad it is. Liam said he’s in San Diego. Can you stop by, or do I need to bribe Ivy? Or even worse, do I need to cancel my weekend and fly to Chicago?”

She’s babbling, and she didn’t even greet me with a hello.

“Good morning to you, too, bestie,” I say calmly.

“Good morning,” she mutters back.

I laugh. “I’m happy to swing by the mansion either on my lunch break or after work, but Stuart’s got me in a nine o’clock I can’t get out of.”

“Ugh, Penguin. I need you to quit Stuart and come work for me.”

My brows dip, and I slam on the brakes. To be fair, the car in front of me did, too, but I might’ve done it anyway at her words. “Come work for you? Like…in Vegas?”

“I mean, yeah. Why not?”

“Because I have kids who attend schools here in Chicago, and I can’t just pack them up and move them away from their father.”

“Why not? He’s a deadbeat, and you have primary custody, right?”

“They don’t really call it that here in Illinois, but yes. I have the primary decision-making ability or whatever the new age legal term is, but they still go see him every other weekend.”

“So decide to move in next door to me and Mav.”

I laugh. “As fun as that would be, Vegas has never been on my radar.”

“Yeah, mine either. But there’s something about palm trees and mountains. You know?”

“I know. And ocean. I’d live by the ocean. I need water. I can’t be landlocked.” You know…like San Diego.

“I get that. Do you have the kids on wedding weekend?”

“No. I’m supposed to, but since your wedding is next weekend and Brent had a work thing out of town this weekend, we swapped. And honestly, I was shocked he agreed to a swap. He’s been such a dick about every other little thing,” I say.

“I know he has. And I get if you can’t move to Vegas, so then you can work remotely for me from Chicago. I don’t even care. Just quit Stuart and go check on the mansion.”

I giggle. “If only it were that easy.”

“Babe, I don’t even need references. I know how amazing you are at everything you do.”

“You’ve never seen me working from home in pajamas while I eat Cap’n Crunch all day.”

“God, if Liam wasn’t my little brother and you were like a decade younger, I’d swear you two were cut from the same cloth.”

I wrinkle my nose. A decade younger? I’m only seven years older than him. Six when his birthday happens before mine does. I open my mouth to say that, but I realize I shouldn’t get defensive.

“Anyway, I get that work calls, but if you’re able to stop by, I’d appreciate it so much,” she says.