I still held onto Wren tightly, and I wasn’t sure why. Part of me liked to believe it was the shock of it—looking up, to have a girl crashing onto me. But another part was fully aware that I was a police officer and trained to cope with shock. There wasn’t much that stunned me. Yet, I sure as hell felt stunned.
A loud squeal directed my and Wren’s attention back to the upper deck. Ty apparently was still playing spin the bottle and this time, the girl hadn’t jumped off the side of the boat to get away from him. He pressed her up against the railing of the deck, his hands gripping the sides of her face as he made out with her. I grimaced.
The girl stumbled away, looking flushed and happy, and Ty’s attention snagged back onto Wren and me.
His gloating smile faded as his eyes bounced between us. “Are you going to put that sweet Chickie down, or am I going to have to come down there and rescue her?”
Wren tensed in my arms, her lips pursing. “Chickie?” She spat the word in disgust.
Ty shrugged. “Yeah, I think it suits you.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, her cheeks reddening.
Ty leaned over the rail, his lips twisting in a way that made me suspect he was about to say something inappropriate.
I cleared my throat loud enough to distract them both.
“You need to try to quiet things down, Ty.” Even though everything in my body was telling me not to, I needed to put Wren down. I carefully lowered one arm until her bare feet touched the dock. She wobbled, and I tightened my other arm around her waist to steady her.
“All right?”
Her long lashes fluttered as she blinked at me, not a trace of her anger toward Ty on her face. “Yes.”
I nodded and glanced at Ty, who watched us with his hands on hips.
“If you want to police my party, why don’t you just stay?” He raised a challenging brow.
That was the last thing I wanted to do. I glanced toward the open river as the sun began to dip toward the horizon. The only way this party wasn’t going to get out of hand was if I stayed, and I knew it.
I narrowed my eyes on my younger brother, knowing full well he didn’t expect me to head toward the stairs and board the boat. The look on his face as I did so, followed closely by Wren, was almost worth wasting my night babysitting a college houseboat party.