Hearing the door shut, I know Lachlan is downstairs waiting for me. I open each of my drawers again, knowing I won’t find anything. My goodness, I seriously have a lot of laundry to do.
Just then, I hear the dryer buzz, and thank the laundry gods above. Now I just need to get to the dryer, which is downstairs in the laundry room. Tiptoeing down the stairs, I pray Lachlan is in the kitchen, the only room you can’t see the stairs from. Of course he’s sitting on the couch and looks over at me as I descend.
“Decided to keep what you have on?” he says with a smirk. “I approve.”
“No.” I roll my eyes—I really need to break this habit. “I’m out of clothes, but I heard the dryer go off.”
“Well, don’t feel like you have to get dressed on my account.”
“I’ll be right back,” I mumble, running off to the laundry room. Thankfully, there’s a dry pair of sweats and a hoodie in there. I throw them on then head back into the living room with the blanket in my hands.
“So, what are we watching?” Lachlan asks as I sit down on the other side of the couch. When he notices, he shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.
I flip through the channels but can’t find anything to watch. “How can we have like two hundred channels and not a single movie is on?” I pout. “I told you, you should’ve went out.”
Lachlan edges across the couch toward me, and I stand. If I let him get too close, there’ll be no turning back. “I need to rotate my laundry,” I blurt out awkwardly.
Once I’m in the laundry room, I open the dryer and start folding and hanging up Kinsley’s and my clothes. If I thought doing laundry would be an excuse to give Lachlan and me some distance, I was wrong. He, of course, joins me, and catching on quickly, starts handing me the pants and shirts hangers whenever I need one.
“I’m going to run these upstairs,” I say, having no idea how to handle having this guy in my home, being sweet and helpful. I’m so completely out of my element with him, it’s embarrassing. I haven’t the slightest clue why he’s even still here, when he could be out with his friends, getting his party on.
“I’ll help you,” he offers, grabbing the clothes that are hung up, while I grab the ones that are folded. All three bedrooms are upstairs. We stop by my room first, and I’m surprised when Lachlan doesn’t comment on how girly my room is. It’s Skyla’s old room, and she was all about the pink. When I moved in I was too lazy to change the wall color.
When we get to Kinsley’s room, though, he laughs. Her walls are half-black, made of chalkboard paint, and half bright green, with science posters covering them. “This is awesome.” He sets her clothes down on the bed and walks around, checking out her room while I put her clothes into their proper drawers. When I open her closet to hang up her clothes, Lachlan is right behind me.
“Oh, man, she has all the classics,” he says, referring to her large stack of board games. He reaches over me and pulls one out. “Wanna play?” When I turn to look at him, I can see the evil glint in his eye. He’s up to something.
“You want to play Candyland?” I’m not buying it for a second.
“My cousin Declan and I are the only boys in the family, and we’re also the oldest. When we were younger, and our parents would make us play these boring games with his sisters and our other cousins, we would change up the rules to make it more fun.” He grins wickedly. “Because they were younger, they didn’t know we were making them up.” He cackles, and I can’t help the smile I’m currently sporting. Lachlan is so damn adorable and playful.
“Like how?” I ask, wanting to know more.
“Well, take this game for instance.” He holds up the board game. “We would tell them if they landed on red, they had to give us a piece of their candy.” He’s smiling so hard, even his eyes are twinkling. “If they landed on blue, they would have to do one of our chores.” He laughs, and the sound hits straight between the apex of my legs. Everything about Lachlan is sexy, even his laugh.
“That’s so mean!” I say, but find myself laughing along with him.
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “But that’s part of growing up, right? I bet your brothers used to do shit like that to you.”
“Nope,” I tell him honestly. “They’re a good six and seven years older than me and they treated me like a princess. They never would have done anything like that.”