Page 4 of Wreck Me

“Right, follow my gut,” Vince said. “Speaking of…you sure you don’t need help with things now? I can get a flight tonight.”

Nico shook his head. “No, no, no. Enjoy your trip with Sarah and the boys. I don’t really have to be here myself. There’s so little to do. It’s just putting up the listing and then managing the social media explosion. Our real estate team will handle all that with ease—and they better, considering the commission they’ll be scoring.”

“Then come to Colorado! Sarah says the woman staying at the condo next to ours would be perfect for you—very pretty and runs a growing personal shopping business.”

Nico stifled a groan. “It’s sweet of Sarah to keep trying to set me up with someone, but I wish she wouldn’t. I’m not looking.”And I’ll never be looking.

“I keep telling her you’ve always been anti marriage, but she doesn’t believe it. She’s very persistent.”

“Then I’ll prove it to her by never marrying.” He did an internal eye roll. Why did this topic keep coming up? The energy that married people put into trying to get their single friends and relations hitched was proof that misery loved company.

“But if you’re not needed, why are you there?”

“I’ve been traveling so much, I haven’t visited Mom in two months. Feel like a terrible son.”

“You’re not! Besides, Sarah or I see her at least weekly. She’s well cared for there.”

“Does she still recognize you now and then?”

Vince sighed. “Sometimes there seems to be a glimmer, but then it’s gone.”

Nico knew this was the case but tried to hold onto hope. She hadn’t recognized him at all on his last visit, and he had been surprised by how angry that had made him—not at his mom, but at the disease stealing the most beloved person in his life away from him. “They say familiar things can jog a person’s memory when they have dementia. Maybe there’s something I could bring her from the house? I brought my key and I’m planning to take a final walk through.”

“There’s nothing left. Everything that wasn’t firmly attached has been stripped clean. Honestly, it might not even be standing. The roof was in bad shape five years ago. The real estate company sent someone out to look at it, and just from the photos they took, we decided it wasn’t worth fixing it up even as a rental. You may be walking moreoverit than through it. Ours was the only somewhat habitable dwelling left on the whole street, and now it’s had five more years of neglect.”

“Yeah, I know,” Nico said while sending up a silent prayer he would be able to do a walk through. Even if nothing would jog their mother’s memory, there was still an object in the house he hoped to find. Something he wanted for himself.

Vince emitted a sound halfway between a whoop and a grunt. “Whoa! Feels like a lunker! I’m gonna see if the boys can help me reel this one in. Let me know how things go.”

“Will do,” Nico said and clicked off. He held his breath as he reached the final stretch, bracing himself to find a pile of peeled-paint siding and tumbled fireplace brick where the house used to be. But when the Placard house finally came into view, he nearly swerved off the road.

Was he hallucinating? Had he turned onto the wrong street, wrong town, wrong side of the planet?

There, between an empty lot and a house that looked as if he could knock it down with the tap of a finger, was his childhood home…and yet not. His mother had always,alwayskept the one-story bungalow white with white trim. Now, somehow, it was not only still standing, but looked like a sherbet factory had exploded over it. A sickly peach pink covered the siding over the small front porch. Not to be outdone, a lime green vile enough to please any storybook villain assaulted the living room bump-out to the right. But, not to worry, because periwinkle blue trim and shutters in various shades of yellow pulled it all together into a cohesive hideousness.

After seriously considering whether someone had slipped hallucinatory drugs into his morning coffee, Nico spotted the source of the pastel infestation. On the left side of the house—the side where his mother and aunt had shared a bedroom—a woman stood high on a ladder, paint brush in hand. Air pods peeked out from her ears, and she didn’t turn at the sound of his car approaching. He couldn't help noticing how shapely she was. The way her cute butt wiggled with each brush stroke almost made up for her turning the fascia the color of a three-day-old bruise.

His gaze was so fixed on the woman that he hit his brakes too hard, causing them to squeal. The sound must have startled her, because he heard a panicked scream as she lost her balance. Her arms flailed as she tried desperately to return herself to full upright on the ladder, which was threatening to wobble backwards.

“Hold on,” Nico yelled as he leapt from his car and ran to the underside of the ladder. Grabbing it with both hands, he yanked it back toward the house. Unfortunately for him, he accomplished the deed with a little too much force. The paint can dangling from the top of the ladder rail tipped, sloshing a wave of periwinkle down onto his head. Thick, sun-warmedliquid dripped past his ears and onto his shoulders as his nostrils filled with the sweet chemical smell of latex.Great. He’d picked up this brand new, expensive suit from the tailor that morning.

For a moment, all he could manage was a stunned, furious silence. Releasing the ladder, he stepped out from under it and leaned over, encouraging the paint to drip onto the grass rather than continue to course down his face. Any moment now, the woman would start apologizing profusely while thanking him for saving her life. If he hadn’t acted so quickly, she would’ve ended up bent backwards over the neighboring chain link fence like a limp rag. But…no apology came. Perhaps she was stunned into silence as well?

When the dripping eased enough that he could raise his head with his eyes open, he realized she not only wasn’t apologizing, she wasn’t bothering to look at him. She hadn’t even stopped painting!

“Please don’t let me interrupt,” he growled.

After giving the gutter one more swipe from her brush, she deigned to peer down at him. Even through sticky blue lashes, he could see she was pretty. Her eyes, wide-set and large, were an unusual shade of golden green, and her high-set cheeks were freckled. Her medium-blonde hair, which just reached her shoulders, swung like spun gold as she cocked her head in his direction.

“There’s a junky towel there to your right if you want,” she said, before turning back around and, of all things, continuing her brushing.

Her slim shoulders rose and fell in a rapid rhythm.Was she laughing?

He grabbed up the ratty, stained towel and ran it over his face, hair, and shoulders. “This is hardly funny.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not,” she said without doing him the courtesy of facing him again. “It’s just my brain does this thing where I wonder about stuff.”

“What?”

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