Page 90 of Panty Dropper

CHAPTER 39

Billy

“Damn,” I looked around the attic and ran my hands through my hair. “This is worse than I thought. If you want to bail, I can take you back to the office.”

“No.” Reagan clapped her hands together. “We got this. We’ll divide and conquer. Just take one at a time.”

I looked over at her and could see the fire of determination coming from her baby blues. I didn’t know anyone that would be excited to spend a beautiful afternoon holed up in a dusty attic looking for journals that were written decades earlier. “You seem damn near chipper about this.”

“I love a good challenge.” She beamed.

“Damn, so you’re saying I should’ve been playing hard to get this whole time?”

She shrugged sassily and moved to the far corner of the space. “You start at that end and I’ll start here.”

I did love a woman that took charge. It was something I’d always found extremely attractive. As much as I would’ve loved to whisk her downstairs and show her just how attractive I found it, I knew that this was more important. So I got down to business.

An hour in, I was starting to wonder if this was a fool’s errand. Maybe I’d only imagined my mother writing in her journals. Or maybe Pop had thrown them out.

“Um…Billy?” There was a strange quality to Reagan’s voice and I looked over and saw that she was holding a paper in her hand.

“What? What is that?”

“It’s your birth certificate.” She looked up and her eyes were wide.

Shit. I stood and rushed to her, but before I’d made it halfway a wide smile spread across her face. “Is your middle name really Sunshine?”

“No.” I lied. I’m not sure why I did, it was just a knee jerk reaction.

“Are you sure? Because this looks legit.”

“It’s not.” I tried to grab it out of her hand, but she was faster than me and held it just out of reach.

“You promised you’d always be honest with me,” she teased with mischief glimmering in her stare.

Fuck. She had me there. “Fine. Yes. My mom was a hippie and since she let my dad name me and Hank after his brothers, she got to pick our middle names.”

“Oh.” Understanding dawned on her beautiful face. “That’s right. You and Hank only had initials when I went through the file. William S. Comfort and Henry M. Comfort.”

“Moonlight.” I offered throwing my brother under the bus. “Hank’s middle name is Moonlight. I remember my mama used to say that our names fit us perfectly because I was cheerful and Hank was moody.”

“William Sunshine Comfort. Did you get teased in school?” Empathy radiated from Reagan.

“No. Because no one knew. We only ever used our middle initials. Hell, even Jimmy doesn’t know what our middle names are.”

“You were lucky, then.”

“Lucky? My legal name is William Sunshine Comfort.”

“Yes, lucky.” She shot back, challenge burning in her stare. “Do you want to know what my mom named me?”

I tried to rack my brain to come up with a humiliating middle name for a girl, but came up blank.

“Fancy,” she said definitively.

“Your middle name is Fancy?” Reagan Fancy York. It was unique but I didn’t think it was that bad.

“No. That was my first name before I legally changed it when I was eleven.”

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