Page 64 of Enticing Her Love

Flynn laughed. “Night, Gramps.” He ended the call, and his phone rang right away. He put it to his ear. “What’d you forget?”

“Um…nothing. It’s Sutton.”

Happiness spread through his chest like fucking wildfire. “Hey.” There was no masking the surprise in his voice. “Sorry. I just hung up with my grandfather. I thought you were him.”

“I’m sorry to call out of the blue, but you’re the only person I know who could possibly understand this, and I thought you’d get a kick out of it. But if you need to call your grandfather back—”

“No. I’m good. We were just touching base. What am I going to get a kick out of?”

“My embarrassing actions. I’m taking a walk in my neighborhood, and I was scrolling through my phone when a cat darted out of a yard. All I saw was this brown blur, and for some reason, in my head, I was back in the rainforest. I screamed and scrambled off the sidewalk kicking and swatting at nothing, because of course the cat had already run past.”

They both laughed.

“My neighbor came outside to see what happened, and I was so embarrassed.”

“Well, you’re not alone in doing strange things after trips like that. When I got back from living with the tribe, I went to stay with Seth for a little while in New York City. But his apartment was too quiet, and I couldn’t get used to sleeping indoors, much less in a bed, so I slept on a blanket on his concrete balcony. That’s probably the only time I’d ever seek out traffic noise.”

“Traffic noise is a horrible substitute for rainforest sounds.”

“No kidding. You want to know the best part? His neighbor saw me and warned him that a vagrant was camping out on his balcony.”

She laughed. “Okay, that’s pretty bad.”

“I don’t even know how the guy saw me. He must’ve had binoculars.”

“So your brother has a creeper for a neighbor?”

“Not anymore. He’s moved since then.”

“That makes me feel a little better. I swear, if I were on the island and a cat ran at me the way it did tonight, I’d think my brothers were pranking me.”

He sat back, so fucking glad to hear her voice. “Do they still prank you a lot?”

“Not as much as they prank each other, but when we were younger it was constant. If they weren’t putting fake spiders in our clothes or hiding under our beds and making monster noises that sent us screaming into our parents’ bedroom, they were dragging one of us out to the vineyard at night to help them hunt vampires or werewolves, only to leave us alone in the dark while they slipped into costume and came charging out five minutes later.”

“Holy shit.” He laughed. “That’s epic.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Jock and Archer have always loved horror movies, and one of their favorite pranks on me lasted a few horrifying weeks. They found this creepy antique doll somewhere, and I was terrified of it. Every night they’d wait until I was sleeping and put it on the rocking chair in my room, tuck it under the covers next to me, or prop it up on my dresser. I swear, I’d wake up and that thing would be staring at me.”

“That’s awful. What did you do?”

“I yelled at them, but the first dozen times or so, they denied it, and I was only six or seven, so I believed them. They told me the doll was possessed and not to tell my parents, or it might do bad things to me. Then they helped me hide it at the bottom of the trash can outside or they’d dig a hole in the yard and we’d bury it. But every morning, it was right there in my bedroom. I’d go crying to Jock or Archer, and they’d play the heroic big brothers and get rid of it again.”

He wanted to get his hands on Jock and Archer and scare the living shit out of them. “Jesus, Sutton. No wonder you’re afraid of the dark.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“Sorry. Uneasy in the dark.”

“We were in the rainforest! That’s different.”

“Okay. You’re totally cool in the dark. Got it. Tell me this. Did they prank everyone like that or just you?”

“Nobody was or is safe around them. I have no idea how my parents didn’t lose their minds. When Jock and Archer were young, they poured ketchup on themselves and all over one of our father’s saws, and then Archer lay in the yard, while Jock, covered in what looked like blood, ran inside screaming that Archer was dying.”

“That’s just cruel.”

“You think that’s bad? You should hear what they did to Levi when he was a kid…”