“And back dives,” Harry adds.

“But you can’t have her because she’s going to marry Jase,” George concludes.

Wonderful.

Joel looks surprised, as well he might. “You’re a friend of Jase’s?”

“Well, not really, I mean, we just met. I’m here to babysit.”

“But she went to his room,” George adds.

Joel raises an eyebrow at me.

Again with the full-body blush. All too apparent in a bikini. “I’m just the babysitter.”

George grabs me around the waist, kissing my belly button. “No. You’re Sailor Supergirl.”

“So where did you come from?” Joel folds his arms, slanting back against the motorcycle.

George and Harry run back into the copper sprinkler. I’m holding Patsy on one hip, but she keeps trying to pull off my bikini top.

“Move her to the other side,” Joel suggests, without batting an eyelash.

“Oh. Right.” Patsy, the baby with the one-breast preference.

“You were saying?” Joel’s still leaning lazily back against the motorcycle.

“Next door. I came from next door.”

“You’re Tracy Reed’s sister?

Of course. Naturally he would not have overlooked Tracy. While I’m blond, Tracy is A Blonde. That is, I’m straw and sort of honey-colored with freckles from Dad, while Tracy’s tow-headed with pale skin. She, unfairly, looks like she’s never seen the sun, although she spends most of her summers on the beach.

“Yup.” Then, suddenly, I wonder if my sister too has secretly interacted with the Garretts. But Joel isn’t blond, Tracy’s chief boyfriend requirement, right up there with a good backhand, so probably not. Just to be sure, I ask, “Do you play tennis?”

Joel looks unfazed by this non sequitur, no doubt used to flustered girls making no sense.

“Badly.” He reaches out for Patsy, who’s apparently decided at this point that any breast will do. Her little fingers keep returning determinedly to my top.

“Yeah, the leather jacket probably slows down your return volley.” I hand him the baby.

He gives a mock salute. “Sailor Supergirl and smartass. Nice.”

Just then a Jeep pulls into the driveway, very fast. Alice slams out, reaching back to disentangle her purse strap from the gearshift and yank the purse to her. Her hair at the moment is electric blue, pulled into a side ponytail. She’s wearing a black halter top and very short shorts.

“You knew the score, Cleve,” she snaps at the driver of the car. “You knew where you stood.” She straightens, stalking over to the kitchen door and slamming it behind her. Unlike her brothers, she’s small, but that does nothing to deflect from her unmistakable air of authority.

Cleve, a mild-looking guy in a Hawaiian-print bathing suit and a PacSun shirt, does not look as though he’d known the score. He slumps behind the wheel.

Joel hands Patsy back to me and goes over to the car. “Bummer, man,” he says to Cleve, who tips his head in acknowledgment but says nothing.

I return to the sprinkler and sit down. George plunks down next to me. “Did you know that a bird-eating tarantula is as big as your hand?”

“Jase doesn’t have one of those, does he?”

George gives me his sunniest smile. “No. He useta have a reg’lar tarantula named Agnes, but she”—his voice drops mournfully—“died.”

“I’m sure she’s in tarantula heaven now,” I assure him hastily, shuddering to think what that might look like.

Mrs. Garrett’s van pulls in behind the motorcycle, disgorging what I assume are Duff and Andy, both red-faced and windblown. Judging by their life jackets, they’ve been at sailing camp.

George and Harry, my loyal fans, rave to their mother about my accomplishments, while Patsy immediately bursts into tears, points an accusing finger at her mother, and wails, “Boob.”

“It was her first word.” Mrs. Garrett takes her from me, heedless of Patsy’s damp swimsuit. “There’s one for the baby book.”

Chapter Nine

With Mom and Tracy both out, the house is so quiet at night that I can count the sounds. The whir-clunk of ice dropping from the ice machine into the freezer bin. The shift of the central air from one speed to another. Then a noise I don’t expect as I’m lying in my room at about ten o’clock that night, wondering if I should say anything to Mom about that woman with Clay. It’s this rhythmic bang, bang, bang sound outside, below my window. I open it, climb out, looking down to find Jase, hammer in hand, nailing something to the trellis. He looks up, nail between his teeth, and waves.

I’m happy to see him, but this is a bit odd.

“Whatcha doing?”

“You have a loose board here.” He takes the nail out of his mouth, positions it on the trellis, and begins hammering again. “It didn’t seem safe.”

“For me or you?”

“You tell me.” He gives a final knock to the nail, puts the hammer down on the grass, and, in seconds, has climbed up the trellis and is sitting next to me. “I hear you’ve been engulfed by my family. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” I sidle back a little. I’m again in my nightgown, which seems a disadvantage.

“They’re the best thing I’ve got, but they can be a little”—he pauses, as though searching for a definition—“overwhelming.”

“I’m not easily overwhelmed.”

Jase gazes at me, those green eyes searching my face. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you?” It strikes me, sitting there, that I can be anyone I want to be with him. Then I notice something move on his shoulder.

“What’s that?”

Jase turns his head to the side. “Oh, you mean Herbie?” He reaches up and pulls a squirrel—a rabbit—something furry—off his shoulder.

“Herbie?”

“Sugar glider.” He extends his hand, now containing a fuzzy thing that looks like a flying squirrel, with a big black stripe down its back and black-shadowed eyes.

I stroke its head uncertainly.

“He loves that. Very tactile.” Jase moves his other hand over so Herbie’s cradled in between two palms. His hands are rough and capable. So much about Jase Garrett seems like a man, not a boy.