Page 10 of House Rules

Con:Nah. If she wasn’t into it, she wouldn’t have been dripping for me.

Maverick:Or maybe she was into the blonde?

Maverick:Closet spying and closet gay?

Storm:Honestly more believable than her being into you.

Con:Fuck all of you.

Just as I type out a longer message before heading to my bathroom and finishing what the waitress couldn’t, my father’s face pops up on my phone, and it rings.

There’s nothing quite like a parent calling you to kill a boner.

“Sir?” I answer, knowing that this will not be a pleasant conversation.

“Why?” my father screams. It isn’t really a question.

He isn’t asking anything; he is gearing up for a rant, so I sit back on my bed and wait for him to get through whatever he’s going to say.

I set the phone down on the bed next to me, still able to hear him clearly without even putting the phone on speaker.

It’s always the same.

Blah blah blah blah blahdo you know how much we have sacrificed for you?Yada yada yada yada yadayou have so many more opportunities than your mother and I did.

It goes on and on and on. I let my mind drift to Phoenix and all the things I’m going to do to her when I get her under me where she belongs.

“I’m serious, Con,” he yells again, pulling my attention back to the phone. “We cannot have you doing anything like this again. You and your friends have almost destroyed everything I’ve worked for, and one of these days, you’re going to get yourself into something I can’t rescue you from. This summer I’m hiring someone to watch you, because apparently at twenty-two years old, you need a fucking babysitter. I just need to find someone willing to put up with you and your?—”

“Phoenix Jones,” I answer before I even know what I’m saying.

“What?” my father barks, clearly not expecting that answer from me.

Hell, I wasn’t expecting it, either, but I sure as fuck am going to run with it.

“Look, you want someone to watch me and the guys, someone that won’t necessarily stop us from partying or having a good time, but someone willing to rat us out if we cross a line, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, his tone full of suspicion.

“Phoenix Jones. She’s the girl who hung around the resort all the time when her father went to go play on the boats. The one who broke the drunk senator’s nose at the pool that one time. She works for you now…a maid, I think.”

“That one. I remember. You dated her for a couple of months, but?—”

“Hear me out. She’s maybe a year younger than me and the guys, but she is the only girl in the resort that we can’t have bending to our will in a blink. She also depends on the resort for her paycheck. Hire her.”

I have to bite back a laugh remembering how the senator was swearing up and down. He was going to take the hotel, pull our gambling and liquor licenses, and have the girl arrested for assault. My father was pissed off and a little worried, trying to get the asshole to calm down.

The look on his face when I said the girl in question was seventeen, and we had surveillance footage of him grabbing that underage girl’s tit…it was priceless. He ended up paying us about fifty thousand to cover that up. I wanted to give the money to Phoenix directly. My father gave it to her loser dad, and it was back in my family casino’s vault within the hour.

That was the first time I asked her out.

“Why should I let you choose your babysitter?”

“Because I haven’t been able to fuck her,” I say bluntly. “Neither have any of the guys. We all want to. Give her to us for the summer, let her distract us.”

“This is supposed to be a punishment, not a reward.”

“Look at it this way. You need something that’s going to hold our attention for the entire summer so we stay out of trouble. If you hire anyone else, we’re just going to ditch them. Or worse. You want us to behave…she’s how we do it. These are my terms.”