How the Playboy Got Serious. Shirley Jump

up early isn’t exactly my strong suit.” He made an apologetic face.

      “You’ll learn.”

      “Learn what?”

      She shifted the chair until it was square against the table. “That you can’t have it all, Riley.”

      He moved closer. “Speaking from experience?”

      She turned away. “Just giving you friendly advice.”

      “Are you saying you never go out after work? There’s no special guy who takes you out on the town?”

      “I’m saying that I keep my life list in order,” she said, turning back to him. “And my list is definitely different from—” The diner’s door opened and Jeremy burst in the room. She could tell before her nephew even opened his mouth that bad news was coming.

      “I’m never going back to that school again,” Jeremy said. “It sucks. My whole life sucks.”

      Stace ached to put an arm around her nephew, to hug him, but she could see him already pulling back. The last year had been hard on him and whenever anyone got too close, he backed up. Years ago, her nephew had told her everything, come to her whenever he was upset. But lately…he’d been as distant as a man on the moon. “Jer, whatever happened today will be better tomorrow. I promise.”

      Jeremy snorted, then dumped his backpack on the floor. His mane of dark hair hung halfway over his face, obscuring his wide brown eyes from view. “I doubt that. Because I got expelled.”

      “Are you serious?” Stace’s breath left her in a whoosh. “How? Why?”

      He shrugged. “The stupid principal thought the drawing I hung in the hall was ‘inappropriate.’” He waved air quotes around the word. “Whatever. I told him it was the First Amendment to express my opinion and he could go to—”

      “Oh, Jeremy.” Just when she thought things were improving, they took a serious detour toward Getting Worse.

      Riley clapped Stace on the back. “Don’t worry, Stace. I got expelled three times. And I turned out okay.”

      Jeremy’s face perked up. “Really? What’d you do?”

      “Do not talk to him,” Stace said to Riley. “Not one word.” She crossed to her nephew and stood between the two of them like a human shield for bad advice. But she was too late. Jeremy scooted around her and strode up to Riley, beaming up at the playboy like he was seeing a personal hero.

      Stace had prayed for another male influence to come into Jeremy’s life. Someone who could speak to him on his level, maybe even take him to the amusement park or play football or any of the things that Frank didn’t have the time or the energy to do.

      Riley McKenna was the last person she would have picked for the job. And now, watching Riley and Jeremy talk—and her nephew smile for the first time in forever—Stace realized she was stuck with her worst nightmare. At work, and now, at home.

      Somehow, Stace had to get rid of Riley. As she hustled her nephew out of the diner, she vowed to make sure the bachelor was gone by the end of the day tomorrow.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      RILEY had no business being here. He should have gone to his grandmother’s house, to try to talk Gran out of her crazy idea. Or gone to hang out with his friends, who were undoubtedly several beers deep into their evening out already.

      Instead Riley found himself flipping through a phone directory, then taking the train several stops down the Red Line until he arrived on the outskirts of Dorchester. Then a long, brisk walk to reach a neighborhood dotted with security bars over the store windows and battered No Trespassing signs nailed to the front of abandoned houses. He took a right, then a left, and another right before finally arriving before an aging one-story Cape with a sagging front porch and peeling white paint.

      Riley checked the address he’d jotted down. Checked it again.

      This was where Stace lived, according to the phone book. He thought of the guest house he lived in on Gran’s property. It wasn’t anything grand, but the Newton house and accompanying land were a far cry from the dilapidated building before him.

      He wondered again how someone could work the job she did, for the pittance she received, and still be happy. All those years of sports cars and women and parties, Riley had told himself he was happy.

      But now he wasn’t so sure that was true. Even though she faced the usual stresses involved in working a hard job, at the end of the day, when she was humming along to the radio, or giving him or Frank a good razzing, he saw something in Stace. A contentment, with her life, her job, herself. So he’d come here tonight, in part, to find a little of that for himself.

      And maybe brainstorm a little. He’d been thinking about the diner’s struggles over the last few days and had jotted down a few ideas, fiddled with some concepts. Maybe he could put something he’d learned at McKenna Media to work.