10. Cody
Cody
“ T he town’s abuzz,” Mrs. Abelman informs us as she plops more mashed potatoes onto her plate. “You won’t hear the end of it until you deal with it, Cody.”
Zee, who was the last to arrive at the dinner table, inquires, “Deal with what?”
“Bunch of bikers, babe,” Tee answers, complete with a quite accurate rendition of a bike engine revving. “Making a shit ton of noise whenever they go into town. Mom went on and on and on about it during lunch.”
Zee’s brows lift. “Bikers? Like the ones who were growing weed on the Bar 9?”
I reach for my glass of ice water. “Rabid Wolves.”
“According to Nonna, they’re sexy.”
I grimace. “Hardly.”
“How’s she doing?” Zee asks.
“She’s pissed. At you.”
“What did I do?!”
“You haven’t visited her.”
“Oh.” My sister-in-law flushes. “I didn’t think she’d want to see me without you.”
Tee drops her knife and fork on her plate with a clatter. “Oh, no! I thought Colton had fucked your inferiority complex out of you, babe!”
“Christy!” Mum splutters, but Mrs. Abelman guffaws.
“Don’t be a prude, Lindsay,” is our surrogate mother-cum-housekeeper’s reprimand.
“Tee, my younger brother is at the table.” Colt groans.
She sniffs. “I’ve already had a conversation about the birds and the bees with Callan.”
As Colt chokes on his meatloaf, I smirk at my youngest brother, who’s eyeing the gravy boat with all the desperation of a man contemplating death via drowning. “I had that talk with you at thirteen.”
“I beat you to it,” Colt argues as he pats his mouth with a napkin. “I talked to him about sex when he saw Thor mounting Freya when he was eleven.”
“Cole got to me first.” Callan ducks his head. “He shared the many and varied disturbing details of sex with me when I was ten.”
“I’ll clip his ear for that,” Mum vows. “What was he telling you about that for?”
“Mostly, he was telling me what he did to his cheerleader of the day.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Thank God he’s the only playboy in the bunch. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with all of you looking the way you do and getting girls pregnant left, right, and center.”
“You were cursed with delicious sons,” Tee agrees. “You’re very lucky.”
“I think I’m offended,” I say wryly, though the dumb Neanderthal taking up a good chunk of my cerebral real estate preens at her adjective. “Who says I’m not a playboy?”
“I’m only eighteen,” Callan grouses, “and have been written off already, Cody. You’re a combat pilot. You can take the hit to the ego.”
Though I hide a laugh at his glum tone, I ask, “Why did Tee give you an impromptu sex talk then?”
His face locks into a rictus of pain. “Why are you making me discuss this in front of everyone?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Tee reasons.
“Yes, it was.”
“I asked you if you wanted to talk about it and you said yes!”
“Then I regretted it.”
“I was saving you, Callan. You’re so ungrateful.”
Zee clears her throat. “Was this about sex or the female orgasm?”
“The female orgasm, of course. Why would I talk to him about his orgasms?” The ‘duh’ is silent. As are the glances knocked around the dinner table as Tee muses, “Men blink at a pair of tits and they blow their load.” Ignoring Mrs. Abelman’s chuckle, she rolls on blithely, “I had to make sure he knew that the way to keeping a good woman was to get her off.”
“And I’ve told you that sex isn’t everything,” Zee chides.
“Says the woman who spends her life working and fucking, Ms. Liar.” She blows Zee a raspberry.
“Why did I want you to live with me anyway?”
“Because you missed me.” The ‘duh’ is silent again. “Anyway, Callan might not thank me now, but he will when he has a girlfriend who’s addicted to him.”
While she chirps the words, her letters revealed how badly she wishes she had that.
Not with Callan, I hope.
But I know how bad sex has been for Tee.
And it’s shit like that that makes me shut up.
I want nothing more than to tell her who I am, but there are so many things she shared with me that she never would have if she knew my real identity.
She’s wary around me because we’re mostly strangers who share a roof, but that’s nothing to what she’d be if she learned I was the bastard who tossed her aside like trash.
Unfortunately, I’ve watched enough romance movies, that Cole made us sit through, to know this is going to end disastrously.
Because the truth always comes out.
And usually at the worst moment.
The question is...
Do I dive deeper into this hole I’ve made, or do I separate myself so that when the fallout hits, it doesn’t hurt if she cuts me out of her life?
“I guess now’s as good a time as any to warn you about an interview, Zee,” Colton rumbles, drawing me away from my thoughts.
She frowns. “An interview? With the police?”
My brother rubs his knuckles over her jaw. “Oh, baby, we’ve had a shitty start to married life if that’s where your mind automatically goes.”
“See, Callan, that’s also how you get a woman panting after you,” Tee whispers in an aside.
Colt doesn’t hear her though. Neither does Zee.
They’re lost in each other, and fuck if I’m not jealous.
I mean, I’m grateful too. If anyone deserves to be loved and to love, it’s Colt, but yeah. Ouch.
My gaze drifts away from the intensely private moment and it locks on Tee.
She’s watching her best friend too. A bittersweet cast to her expression that I figure sums up how I’m also feeling.
I know she doesn’t envy her best friend. If anything, I can sense her joy whenever Colt does shit like this, and he does it with surprising frequency, but sometimes the belief that she’ll never experience it for herself takes over everything.
The urge to cup her chin, to draw my lips to her temple is so all-encompassing that I actually lean forward.
Before I can fuck this situation up any more than I already have, Colt rumbles, “We’re on PR duty. Clyde’s taking up too much room in the papers, and we’re the sacrificial lambs according to the PR department.”
I cut a look at Callan. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“They’re sickening together. Of course, it was. The public loves a happily-ever-after.”
I bark out a laugh at his cynicism as Zee grumbles, “You tossed me to the wolves, Callan?”
“Please, you only have to turn those sappy eyes on one another and the photographers will plaster it far and wide. ‘Billionaire Falls in Love.’” He retches. “It’s a modern-day fairytale. As much of an asshole as Clyde is, he’ll be back in the paper shortly, but we’ll have shored up our position as against him too.”
“Oooh, you know what this means, don’t you?” Tee declares, mouth curving into a victorious smile. “You need clothes!”
“I have clothes,” Zee whines.
“Not for a photoshoot, you don’t.” She claps her hands together. “When’s the interview?”
Callan, seeing Tee will make this happen, shares the details. But even as Zee’s horror grows, Mrs. Abelman demands, “You full, boy?”
I flick a look at her and find her staring at my dish. “I had a lot of tiramisu before I came home.”
“Nonna’s tiramisu?” Zee blurts out, drawing all eyes her way.
My brows lift. “Yeah. She invited me around on Saturday night, so Tee and I won’t be here for supper, Mrs. Abelman.”
Zee gasps. “SATURDAY SUPPER? Why didn’t you tell me?!”
I guess that’s aimed at Tee, who mutters, “I tried to get him to cancel!”
“What aren’t I understanding here?” I ask wryly, ignoring her blatant lie. I did offer to cancel.
“Nonna cooks for Tee and her dad. That’s it. She leaves the chore to Angela now. Says she wasted too much of her life in the kitchen and she’s done her penance. If she’s...” Zee freezes. “Is she making her marinara sauce?”
“Apparently.”
It’s Zee’s turn to drop her cutlery on the table. “CHRISTY MACFARLANE!”
“What?” she grouches, shoulders hunching, gaze locked firmly on the carrot she’s swirling through a puddle of gravy. “I brought you a Tupperware of leftovers home! That’s my only obligation!”
Huh. So leftovers were what she’d been carting around in her purse. Jesus. H. Christ. I used to lug around less on maneuvers!
“Ermmm, what’s going on?” Callan inquires, as perplexed as the rest of us.
He receives no answer other than Zee’s: “Ida, Colt and I won’t be here on Saturday either.”
“I’ll warn her you’re coming.” Tee snags a bread roll and tears into it. “You’re lucky she loves you or she wouldn’t let you through the door.”
The snippy tone has my brows skyrocketing.
To me, Zee explains, “She loves me, but not enough to cook for me.”
“She’ll expect a gift,” Tee warns. “Seeing as you haven’t been around in ages.”
“We can buy that when you drag me shopping then.”
That has Tee sniffing, but it improves her mood.
I stare at Colt, who appears to be as bewildered as I am.
It’s a state, I realize, we need to get used to.
As much light as these two women bring to the Seven Cs, there’s no denying they’re batshit crazy.