Adele #2
Paz shrugged. “I’m only trying to prevent Parker from cooking. Keeps me from having to clean up the giant mess she’ll inevitably make in the kitchen.”
Parker flipped him the bird while snagging the bottle of wine to refill both our glasses.
Prior to Parker’s arrival in Lovewell, I had seen the inside of my brother’s house maybe once, but now we had dinner here regularly.
They even kept dog bowls for He-Man, who was currently lounging on the couch.
At first, I felt like a third wheel. Early on, I tried to beg off or cancel on their dinner plans, but Parker eventually wore me down. After homemade jambalaya and some really excellent white wine, my heart rate was finally slowing.
Wineglasses in hand, we headed to the back deck and sprawled out on the beautiful lounge chairs that faced the mountains.
Parker set the wine bottle on the table between us and tipped her head back to look at the stars.
He-Man zoomed around the yard a couple of times before tiring out and falling asleep in my lap.
She chatted about the cases she was working on, filling me in on what she’d discovered since the last time we’d hung out. After solving my dad’s murder and singlehandedly bringing down an international drug trafficking organization, she was in demand, but she was trying to take things easy.
She’d hired a part time assistant to help her manage the workload, which she desperately needed since, as a key witness in the case against Mitch Hebert, she was still spoon-feeding the FBI the necessary evidence.
“Maybe it’s my investigative instincts, or maybe it’s the wine talking, but I think there is more to the Finn Hebert story.”
I shifted, bringing my glass to my lips, and He-Man yipped in protest.
“I’ve watched him make eyes at you at the gym for a year now. You might as well come clean.”
“Come clean about what?” Paz stepped through the French doors carrying plates of blueberry pie with ice cream.
Sometimes I still didn’t recognize this man.
This was my grumpy, asshole brother, yet he was delivering pie with a smile and dropping a kiss to his girlfriend’s head like some sweet, doting book boyfriend.
He sat on the edge of her lounge chair and handed me a plate.
“Courtesy of Bernice.”
Parker beamed at him. “You did not pick this up after work.”
He winked at her. “You said you were craving pie this morning. You know, after.” He shot her a look that stole my appetite instantly.
Parker shoved a forkful of pie into her mouth and turned back to me with her brows raised and her eyes bright.
In response, I dropped my chin and shook my head.
She got me. Without needing any explanation from me, she shooed Paz away. “Girl talk only, stud muffin. Get lost.”
He leaned down and kissed her for far too long before retreating into the house.
“Start talking,” she said. The bright expression was gone. All that remained was her deadly serious investigator face.
“Two years ago, I was dating this guy named Blake.” I tilted my head back, studying the stars.
“In retrospect, he was terrible. But Dad had recently died, and I was so lonely.” A sigh escaped me before I could catch it.
“He dumped me, publicly, at a really nice restaurant in Bangor. And lucky me, Finn happened to be there to witness it.”
Parker shook her fork at me. “Aw. Shit. Yes. Did he fight him?”
“No. He insisted on joining me for dinner and then gave me a ride home.”
“That Blake asswipe left you thirty minutes away without a car? How did you not break his nose?”
I cringed. Constantly donning the identity of big, bad killer woman got old sometimes. And the assumptions that I was a breath away from violence at any given moment was both untrue and unfair.
Yes. I was serious and assertive, and yes, maybe I had a bit of an anger problem, but I wasn’t a lunatic. People assumed I had no feelings, that I punched and kicked my way through life. But really, it was the opposite. On the inside, I felt so breakable. So fragile at times.
During undergrad, the guys in my engineering program called me “nut crusher” for no other reason than I was tall and competitive.
But having my feelings and emotions written off because I presented myself as strong and independent stung more than anyone knew.
Including my siblings and their significant others.
“I was upset,” I explained. “And I was at a really low point for many reasons.” Chasing something I thought would fix me. But it didn’t. “Finn drove me home, which was really nice of him.”
“And?”
“And we kissed.”
Parker sat straight up, her plate of pie falling onto the deck. He-Man, who seconds before had been deep in slumber, pounced, licking up every speck of blueberry. As if even he knew Bernice’s pie was not to be wasted.
“So the hot Viking kissed you.”
“Yes. And it was intense. He suggested we hang out again, but I shut him down.”
She nodded. “I admire your willpower.”
With a huff, I stuck my tongue out. “I saw him around town a lot. With his daughter, at the gym or the diner. There was always this tension.”
Parker rubbed her hands together. “Ooh, now this is getting good.”
I dipped my chin, snuggling farther into my hoodie, as a familiar sense of trepidation grew in the pit of my stomach.