7.
My best advice is that you should always admit when you’re wrong, but when you’re right, you should do your best not to gloat. It’s difficult at first, but you’ll get plenty of practice, so it gets easier over time.
Patrice Donovan
SHILOH
I’d been sitting in Dante’s apartment, surrounded by the Donovan siblings, for no more than fifteen minutes and had concluded that they were all horrible people with no sympathy or care for others who might be in pain.
That was a little extreme, but since my face was puffy, my eyes were black, and I couldn’t breathe through my nose, the thought seemed justified.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d suffered a broken nose, so I knew what to expect during the recovery process.
However, the times I’d dealt with the pain before didn’t include sitting in a room full of crazy people whose mission in life seemed to be making me laugh.
Smiling made my entire face throb, but laughing made me feel like my head was going to explode . . . yet I couldn’t seem to stop!
“I’m enjoying this banter, so go ahead. Keep lobbing out family secrets. Kyla and I will be over here taking notes for future blackmail.”
“What about the time you took us to the trampoline park and met that woman who thought we were your kids?” Colbie asked James. “And then we had to go with you to meet her for lunch a few days later, but we didn’t get to stay because she found out you were a liar and had a fit?”
“Technically, I didn’t lie to her. I just didn’t correct her assumption,” James clarified with a shrug.
“You used my kids to pick up a woman?” Quinn asked.
“No! She came on to me!”
“He’s not the only one who did it,” Quinlee tattled. She looked around at the other men. “For the right amount of money, we’ll forget those times.”
Wes frowned at her. “Extortion is not a good look on you.”
Quinlee scoffed. “Everything looks good on me.”
The women all smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile too.
It was nice to see a young woman so self-assured.
I attributed a lot of that to her parents and the rest of the family who doted on her.
Raylee was getting more confident in herself, and I loved it, though I knew she still had quite a way to go.
Hopefully, her newfound friends would help bolster her confidence and help her come out of her shell.
I regretted that thought five seconds later when Raylee asked, “But has your dad ever made you pretend something was wrong to get him out of something he didn’t want to do?”
I felt a little bit vindicated when the other three teenagers all quickly answered, “Yes!” But I still couldn’t get over the fact that my daughter was a traitor. So much for “love them and they’ll love you back.” Apparently, that only worked until they wanted to tell tales.
“My dad had me fake stomach problems every time the receptionist at the shop where he used to work got close to him because he knew the sound of puking grossed her out,” Raylee tattled.
“She was aggressively flirty, and it made me uncomfortable!” I said in my defense.
“Aww. The big strong man had to be rescued by a sweet little girl!” Lara teased. She bumped knuckles with Raylee before grinning at me. “Show me on the doll how the receptionist hurt you.”
“You’re just downright mean!”
Lara leaned closer and nudged me with her shoulder, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Poor little biker needed a rescue.”
“Isn’t he cute? Poor guy!” Lake said with an exaggerated pout.
Of course Lana had to chime in. “He’s just a big schmoopie!”
“Run while you can, friend,” Clay said, shaking his head.
“You’ll never just have to fight one. There will always be three of them on your ass, and they’re just blatantly rude.
When you get finished telling us about your stalker, I’ll tell you about some things the clones have done to me over the years. ”
“My wife is a sweet and tolerant woman who would never be irritating on purpose. I’m sure you’re mistaken, Clay,” Mark, Lake’s husband, boasted.
“You know she’s a sure thing, right? You don’t have to lie like that,” Clay scoffed.
“What the hell are you talking about? Do you remember what they did to my apartment? I came home, and it reeked! It took me forever to figure out the smell was coming from the vents. I was positive I’d find a dead animal, but instead, I found bowls of shit they’d hidden there.”
“Who put them there?” Lake, Lara and Lana asked in unison.
James looked at them in horror. “You know it freaks me out when you do that.”
“Do what?” they asked together.
“Stop it!”
“Stop what?”
I glanced over at Raylee and saw her watching the triplets as if she were waiting for their heads to start spinning.
I laughed when she looked at me with giant eyes and mouthed, What the fuck?
I put my hand to my face and groaned at the pain the laughter caused.
I felt Lara’s hand on my thigh, rubbing back and forth to comfort me as the room fell silent.
“Raylee, do you mind hanging out with the girls for a little longer? I’d like to let your dad rest at my house with an ice pack. Since he doesn’t have one with him, I’m sure he didn’t listen to the doctor’s instructions last night.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Raylee replied with an eye roll.
“Et tu, Biscuit?” I muttered, knowing she’d catch the reference since her English class had just finished Julius Caesar.
Lara patted my knee before she stood up. “Come with me, Shiloh. I’ll get you fixed up.”
“I bet you will,” I heard Kyla mumble before Damaris and Lake started giggling.
Lana smiled knowingly and waved us off. “You kids take your time. We’ll hang out here and definitely not talk about you.”
Lara flipped Lana off over her shoulder. I was able to ignore the pain in my face only because I was watching her ass as she walked out ahead of me.
Cupcake was dangerous in more ways than one, to my health and my ability to behave like a gentleman, but I had a feeling her sisters were even greater threats to both.
I followed Lara, surprised to see that there weren’t any children playing with the toys scattered around today.
I knew Dante’s younger children lived here, and Lara had told me about her other nieces and nephew, but I hadn’t heard a peep out of anyone.
I was confused. I hadn’t seen a single kid other than Raylee and the other girls her age.
“Where are the kids?”
Lara laughed, slowing down so I could walk beside her. “My parents took them all for the weekend.”
“All of them?”
“How many do you think there are?”
“I’ve only met a few at the shop and one yesterday, but from the toys in the hall, I’d say at least a dozen live here. Maybe more.”
“Not quite that many, but we’re working on it.”
“Actively?” I asked.
Lara’s smile transformed. It was more than beautiful, and it took me a second to find the right word to describe it. I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until Lara tilted her head.
“Radiant?” she asked.
“In my head, I was trying to come up with a word for your smile.”
“A word for it?”
“You’re gorgeous, but when you smile, it ramps it up so much that ‘gorgeous’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. I want to make you smile all the time just so I can bask in it.”
“You are really good, Shiloh. But like my sister said earlier, I’m a ‘sure thing.’”
“You are?” I asked in genuine shock.
“It’s inevitable. I just . . . I can just . . . I don’t know how to say it.”
“You feel it, too, huh? That makes me feel better. If more than one person is experiencing it, it means the first person isn’t the only one that’s crazy.”
“You are not my type.”
Knowing she wasn’t happy about it shut down any good feelings I might have let surface when she admitted there was something tangible between us. I could almost guarantee I knew why I wasn’t her type, and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change those reasons even if I had a chance.
“Don’t do that,” Lara ordered, her brow furrowing. She slowly shook her head. “I can see the shutters snapping closed from here, and I don’t like it.”
“It’s not hard to figure out why I’m not your type, but I’m not willing to apologize for it.”
“And you shouldn’t! It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not?” I followed her into her apartment. I didn’t have a chance to look around because I was staring at her intently. “Then why am I not your type?”
“First of all, you have a beard. They’ve always given me the ick because I thought they probably smelled funny.”
“Does mine?”
“No. It smells like vanilla and . . . I don’t know what it is.”
“I have a few different scents, but the beard oil I use most is vanilla bergamot.”
“You use beard oil?” Lara asked. “You’re kidding!”
“Why would I joke about that?”
“Because it looks like a blind barber used his left hand to cut your hair with right-handed scissors.”
“What the fuck?” I muttered, reaching up to run my hand through my hair. “I’m not blind, but I am left-handed.”
“I should have known. Shiloh, your hair needs to be styled, not trimmed with pinking shears.”
“They’re not pink; they’re blue.”
Lara blinked a few times and cleared her throat. “Moving on to reason number forty-seven. From what I’ve seen, I have to assume that you don’t own anything other than jeans and T-shirts.”
“Wrong.”
“Really?” She looked so surprised I got offended all over again, even though I was still smarting at her insults about my hair. “You own a suit?”
“I sure do.”
“I’d have never guessed that. When was the last time you wore it?”
“When I took Biscuit fishing.”
“A swimsuit?”
“Trunks, but that’s the same thing, right?”
“You knew damn good and well I was talking about a suit and tie.”