“Given the compromising position—”
“Why don’t we save this story for later?” Naomi said loudly, looking in Waylay’s direction.
“You were doin’ what?” Knox demanded, tuning in.
“I’m worried that your lack of you-know-what is making you hallucinate, Stef. Maybe you should ask Jeremiah out,” I suggested.
“Touché, Legs. Touché,” he said.
Nash ignored us and put the trembling dog down on the floor. She tried to hide behind his legs, then spotted me when she peeked around his boots.
I waved to her and she took a tentative step in my direction. I crouched down and patted the floor in front of me.
Piper inched her way out from behind Nash’s boots and then made a mad dash to me.
I picked her up and submitted to the tongue bathing. “You smell so much better than you did,” I told her.
“Aww! She likes you,” Naomi observed.
“Let’s get back to this compromising position,” Amanda suggested.
Stef topped off the empty wineglass Liza J waved at him. “So I was heading back to town early yesterday morning, and what did I see on the side of the road?”
Knox earmuffed Waylay with his hands.
“A bear?” Liza J guessed.
“Even better. I saw Knockemout’s chief of police on his knees in the grass in shall we say ‘thrusting position’ behind the curvy a-s-s of Miss Solavita.”
Nash looked like he was giving serious thought to running for the front door.
“What the f—erret?” Knox snapped.
I sighed. “Seriously, Stef? You say thrusting but you spell ass?”
“Thrusting isn’t a swear word,” Waylay said knowledgeably.
“Hey! Earmuff her harder,” Naomi instructed Knox.
He complied by spinning the girl around and wrapping her in a head-level bear hug.
“I can’t breathe!” Her cry was muffled by Knox’s chest.
“You can if you’re still complaining,” Knox insisted.
“Your dumb muscles are breaking my nose!” Waylay whined.
Knox released her and ruffled her hair.
“Waylay, why don’t you go see how Grandpa is doing with the chicken?” Naomi suggested.
“You’re just sending me away so you can talk about gross grown-up stuff.”
“Yep,” Stef said. “Now get out of here so we can get to the gross stuff.”
Knox put his hand on the top of Waylay’s head and steered her toward the back door. “Come on, kid. Neither one of us needs to hear this.” Together they trooped out onto the deck and closed the door.
“Back to the thrusting,” Amanda insisted. She hopped onto a bar stool and did a little shimmy.
“I pulled over, being a Good Samaritan and all,” Stef continued.
“Is that what they call it these days?” Nash said dryly.
“I offered my assistance, but the rosy-cheeked Lina assured me they didn’t need any help with their dry humping.”
“We weren’t dry humping!” I insisted.
“Bet you could be arrested for that,” Liza J mused with more than just a hint of pride.
I threw a carrot from the veggie tray at Stef and it bounced off his forehead. “Ow!”
“We were fully clothed and pulling a dog—this dog—out of the storm drain, idiot.” I held Piper up to the crowd Lion King–style.
“Speaking of, who’s gonna foster her until the rescue finds her a home?” Nash asked.
“I never thought a dog rescue story would disappoint me,” Amanda announced after a beat of silence.
“Let’s get back to Stef being a chickenshit,” I suggested.
A piece of cauliflower bounced off my cheek and landed on the floor.
Lou opened the door, and the flood of dogs rushed in. Liza J’s pit bull, Kitty, plopped her butt at my feet and stared up at the pumpkin-sweatered dog in my arms. Waylon gobbled up the floor cauliflower, while Beeper tap-danced at Lou’s feet.
“Chicken’s ready,” he announced. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Nash and I said together.
EIGHT
GREEN BEANS AND LIES
Nash
Dinner was as chaotic as a Morgan family gathering usually got. But what I’d once found enjoyable was now plain exhausting.
Conversations flew back and forth across the large table over the country music playing in the background. It went too quickly for me to keep up with let alone participate in, even if I had the energy, which I didn’t. I’d spent all day at the station and being shadowed by a U.S. marshal who seemed to take great joy in pissing me the fuck off.
I was bone tired. But I’d come here for one reason, and that was to get answers from Lina “Insurance Is So Boring” Solavita. She’d lied to me and my family, and I was going to find out why.
I’d brought Piper along for company. The dog looked as weary as I felt. She was passed out in a tiny ball against Kitty on a dog bed in the corner. The rest of the canine crew had been too rambunctious to join the party and were banished outside.
Food was passed and drinks were topped off, sometimes without even being asked. I stuck to my one and only beer and forced myself to eat just enough not to draw anyone’s attention. We Morgans were plain bad at talking about feelings, which meant I’d get a free pass from my brother and grandmother. But Naomi and her parents were the kind to spot a problem and talk it to death while doing their damnedest to solve it.
When I’d been discharged from the hospital, it had been to a clean apartment, fresh laundry, and a refrigerator stocked with meals. The Witts had made it clear that they’d adopted not just Knox and Waylay but me as well.
After a lifetime with the comfort of Morgan family dysfunction, it was more than a little disconcerting.
Half the table erupted in laughter at something I’d missed. The suddenness of it startled me. Piper too apparently. She let out a worried yip. Unfazed, Kitty put her big head on Piper’s body and within seconds both were fast asleep again.
This was more life than this old house had seen since my own childhood, more than I could handle. I’d been prepared to do what I’d learned to do, white knuckle my way through. But Lina’s presence on my left gave me a tangle of feelings that knotted themselves up in the middle of the emptiness that now lived full-time in my chest. That burn of attraction that I didn’t understand was still there, along with a sliver of guilt for using her to get a few jabs in at that asshole Nolan. But more than anything, I was pissed.
She’d deliberately misled everyone when it came to her work. And that was as good as a lie to me. I didn’t tolerate lies and liars.
Our exchange this morning left me with questions.
I’d done a little digging between slogging through paperwork and helping Animal Control capture one of Bacon Stables’ pain-in-the-ass runaway horses after it shit its way down Second Street.
But the dinner table wasn’t the place to start the interrogation. So I bided my time and tried to limit the number of times I glanced in her direction.
She was wearing tight jeans and a gray cardigan that looked soft as a cloud. It made me want to reach out and touch it, to rub my face against the fabric. To—
Okay, creeper. Get a hold of yourself. You’re depressed and pissed off. Not a sweater-sniffing stalker.