Page 221 of Holding On To Good

She was pretty sure Urban would put a stop to that when he got here.

If he got here.

She got that he was probably nervous about groveling for Willow’s forgiveness, but it’d been over three hours since he raced out of his office. The ceremony was long over, they’d eaten dinner, the speeches and toasts had been given, and the dancing had started half an hour ago.

What was taking him so long?

She knew he was alive because she’d texted him not five minutes ago asking that very question. His response? An overabundance of emojis. A skeleton. A vampire. A zombie. And three of the disco dancing guy which she assumed meant he was Staying Alive.

And that was why it should be illegal for anyone over the age of twenty-four to use emojis.

Until he did show up, she was left to her own devices.

And left alone to deal with Toby and Miles and their nimroddy shenanigans.

Case in point. A good-looking guy, early twenties with dark hair and a mustache she prayed was supposed to satirical, approached her table, his eyes on her, his smile friendly.

She smiled back.

After a quick glance to see if Reed just so happened to notice a guy approaching her.

He didn’t.

Which was fine. She didn’t care. It wasn’t like she was still hung up on him or anything. She’d rarely even thought about him these past few weeks.

Even if all her shorts were just a little tight due to that high volume of ice cream Urban mentioned her eating every night.

But… whatever. So she’d wallowed a little bit. That was over. Done.

This was her moving on.

Except she wouldn’t be moving on with regrettable mustache man because the moment he reached them, Toby opened his big, fat mouth.

“She’s seventeen,” he said, calm as the lake, mild as the breeze. Like he was just a guy whose hobbies included yoga, meditating and spouting off people’s ages.

Verity’s smile went stiff. “I’ll be eighteen soon.”

Mustache man froze, but then gave her an up-down look that, honestly, wasn’t flattering in the least but her brothers had already scared off three guys already, so she had something to prove here.

And couldn’t afford to be too picky.

“How soon?” the guy asked hopefully.

“Not soon enough for you,” Miles said before she could respond.

Then he oh-so-casually slid his freaking badge out of his front pocket and laid it on the table in plain view of the guy, God—who did indeed hate her—and everyone at the reception.

And he wasn’t even on duty!

He probably slept with that thing.

The guy took one look at Miles’s badge, went white, then turned on his heel and speed-walked away in the most unattractive way possible.

Okay, so she dodged a bullet there, but come on.

Moving her soda glass out of the way, she leaned forward—the better to glare at her brothers, first Miles, then Toby, then back to Miles because, as always, he was the one being the biggest pain in her rear and deserved a double whammy of her irritation.

“Uh, thanks a lot,” she said, amping up the sarcasm in her tone to an eleven because with these two morons, they’d probably think she was sincere if she didn’t. “That could’ve been the man Fate had destined for me to marry and you scared him off. If I end up alone with only my houseful of cats to keep me company, it’ll be all your fault.”

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