Page 110 of Driven Daddy

“Where’s the TV, man?” Larsen asked.

I pointed to the TV that had been unplugged and tucked behind the chair. “We kinda needed the stand for all our workshop notes. She doesn’t really watch it that much.”

“Sacrilege.”

“Aww, you’ll just have to have a conversation.” Colette picked out a fat pepper from her hot steak sandwich.

“I’m very good at conversation, thank you.”

She licked the tip of her thumb. “I know. You flirted shamelessly with my employee throughout the whole signing.”

Larsen shrugged. “Amanda Jean is lovely.”

Colette snickered. “Not her name.”

“I’m going to get it.”

“Doubt it. I’ll be very surprised if you do.”

By the time Rita came back down in her bright pink outfit from earlier today, we were in a heated discussion about which scary movie was superior.

Rita sat next to me, tucking her feet under her. She dragged over the tray I was using. “Screamwins all. Hands down.”

“See, I knew we were destined to be besties.” Colette sat back with her wine. “The two killers to start the series trumps all of your chainsaws, Penn.”

“Texas Chainsaw Massacreis a classic.”

“You’re wrong,” Rita and Colette said in unison.

“You’re all delusional. Freddy Krueger has, by far, the bigger fear factor. Dreams? C’mon, man. It’s so individualized.”

Rita did a little shiver. “I’ll agree there, but it got too gory for gore’s sake. Same as the Chainsaw movie.”

“Movies,” I interjected.

“Screamall the way. We should watch it tonight.”

Larsen nodded toward the unplugged television. “You are the very worst host, Rita darling.”

She laughed. “This is supposed to be a work trip. It was in the way.”

“Bah.” Larsen rolled up his empty papers, then stood and took the rest of the leftovers away from those of us who were finished.

Rita happily tucked into her grinder as Colette and Larsen sniped at each other in the kitchen.

When I pulled out my phone, I found a long list of texts waiting for me from my brothers’ text chat. We generally used it to bitch about sports and shared rude memes, but today was heavy on the Halloween decorating topic.

Travis’s kid was pushing for a full-on Gideon-style extravaganza.

The Gideons were well known in the Cove for being the Halloween house to see every year. Evidently, Travis wanted to try and beat them out.

Trav:

Anyone have a big ladder?

Moose:

How big?

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