Page 18 of The Love Losers

“I’m enjoying myself,” my mother says with a broad smile. “I find this rather amusing, honestly.”

“That’s my cue.” I walk over to the bar to pour myself a whiskey. When I step away with the glass in hand, my mother halts me in my tracks with nothing but a stare.

“Truly, did I teach you no manners?”

So I pour her a gin and tonic, her drink of choice, then bring it to the settee before settling back down in my armchair.

“Thank you,” she says after she takes the first sip. She glances at the old-fashioned clock on the mantel over the fireplace, sitting under the portraits of Emma and me, but above the urns belonging to husbands one through three. “I find I’m rather eager for them to arrive.”

But she isn’t acting worried about the threat.

“Mother, this isn’t a game.”

“Of courseit’s a game,” she says with a prim smile. “Have you ever known a countdown to be anything else? I’m tickled by the whole thing. It’s about time something interesting happened in this house.”

“You didn’t happen to do this yourself, did you?” I ask, because it needs to be asked.

“Howdareyou,” she says, not very convincingly, then gives a slight shake of her head. “If I’d done it, the presentation would have been better.”

I don’t deny her point. She’s always been good at creating a spectacle. “Do you think Nina’s behind it?”

My ex-fiancée certainly didn’t like my mother, as she’d expressed to me on multiple occasions. The feeling was decidedly mutual. That being said, it’s hard to imagine her going to the effort of producing a website.

My mother makes a dismissive sound from the back of her throat. “Well, the execution is certainly lacking, but she doesn’thave the imagination to pull off such a thing. We’ll discuss all of that with the private investigators, though.”

I clear my throat. “We need to tell Emma.”

My mother clicks her nails against her glass. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

“Yes. She’s coming to the New Year’s party, isn’t she? It would seem prudent to tell her that someone has threatened to murder you at it.”

She titters as if I’ve made an amusing joke, and I take a long slug of the whiskey, enjoying the fire it spreads through my stomach. This, too, is something that can make me feel, although I’ve always been careful not to drink too much. My father was a mean drunk, although my sister would likely point out that he’d been cruel whether drunk or sober. But when he was drunk, the mask would slide off, revealing what always lay beneath it, barely banked. A man who liked to punish—a man who always won, even when he lost, because if he was talented at anything it was finding the silver lining in any situation and stealing it.

He’s a man whose face I share, so even though he’s been gone for well over two decades, I’m haunted by him in the mirror every morning.

My mother shifts, her gaze finding and holding mine. “You seem different, Anthony.”

“Different how?”

The buzzer for the gate rings, and I’m relieved for the reprieve.

I press the buzzer, and Jake’s voice booms over it. “The cavalry has arrived.”

I buzz him in and then make my way to the front door. When I open it, I see four people I was expecting: Jake and Lainey, with a couple I haven’t met—the woman wiry with short pink hair and an amused twist to her mouth and the man dark-haired withlight brown skin. Behind them is one person I most definitely wasn’t expecting….

I nearly drop the drink.

It’s Rosie, her blond and purple hair pulled back, wearing a purple coat over a black sweater dress shot through with silver. Seeing her is like getting that first jolt of energy from a strong cup of coffee, or stepping into a warm shower.

“Oh, shit, is that for me?” says the pink-haired woman, grabbing the whiskey glass from my hand. “Don’t mind if I do.” She winks at me and takes a slug from the glass.

“It wasn’t,” I reply, my gaze still on Rosie. I make myself look away. “But I suppose it is now.”

The man gives her a fond look, then extends his hand to me. “I’m Damien, and this is Nicole. We’re here to help your mother.”

“Anthony,” I say, shaking his hand. “My mother’s waiting in the drawing room with bated breath. Jake and Lainey know the way.”

I nod for them to come in, and they file past me in the appropriate direction. Rosie steps inside last, and she stands beside me as I close the door against the puff of cold.

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