Page 110 of Fiona and the Fixer

“YOU PICKED UP A VAN! I’m allowed to be unreasonable. What other guy has to deal with his pregnant woman doing that?”

It hadn’t even been nine minutes and Jack was losing his shit. It was going to be a fun nine months. I leaned down, whispered in Fiona’s ear. “Time to go, sweetheart.”

We didn’t even say goodbye, just turned around and left. Nitro and Brittany were right behind us. Because Jack and Hannah weren’t paying us any attention. By the time the door shut, the arguing stopped, and they were the ones making out on Jack’s movie couch.

58

FIONA

“Brittany seems nice,”I said when Dax opened the door to my rental house. I didn’t ask how he unlocked it, because this time I knew. We didn’t lock it behind us when we went off with the pickle people.

“She is, for a dentist,” Dax replied, turning around abruptly and pinning me against the closed door. His face was inches from mine. All I could see was him. Feel him. “I don’t want to talk about her. I want to talk about us. And your bed. And no one to–”

“Don’t mind me!” Dottie called from the kitchen.

I stared at Dax. Dax stared at me. Then my lips.

Then I grinned. So did he.

He stepped back and he adjusted himself in his pants.

It was then I picked up the amazing scent. Cookies.

It was hard to be mad at being cockblocked by cookies.

I took Dax’s hand. Yup,Itookhishandand led him into the kitchen where Dottie was using a small ice cream scooper to drop dough onto a cookie sheet. A cooling rack had a small stack of finished treats.

Yum.

“Are all these for us?” I asked.

“It’s book club night,” Dottie said.

Dax groaned and held up both hands to ward off the pint-sized senior. “I’m not reading any more sex scenes.”

Dottie laughed. “This is a book club where we don’t actually read the books, only say we do so we can get together, drink wine, and gossip.”

Dax visibly relaxed.

“I need all the gossip,” she said, looking at both of us with a surprised level of seriousness.

“You’re the one who knows everything going on in town,” I said, snagging a cookie from the cooling rack. Oooh, they had nuts.

“Not since you two moved here,” she countered. “My connection at the police department says that a pickle van somehow rode off a cliff.”

“Huh,” Dax said. He only had a few seconds of additional willpower because he grabbed his own cookie. “Sounds messy.”

“Don’t huh me, young man. I know you know what happened. I can’t let Evelyn Seymour get the advantage.”

I didn’t know who Evelyn Seymour was, but it was the first person Dottie didn’t seem to like.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Dax offered.

Dottie’s eyes lit up.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. The pickle van. The pickle people. Your dentist falling for a friend of mine.”

“Brittany met–” Dottie zipped her lip. “In exchange for?” she asked, knowing that had only been a tease. “Four cheese lasagna? Pesto garlic bread?”

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