Page 30 of The CEO I Hate

She looked me up and down. “You didn’t have anything nicer to wear?”

I’d shown up in jeans and a T-shirt. “You didn’t tell me I needed to be dressed up.”

“Is dinner with your parents not enough of a reason to look nice?”

I bit my tongue. Hard. Mostly to stop myself from pointing out that she was the one treating dinner like a matchmaking interview.

“Well,” my mother said under her breath. “Just be extra chatty. Hopefully, your personality will shine through despite the band T-shirt.”

“Extra chatty for who?” I muttered. We reached the dining room to a chorus of laughter. An unfamiliar man sat in the chair next to my father, who’d apparently broken out the good scotch. Damn, my parents were really excited about this one. And since anyone they liked was pretty much guaranteed to not be my type, I could already tell it was going to be alongnight.

“Mia,” my father said, getting to his feet to give me a hug.

“Hi, Dad.” I slid into his arms, trying not to make awkward eye contact with the stranger.

“This is Peter Porter,” my father said, pulling away to introduce the man. The receding hairline and heavy jowls told me he was at least a couple decades older than I was. “He’s one of our clients.”

I politely reached for his hand. “Nice to meet you, Peter.”Please don’t say, “You’re prettier than your parents described.”

“Great to meet you too, Mia.” He beamed at me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I shifted back around to my seat on the opposite side of the table.

“Peter’s a manager at a manufacturing facility,” my mother said, like she was announcing his pedigree at a dog show.

“It’s actually my grandfather’s company. Peter Porter’s Potties and More,” Peter said. “He’s the original Peter though.”

“Wow,” I said. “What a great company name. A lot of…alliteration.”

“Good, stable job,” my father pointed out.

“Makes more money than you’d think,” my mom added quietly as she passed behind me with a basket of rolls and a large bowl of Caesar salad.

Dear God.

They wanted me with a man whose entire bloodline was built on toilets. I piled up my plate with salad. Maybe if I stuffed an entire roll in my mouth, I wouldn’t be expected to respond for at least a couple of minutes.

“And Peter will one day inherit all of Porter’s Potties,” my mother said, way too loud and way too proud. “Isn’t that right?”

“Porter’s Pottiesand More,” Peter cut in. “Thatmoreis very important. We do a lot of business on toilet parts. Handles. Bowls. Wax rings. Flanges. Bolt caps. Tanks. Tank lids.”

The list went on.

Andon.

I stared at my parents like they’d lost their damn minds. I was about to losemine.

“Fill valves. Overflow tubes. Seats. Seat lids,” Peter continued, undeterred.

I jumped to my feet. “You know what I just remembered? I have to grab something for Jake.”

I didn’t wait for a response and hurried back out into the hall. For a moment, I considered setting myself on fire in the driveway. It felt more dignified than going back in.

“Mia?” my mother called. “Can’t it wait until after dinner?”

“I’ll just be a minute,” I said, slipping out to the garage. If Peter continued on like this for the rest of dinner, I’d end up forgetting to look for the yearbooks just so I could make my escape as quickly as possible.

I made my way to the massive shelves where my parents had stacked our boxes from childhood. This place didn’t have an attic, so the garage had become the space where old junk came to die. Thankfully, my mother, in her obsessive need to label everything, had separated my boxes from Jake’s and labeled them by year. All I had to do was find the high school years.

Bingo!

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