Page 14 of The One Who Got Away
He laughed. “Oh, hell. That was the sweatiest day all summer. The humidity was off the charts.”
Oh, I knew all too well. There’d been a whole lot of tanned, and sometimes pink, skin on display that day as they dug out and leveled the backyard.
“Pretty sure Maxie made sure to bring out bottles of water for the cooler. She’d shamelessly stolen one of my sundresses to go show off for your brothers.”
He snickered. “I remember. There was a whole lot of Maxine Delacroix hidden under her oversized sweatshirts. Pretty sure my brother Cam swallowed his tongue.”
I smacked his arm. “Bet you looked too.”
He cut a hunk of chicken off and scraped it through the sauce. “Nah. I valued my head where it was.”
“What’s that mean?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. So, how long are you in town?”
I gave a little shrug. “Not sure.”
He got up to get the wine we’d left behind, then sat a bit gingerly.
“You good?”
He laughed. “Just a little sore from my first training session yesterday. Then we framed out a few walls in the basement of a job today.”
“Bet you overdid it.”
A rueful smile was his only answer.
He paused with his fork to his mouth. “So, are you sticking around?”
I nodded. “I tried to get a leave of absence from Everest Games, but they were too pissed that I gave them no warning. They didn’t really care that I didn’t exactly have a warning myself.”
“And you came home.”
I nodded. “She needed me. What was I supposed to do?”
Chapter 5
Gus
The painin her eyes wounded something deep inside of me.
The Murdocks were close knit and a united front on damn near everything. That wasn’t the case when it came to Eloise’s family. There was a deep divide in how her small family dealt with one another versus how my mother looked at her kids.
There were sacrifices, sure. We’d fallen on our share of hard times, but I never had to worry about my mom or dad splitting. When I came home there were some things that never changed. My mother kicked ass and my dad would be there for us no matter what were only a few of the long-held constants.
I reached across to cover her hand. “Exactly what you’re doing, El.”
She pulled back, reaching for her wine glass. “Yeah, that’s enough of that. I’ve been drowning in my mom’s sad for weeks. I want to talk about anything else.”
I nodded. “Okay. How about I tell you about Roland and the vinegar swill he made me drink?”
She huffed out a laugh and leaned back in her chair. Her long fingers cupped her glass, swirling the liquid gold. “Let me guess, it was one of his most expensive bottles?”
“Damn, how’d you guess?”
“I mean I think merlot is trash no matter how expensive the bottle is, but I figure there’s always some way to fuck up wine. Especially if it isn’t stored properly.”
“Got it in one. He was trying to show off for a woman, of course. Here’s the oldest bottle I’ve got in my collection...absolutely the worst vintage in the history of wine. But the woman knew what a catch Ro was and choked down an entire glass of the hideous stuff.”
