Page 70 of The Pucker and the Princess
“Did everyone else get in alright?” I ask as we approach the luggage carousel so I can claim my bag.
“Lance, Abby, and Nathaniel got in last night and are excited to see you. I know you just saw them a few months ago, but you’ll never believe how much Nathaniel has grown in that time! And he’s such a chatterbox now.” I ignore Dad’s eye roll at that comment. I’m sure he has something to say about how bad adding another chatterbox to the mix is. Or that at least he’s a boy, so he’ll probably grow out of it. Or that at least the next generation isn’t trying to overwhelm him with estrogen.
He always groused about him and Lance being outnumbered by women. It was always “just a joke,” of course, but also not really a joke at all.
God, why did I let Mom talk me into this?
Lance greets me first as soon as I get back to Mom and Dad’s house. It’s interesting that leaving Texas is what got me to stop thinking of it as “home.” Even when I had my own place here, coming to Mom and Dad’s was always coming home. But now? Home is in Seattle.
It’s a strange realization, but I’ll have to examine that later.
“You made it!” Lance crows, greeting me with a big smile and a bone-crushing hug.
“I made it. It’s good to see you.”
Stepping back, he reaches for my bag and shakes his head. “It’s sad we both have to travel two thousand miles just to see each other again when we live only a few hundred miles apart!” he quips, heading for the stairs.
Dad follows behind us, grumbling something, and I hear Mom calling after him and telling him to hush, but I ignore both of them.
“Well, you know how it is when you move to a new place for a new job. Things are busy. I haven’t really had any time off since I started.”
“I get it. We haven’t exactly made the effort to come see you, either.” Lance grins at me over his shoulder.
“You’ve got a little one! I’d imagine that makes it harder to travel, too.”
He sighs heavily, turning to give me an exasperated eye roll. “You have no idea.”
Wrinkling my nose, I grimace at him. “Rough flight?”
Another sigh as we reach the top of the stairs and he gestures me ahead of him to my door. “It could’ve been worse, I suppose, but yeah. And we can’t fly direct from Spokane. I almost called to see if we could coordinate being on the same flight from Seattle to here.”
I grin at him, stepping inside my room. “That would’ve been fun. Maybe next time.”
“Definitely.” He drops the bag, then takes my suitcase from Dad, who’s standing in the open doorway.
“You women, always traveling with so much luggage,” Dad grouses, nodding to my suitcase.
I raise my eyebrows. “It’s one suitcase, Dad. I brought my larger one because I have gifts? And I thought I might have things to take home?”
He grumbles something about Abby, and Lance’s jaw ticks. “And we have a toddler. Who needs a lot more stuff,” Lance grits out between clenched teeth.
More grumbling from Dad that’s practically unintelligible as he turns to leave, and I don’t try to make out what he’s saying because I’m sure it’ll just make me mad.
Lance stares after his retreating form, waiting until Dad’s heavy footfalls make it all the way down the stairs before turning to me and hissing, “Was he always this big of a misogynist?”
I have to cover my mouth to stifle the laugh. “Oh, god. Are you seriously just noticing?”
He shrugs uncomfortably. “I mean, I knew he wasn’t what anyone would termprogressive, but I guess it never hit me that he was this bad. One of the perks of being away from him, huh?” He gives me a lopsided smile.
“Why do you think I followed you halfway across the country?”
“Uh, ’cause you got a killer job offer?”
Laughing, I nod. “Well, okay, that too. But the reason I even went after that job was because I couldn’t take being here anymore.” I point a finger out at the door. “Listening to that kind of crap growing up, every day at work even after I moved out, and at every dinner Mom invited me to …” I shake my head. “I had more than my fill.”
He rubs a hand over his face, glancing out the door. “I’m surprised you stayed as long as you did, honestly. I know my experience of him was obviously different, but I went to college so far away just to get out from under his thumb too. He had my whole life mapped out from the time I was born, and it didn’t matter to him what I thought at all.”
“Oh, trust me. I remember.” The old, bitter jealousy rises up inside me. Lance was the son Dad wished I was. And I was the one who wished for all the things Lance never wanted—to work alongside him in the shop and inherit it one day. I guess Kane and Daughters didn’t have the same ring as Kane and Sons. Which was also silly, since he only had one son. He changed the name when Mom was pregnant with Gabby, stubbornly refusing to believe Mom would dare to give him another daughter. Sure, he spoiled her rotten when she was a kid, indulging her everywhim. But that was because she was the baby, and although he taught her to change a tire and jump a car and all the same basic car maintenance tasks we all learned, she never cared as much as I did. Or as much as Lance had to.
