Page 75 of Inviting Trouble
Mad lowered her voice, finding the words hurt too much to say at full volume. “You heard her say I took after your side like it was a bad thing.”
“It’s a great thing,” Park put in. “You got the best genes.”
But she didn’t believe him.
“Just give her a chance,” her dad said. “Talk to her.”
Mad shook her head. “Donotask me to do that. She doesn’t deserve it. And you deserve better.”
Her dad’s gaze was direct. “I devoted my life to you kids and I don’t regret that for a minute, but now I have a second chance.”
She stood abruptly and headed out of the kitchen, intent on packing up and crashing on someone’s sofa because she could not stay in the same house as that woman.
“Mad,” Park called.
“Let her cool off,” her dad said.
She went to her room and packed a suitcase. She stopped and stared at it. What the hell was she doing? That woman should leave, not her. This was Mad’s home. She dumped out the suitcase again and then threw it across the room.
“Hi,” a soft feminine voice said from the doorway.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Mad said.
“I’m sorry if seeing me upsets you.”
She glared at the woman. Tina. She refused to think of her as her mother. “It doesn’t upset me. You mean nothing to me.”
“Okay, that’s understandable.”
“Why now?”
“Your dad was always so good to me. A gentleman.”
“You’d better leave. I seriously want to throttle you.”
“How did you get so abrasive? Were there no women around here at all?”
“No! It was me with older brothers and a cop dad, so sorry if I didn’t turn out all girly like you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Get out of that doorway before I plow you down.”
Tina backed up and Mad moved past her, hands in fists. She headed downstairs, full of so much pent-up energy she didn’t know what to do with it.
“Park!”
He appeared a moment later from the kitchen.
“We’re going to a hotel.”
“Yup.”
She hadn’t thought it would be that easy. “Let’s go.”
“You want to pack a bag or—”
“We don’t need clothes.”
