Page 78 of Inviting Trouble
He squeezed her shoulder. “Come on, I can feel the tension radiating off you after I spent hours screwing it out of you.”
She glared at him. He gave her a small tender smile she found hard to resist.
She sighed. “Dad called a family meeting tonight about Tina.” Even the name Tina left a bad taste in her mouth. “What the hell is wrong with Dad? I want to crack their skulls together to knock some sense into them. I mean, what’s the point of them getting together at this stage in his life?”
“He’s only fifty-three,” Park pointed out. Cops could retire earlier than most careers with a full pension, so she supposed he wasn’t exactly old.
She loosened her death grip on the steering wheel. “Damn it all. All that screwing we did is wasted because now I want to throttle her again.”
“I wouldn’t say wasted,” he teased. “Filthy fun more like.”
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips.
“Can I give you some advice?” he asked.
“No.”
“She’ll always be a part of you, but you don’t have to let her rule you.”
She scowled. “Where’d you get that from, a fortune cookie?”
“She doesn’t have to be everything.”
She blinked rapidly, not wanting to cry over that woman, who didn’t deserve her tears.
He reached over and put a hand on her upper thigh. “Your dad told me that once about my mom.”
“Oh good, I’ll throw it in his face.”
“Don’t. I only said it to help you.”
Nothing can help me.
She kept the bleak thought to herself, where it burned a hole in her gut.
~ ~ ~
“Mad, glad to see you here for the family meeting,” her dad said, standing in front of the sofa where she sat.
She put her feet up on the coffee table and jerked her chin. “I live here.”
“Tina will be down in a minute,” her dad said.
“Fabulous.”
Her dad rocked back and forth on his heels. A long silence fell. She refused to make it easier on him. He’d brought that woman into her house. The house where she’d grown up motherless. That evil, abandoning, unfeeling bitch. She struggled to find her calm center again.
So fucking perfect that Park was on his way to Ty on the other side of the country, trying to be what he thought she wanted. But did he ask her? No! Did she want him doing stunts? Hell no.
She jumped up and paced.
The front door opened. Josh and Logan stepped inside. She immediately felt better. Josh was a rock. Logan, she suddenly realized, took after their mom. His hair was a light brown, unlike the rest of them with dark brown hair. He had her narrow nose, same ski-jump tilt at the end. Still, he was one of them. They’d shared a room growing up, her on top bunk, him on bottom, and he’d been her long-time late night confidant. When he wasn’t teasing her.
“I’m only here for you, Dad,” Josh said, taking off his black wool coat and hanging it in the front closet. “I have nothing to say to the woman who abandoned her six children.”
Mad went over and hugged Josh, so glad she wasn’t alone in this. He kissed the top of her head and ruffled her hair. She didn’t even complain about the hair thing.
Logan looked a little shell-shocked, not even taking off his black down jacket, just standing there staring at nothing. “I barely remember her.”
