Page 81 of Inviting Trouble
He widened his eyes and made an adoring cow face. “Everyone knew how you worshipped him.” Wow. Guess it wouldn’t be as hard as she thought for her family to see her and Park as a couple.
“Now he worships me,” she informed him.
“Where is he, anyway?”
“Out in LA with Ty.”
Logan winced. “Did not see that coming. I can’t believe Park would trash cars and bikes for stunts. He loves machines too much for that.”
“Maybe he’ll just jump out a window.” She cringed thinking of that. Not her Park. She’d finally gotten him back out of war zones. “Augh! I can’t think about it. See ya!”
He snagged the sleeve of his jacket, and she shrugged it off. “Keep me posted on Dad,” he said.
“Yup.”
She stepped back inside the house.
Her dad smiled at her, his arms wrapped around Tina. “We’re going to Vegas!”
“Great, you saved me from moving out. Go nuts.”
She went to the kitchen and got herself a drink. Talk about a midlife crisis. She wouldn’t even try to talk sense into her dad. Let him crash and burn. Maybe then it would finally get through his brain that Tina was no good for him.
Chapter Eighteen
Mad sat in the circle of eight women—her usual friends plus their newest members Missy, Sabrina, and Lexi—at the Happy Endings Book Club meeting at Something’s Brewing Café, feeling anything but happy. She pretended to be listening to Hailey reading chapter one ofThe Princess Brideout loud. It was Thursday night, she’d had only the briefest of phone calls from Park out in LA, and her damn midlife-crisis dad hadn’t returned yet from Vegas. She wasn’t sure if he’d married Tina or not, but she was not looking forward to family functions withthat womanin attendance. At least Hailey was back to her usual cheerful self, no longer worried about break-ins at work. The man had turned out to be homeless, displaced from a mental institution that didn’t have the budget to keep him. He was now in a psychiatric hospital, getting the help he needed.
Someone snapped their fingers in her face and she swatted them away.
“You okay?”
She jerked her head up to see Charlotte looking at her with some concern.
She straightened. “Yeah. Just tired.” She suddenly noticed the women had gone quiet. She looked around at all the concerned faces, sensed it might be girl-talk time and just wasn’t ready to go there. She didn’t know some of the newcomers that well and every time she talked about Tina she wanted to kick someone’s ass.
“I brought brownies!” Hailey chirped, lifting the lid off a large square plastic container. “So the game is tell us if you like your man inked and muscled or trim and in a business suit, and then you get a brownie.”
“Can’t we have both?” Charlotte asked.
“No, silly,” Hailey said. “No man is both of those things.”
Josh immediately came to mind, but Mad was too depressed to even try to tease Hailey. Besides, he didn’t wear a business suit anymore.
Charlotte gestured for the brownies. “If I have to choose, I go with inked and muscled.” She took the tiniest piece of a brownie.
“Good to know,” Hailey said with a big wink.
Lauren took the container, said, “Business suit,” and quickly popped a brownie in her mouth.
Everyone else picked inked and muscled, big surprise. Mad took the container and reached for a brownie, but Hailey snatched the container out of her hand.
“Nope,” Hailey said. “You have to tell us which you prefer.”
The women started joking around, eating their brownies, the same brownie being denied Mad, their conversation rising in volume with her temper.
Hailey waved the container around enticingly.
“Who cares?” Mad barked. Hailey knew she was stuck on Park. The big jerk.
