Page 78 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

Katherine pinned her daughter with an expectant gaze.

“I contacted a headhunter,” Laney said in response.

“Wonderful.”

“And secondly, Mom, Ethan isn’t my friend. We’ve started dating.”

Katherine twisted in her chair, giving Laney her full attention. “You’re dating?”

Laney nodded, fiddling with her cell phone in her lap as she watched the nail technician buff her toenails.

“This is Dean’s friend Ethan, right?”

“Well, he was my friend too.”

“In high school,” her mom said in a funny voice that had Laney lifting her eyes.

“Yeah.”

A grin broke out across Katherine’s face. “I always thought he had a thing for you.”

Laney almost shrieked. “You what?”

Their mother-daughter relationship was good, but it wasn’t the open kind where they’d gossip or talk about the latest boy to break Laney’s heart.

Katherine shrugged. “He was at our house all the time, and he always seemed to be…” She twirled her hand in the air, aluminum foil on her fingers to remove her gel nail polish. “He was close to you a lot. If you were standing by the kitchen counter, so was he. If you were sitting on the long couch in the living room, so was he. And you—” She snorted a laugh that sounded exactly like Laney’s. “You were so popular, I could never understand why you weren’t going out with different boys all the time, until I came home from work one night and the two of you were at the kitchen table, doing something, I don’t know what.”

“Probably calculus homework,” Laney guessed, and her mother eyed her. It was her mom who demanded she get a tutor, after all. Lest she be the first in her family to get a C in any class.

“You were sitting so close together, you were practically in his lap.”

“Mom,” Laney chided, her cheeks heating with secondhand embarrassment for her teenage self.

“It’s true.” Katherine shook her head in mock scolding. “You know your father and I weren’t sure about the two of you together at the beach. When Dean told us he was inviting Ethan, we really considered making you and your friends go a different week, but you know your dad.” She puffed out a short burst of air. “He didn’t want to pay for two different rentals.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Laney asked, full of indignation. It wasn’t as if they’d gone on a weeklong bender. It was a bunch of recent graduates drinking warm beer and gorging themselves on pizza.

Her mother pursed her lips, letting her silence answer, and that’s when Laney realized she and Ethan had done exactly what her parents were afraid of—they had sex during that trip—and she played with her hair, trying to hide the growing blush she felt creeping up from her neck. Her mother threw her head back and laughed. “Guess maybe we should have sprung for that second house for you and your girlfriends, huh?”

“I plead the Fifth,” Laney said, which only caused her mom to laugh louder.

“Well,” she said when she quieted down, “I’m happy for you.” She patted Laney’s arm. “Does that mean you’re looking to be here on a more permanent basis?”

Even though Laney and Ethan had officially been together only a few weeks, they hadn’t talked about it. But now that her mother had brought it up… “Yeah, I think so.”

Katherine smiled, patted her daughter’s hand once more, then faced forward, smiling at the nail technician when she started painting her toenails the usual maroon color. “Well, let me know how it goes with the headhunter, or if I need to take a look at your résumé.”

Laney inhaled deeply. “I got it covered, Mom.”

Her mother raised her hands in innocence. “Just checking.”

An hour later, Laney was headed back inside Dean’s house when her phone buzzed with a text from Gem. She squinted at the picture for a moment before she recognized what it was.

OMG, she typed, not paying attention to the two men in the living room as she threw herself into the closest chair, her fingers flying over her phone screen.IS THAT MITCHELL BABY #2?

Another picture came through, a black-and-white photo of what looked like two tiny hands balled into fists.

Looks like they want to fight,Bronte messaged with a couple of skull and crossbones emojis.

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