AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Apparently, he planned to stick around awhile. She shouldn’t have been relieved, but even with everything else, she felt better when he walked through the door.
She rummaged through the napkins and sauce packets. “Do you have any vodka?”
He chuckled. “No. They frown on mixing alcohol with your pain meds.”
“Lucy?” her father asked. “Lulu, who calls you Lucy?”
“Everyone,” she said, her focus attuned to the emotional eating frenzy in front of her.
“How’d you get out?” Katie asked Will.
“My x-rays and oxygen levels are fine, but I’ll sound like I inhaled a bonfire for a while.” He propped a hip to sit on the edge of her bed. “Hoped you’d be resting, so I stepped out to get you non-hospital-grade food. Looks like I missed the party.”
“Where’d you get clothes? I thought your clothes all burned at my place?”
He stared at her a beat too long. “I have my ways.”
“Lulu, why were his clothes at your house?” her father asked.
“You two are living together?” Her mother stared at Lucy as though she had suddenly sprouted a parasitic twin out of her neck.
“William Covington.” Will cleared his throat and offered her mother his hand. She shook it and gave Lucy an accusing look.
“You’re dating our girl?” her father asked.
Holy moly, they were acting like they got to have an opinion about this.
Will squeezed Lucy’s knee. “Seems that way.”
“What do you do, William?” Her father shot his patented witness-on-the-stand, take-em-down-death-ray stare at him.
This wasn’t happening.
Will glanced to her and stopped abruptly, raising an eyebrow. “I…uh…own several television stations across the region.”
Lucy snorted. “He owns dozens of them.”
“Oh my.” Her mother’s nasally words pitched higher. “Why’s he with you, dear?”
Katie gaped at her. Will tensed.
Lucy squeezed the burrito, and a chunk of chorizo plopped out.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Will had clicked into his get-it-done CEO tone.
Her mother paled. “She’s…well…Lulu.”
As though that explained exactly why he wouldn’t want to be with her. The burrito landed, thump, a solid mass into Lucy’s stomach.
“Berta.” Her father’s tone held warning.
Lucy was beyond over this little meeting. They were as impossible as they had always been.
“Could you both leave?” Lucy stared straight at her parents, vaguely aware of Will’s hand moving to her leg. “I mean it. Don’t come again. You’ve made your choices. Now I’m making mine. Please…go.”
“She’s kicking us out.” Her mother glanced to her father. “Graham, she can’t just kick us out.”
“Lucille, apologize to your mother,” he barked at her.
