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Somewhere a demon just earned its horns because of that bald-faced lie.
“Why are you all together?”
“It’s Wednesday night,” Brit said, “and that means enchiladas.”
“And tequila,” Megs added.
Cami chimed in with, “And gossip.”
“Mostly about you,” Roxy finished off.
“But sometimes about Carson brothers,” Brit said, earning her death glares from the other sisters.
Before he could follow up on that, though, Roxy turned the phone back on herself. “Don’t even think about it. We’re gathered here to talk about you. So ’fess up, little brother. Who is this woman and how did she get you to break your four-year drought?”
“I have not been in a drought. I just haven’t been dating,” he said. “There’s a difference. And this isn’t a date. We’re just friends.”
The laughter from his sisters was immediate and very, very loud.
“Okay, fine,” Cami said from off camera. “Who is this woman who got you to actually know more than her first name before you had sex with her?”
“Cami!” Brit gasped. “You don’t know that he did that.”
“Really, Brit?” Megs said. “Just look at his face. It’s obvious he’s trying to make his FWB into something more.”
He was not, but he knew better than to argue with Megs. The woman was half psychic, and the other half was pretty much pure deviousness. So he kept his mouth shut, knowing that upped his odds of his sisters forgetting he was even on the phone. Those odds were pretty good, considering they were all talking over each other and Roxy had the phone pointed down so all he could see was the chipped linoleum floor and…was that a pair of men’s boxers under the desk?
“Matsens! Focus!” Roxy hollered as she brought the phone back up so now he could see all of them squeezed in on the loveseat. “This is about Cal’s not-a-date, not his past naked shenanigans.”
Brit straightened up and said, “Caroline says hi, by the way.”
All of the other sisters yelled, “Brit!”
“Fine,” his next-to-youngest sister huffed. “Whatever. We all know they were let’s-bang-the-small-town-boredom-away friends when he was home. Tell us about this mystery woman.”
There wasn’t any point in fighting it. His sisters would never let this go. He let out a long sigh and sat down on the corner of his bed.
“Her name is Astrid. She’s a personal organizer, but right now she works with the Ice Knights. We’re working together on the whole Tig Jones problem.”
“Oh, an office romance,” Cami said with a happy sigh. “Those are my favorite.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to ten. He really should’ve tossed the phone out the window.
“It’s not a romance,” he said, keeping his tone even. “It’s not even a date, so you can all back off.”
His sisters looked about as likely to do that as they were to letting Roxy’s first husband back inside the Prairie Lake city limits.
“So it seems like Tig is finally doing better?” Roxy said, throwing out a lifeline. “You guys have won, what, the last three pre-season games? He made a great save against the Yetis.”
The Boston team’s phenom rookie had a breakaway and had fired off a shot in the final seconds of the Ice Knights’ last pre-season game that should have made it into the net. However, Tig had made a highlight-reel-worthy glove save that denied the Yetis a tie and a chance to win in overtime.
“He’s still a giant pain,” Cal said. “But his head seems to finally be getting dislodged from his ass—let’s just hope it lasts beyond the pre-season.”
“So this is the same Astrid who used to be engaged to Tig?” Megs asked as she scrolled through her phone as if she was just making conversation.
As if that was ever the case with his second-oldest sister. The woman was a born bulldog. The back of Cal’s neck started to itch with dread because this was a question she obviously already knew the answer to.
“Megs, you’ve got to stop googling everyone.”
