Page 60 of It Runs in the Family

“Until you abandoned him on the front porch,” Hannah said with an evil grin. “And I had to go get him.”

“Hey!” I protested. “I brought him home safe and sound. It wasn’t my fault that Rita was still asleep and John Jacob refused to take in his own child. I had to get to work.”

“You still left him on the porch,” Hannah countered, but the amusement in her eyes proved she was just stirring up shit.

“I was parked down the street watching him until you picked him up, and you damn well know it.”

“Jezebel!” Edward shouted, pointing a finger at me.

Billy scoffed. “Do you even know what a Jezebel is, kid?”

“An evil woman,” Edward countered, hash tagging his fingers again and pointing them in my direction.

“See, Trinity,” I said, stabbing some green beans with my fork. “All the more reason for me not to watch your kids. Think of all the potty words they’ll be saying before I leave. Not to mention, I might let them outside like dogs and forget to bring them back in.”

Trinity’s eyes opened wide, and she glanced across the table at her younger children, who had been silent for most of dinner.

Ava leaned into my ear. “Looks like you dodged that bullet.”

“Are you in the habit of leaving babies on porches?” Boone asked with his devilish grin. “Or was this a one-time thing?”

Talk about dodging a bullet. If he’d shown up at my front door half an hour earlier and asked me out on a date, I would have agreed.

Just one more piece of evidence that I couldn’t pick a decent guy to save my soul.

“Oh, I do it all the time,” I said, grabbing a roll from a basket across from him and aggressively breaking it in half. “I just pick up babies off the street and dump them on people’s doorsteps. I’m like a stork.”

“Could you get any weirder?” Stacy muttered under her breath, then turned to Boone. “I like babies.”

He released a chuckle. “I bet you do. How many do you have?”

“None!” she said, jutting her head back. “I’m not ready to be tied down.” She lifted a bare shoulder, somehow making it look sexy. “Or maybe I haven’t found the right man.”

He gave her a weak smile, then turned to me. “Tell me Iris, when you’re not abandoning babies, what do you do?”

“Good question,” I said. “How about you?”

“This and that,” Boone said. “And you didn’t give me an answer.”

What was this game? Did he think I’d been lying about losing my job? I wasn’t about to announce my employment status at the dinner table. I had to tell Granny before I told everyone else. Not to mention, people like my Aunt Millie would gloat over the fact that I couldn’t keep a cashier job. I’d let them know as soon as I found something else. It wasn’t like many of my family went to the Stop-n-Go.

“Why the interest in my freak cousin?” Billy asked, shooting Boone a look of confusion.

“Just making conversation,” he said lightly.

“Well, don’t,” Billy muttered, curling his lip as he looked up at me. “You can ignore her.”

“What does this and that entail?” Stacy asked, running her nail down Boone’s bicep.

Mary Ellen released a loud huff. “For God’s sake, Stacy. If the man wanted to tell you, he would have said.”

Stacy glared at her before she resumed eating, taking a tiny bite.

When was this dinner going to be over?

“You must be good friends with Billy for him to invite you to Sunday dinner,” Mary Ellen said to Boone, with a hint of surliness. It looked like her previous amusement had worn off, although I wasn’t sure what had flipped the switch.

“Not really,” Boone said, keeping his gaze on me with a serious look in his eyes. “It just kind of worked out.”