AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He’d told me that and I’d been flushed with pride. He was a good guy. A smart guy.
Like that had anything to do with me.
On the video he and the giant hockey player started fighting. Like, for real.
“Who is that guy?”
“His brother. A big deal hockey player.”
“Why are they fighting?”
“Family, Lex. Family.”
True.
Ethan landed a solid jab. But took a punch to the face that made me wince.
The video stopped and I pressed Play again.
“Hey, ladies,” some backward hat-wearing guy walked by, licking his lips and rubbing his hands together like we were food he wanted to eat.
“Fuck off, asshole,” Henny said.
“Maybe I was talking to your friend,” he said.
I smiled at him. “You’re sweet. But fuck off.”
He walked away, joining his friends. But he didn’t mutter bitch under his breath so maybe there was hope for him.
The video kept playing. Dimples and everything.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Henny asked.
I nodded.
“What a lying asshole.”
My brain was empty and buzzing and my chest ached. I wanted to scream. Or cry. Both. But really, what I wanted—and I wasn’t going to say this out loud, not to Henny who wanted Ethan Kringle stuffed and hung on a wall, and not to my mother who believed love was a lie boys told to get girls to take off their pants—I wanted him to be the guy he’d been that night.
The guy I’d fallen in lust with. There. I said it. Yes, I’d been drunk, but what I’d felt…I was sure it was real. And it wasn’t love, I wasn’t that stupid, but god, that chemistry we’d had. How was a girl supposed to date a dentist after experiencing that kind of attraction? That kind of dizzy lust?
“Lexie,” Henny said in a warning voice. “What are you thinking?”
“He was a good guy.”
“No,” Henny said. “You thought he was a good guy and then he married you, signed a fake name so you couldn’t find him, and left in the morning without saying goodbye or leaving a note. I guarantee that guy went home and told everyone about how he banged a showgirl and got her to marry him.”
I flinched.
“Sorry, honey, but you know it’s true.”
“So, what do I do?”
“Go to Salt Springs, get the asshole to sign some divorce papers, and then kick him in the nuts.”
Well, it’s not like I had anything else to do.
6
Ethan
“Dad,” I said, I was standing in the middle of the back office where Kristen and Dad had been holed away making plans. “I’ve got this.”
Kristen was putting on her coat to go talk to Paul. And she kept setting off the motion-sensor singing snowman.
“You said Tiffani with an i had this,” Kristen said, taking the snowman and shoving him in a drawer. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”
Tiffani with an i had worked out for a few days. And worked out was really giving her more credit than she deserved. But then Matt came back and with him had come some front-desk challenges and Tiffani disappeared. Kristen had called me this morning and told me I needed to come home and man the front desk or dad was going to do it. On my lunch hour I’d raced over.
“And aren’t you busy being Mr. Salt Springs?” Kristen asked, and the answer to that was yes. Yes, I was outrageously busy, but if I managed the front desk for an hour or two this afternoon, I could head back into my office and finish my work there.
“No, son, you think you’ve got this. But you don’t,” Dad said. His white hair was combed and fluffy, he was wearing a red flannel shirt. We should put him in the corner of the lobby and charge people to take pictures of themselves with Santa Claus.
“It’s the front desk. How hard can it be?”
“Well, with that hand…” Kristen was still pissed about the fight Matt and I got into at the airport two days ago. And I didn’t blame her. I was still pissed, too. Matt had that effect on people.
But I held my own. So I was pissed and proud.
“I ran the front desk every summer through high school. I created the booking system on the computer. It’s like riding a bike, I’m sure. It will be fine.”
“I don’t know Ethan,” Kristen said, determined to be a buzz kill. “Tiffani left because things are getting busy. Matt being here is working better than expected and his fans are really…something.”
A bunch of hockey fans? I’d faced down the teamsters last year and won. I could handle hockey fans in my sleep.
“I got it,” I said, holding my hands out wide, backing out of the office and right into bedlam.
Holy shit, the front desk was mobbed. And there was a whole lot of Warrior gear. Was that face paint?
“Hi!” I said with a big smile. Talking over the din. I turned down the music so I wasn’t competing with Bing Crosby. “If you could just form a line—”
