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Though Alma adored her. She’d go on and on about her sister. I guessed I’d set the bar too high because this woman couldn’t be who Alma had on a pedestal.
“I didn’t realize you’d come up for air,” she said tartly, stabbing at a grape tomato and missing.
I snickered.
She scowled.
“I’m impossible to ignore.” I shoved a bite of crab cake in my mouth.
“My sister will be rid of you so fast you won’t see it coming. You’ll find out just howeasyto ignore you are.”
She finally forked the tomato and put it against her lips in triumph. Her mouth wasn’t a kissable pink shade like Alma’s. In fact, it didn’t look like she’d ever put on lipstick. Maybe just some of that balm stuff that was probably homemade.
The two of them couldn’t have been more night and day. Light hair. Dark hair. Pale skin. Bronzed skin. Blue eyes. Green-gold eyes. Trim tone body. Who knew what the hell was under that sack?
There was an air ofstay backthat surrounded JoJo. Except with her family. She’d had a warmth that clearly wouldn’t be extended to me.
“JoJo. What kind of name is that?” I asked.
“I’m named after my grandmother. Who is sitting right across the table from you. So if you want to insult her, be my guest.” She stiffened.
It wasn’t her grandmother I’d insulted. It was her.
“I don’t sugarcoat anything for anybody.” I shrugged. There was no point in niceties.
“If you held your tongue, we’d all be better off.” Then she flashed the most insincere smile I’d ever seen. “On second thought, keep talking. The more you do, the sooner you’ll be out of here.”
I lowered my voice and leaned closer. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She scraped the last bit of lettuce from her plate. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard that before. But you’ll see I’m right. You and your wounded ego can go back to the city.”
Alma’s hand crept up from my knee, under my swim trunks to my thigh. She grazed my skin with her nails in a random pattern of circles.
JoJo glanced down and made an irritated noise. “Have some decency. We’re trying to eat.”
“Kane, tell everybody about the big case you just won, baby.”
JoJo angled her body away from me. Like she didn’t give a damn about what I had to say. Nobody ignored me.
“I saw it on the news. The Salvatores are a good family to have on your side,” her grandfather said.
I cleared my throat. “Certainly better than being on their shit list.”
He chuckled. Her mother cringed. And Alma giggled.
That was typical Alma though. She saw the fun in life and was certainly easy to be around. We’d been together for two months, and although JoJo was certain I was just a momentary fling, Alma treated me like I was the most fascinating person on the planet, something I enjoyed. Plus, I couldn’t fault her for thinking that.
Alma wasn’t long-term material, so JoJo’s barb hadn’t worried me, but I was keen to give it another month or so. Now even more so. But what was JoJo’s deal? One side of my body was warm where Alma was cuddled up to me, but the other? A distinct chill. Made me wonder if JoJo treated all of Alma’s boyfriends like that, or whether she’d taken exception to my throwaway comments from the night before.
“Daddy, can I borrow a boat?” she asked quietly as if we weren’t in the middle of a conversation about me.
“You don’t have to ask, Earth Warrior.” He patted her hand.
Earth Warrior. She certainly had a slap and sharp enough claws to be a fighter.
“I don’t mean this weekend.”
He lifted a brow. “You still don’t have to ask.”
