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He definitely wouldn’t go that far.
“Unless you get on his bad side.” She stabbed another piece of waffle. “He’ll come at you hard if you get on his bad side.” She paused in thought as she chewed. “But that rarely happens. A person has to do something really offensive, like steal from poor people.” She reached for her coffee. “When I was ten, he actually caught a guy trying to steal from a Salvation Army bucket. So he put him in a headlock and fed him his lunch.” She raised the cup and added as she blew into the coffee, “He hates cocky showboating about as much as I hate dog beaters.” She set her cup on the table and looked across at him. “You never did mention what you do for a living.”
He was on the same level as a dog beater? “Nothing as exciting as chasing pigs and running away from weddings.” He took a drink of his beer and sucked the foam from his top lip. Last night, her cluelessness about him had seemed kind of funny. Like an inside joke. Not to mention a few extra hours before he had a conversation with John about a certain wedding dress and flying buttons. In the light of day, not so funny. He’d sought her out today to tell her that he was a Chinook. It wasn’t a secret and she was bound to find out. He’d looked for her today to tell her and because there were parts of last night she might not want her dad to know about. He would be willing to help her out because he was a nice guy, but now she’d called him a thieving, dog-beating showboat, and he didn’t feel like helping her or telling her shit. “What do your folks think of you being the runaway Gettin’ Hitched bride?”
“Not happy. Mortified. Worried.” She looked away and took a bite. “Once my dad got over his initial blowup, he was okay. But my mom . . .” She shrugged a shoulder. “She’s happy that I didn’t marry Pete, but she’s hurt that I didn’t come to her instead of running away.”
Sounded reasonable to Sean. “What did your folks think about you being on the show? Chasing pigs and competing for that Pete guy?”
“I didn’t talk to them while we were taping, but of course I could guess.” She put her fork down and reached for her coffee.
“You couldn’t contact them?”
“Yes, but we could only make one call a week on the phone in the Hitchin’ House, and those were recorded. I didn’t want a recording of my mom crying and my dad swearing over the pig phone.”
“Pig phone?”
“It was a landline phone shaped like a pig.” She took a sip from her cup. “It was pink and grunted instead of ringing.”
Of course it did. “What did your parents think about your groom?”
“Dad thinks Pete’s a pansy ass.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged one shoulder. “My mother couldn’t quit crying and thought I shouldn’t marry a man I didn’t know. She was right. I’d had two solo dates with him, but we weren’t really alone. The whole film crew was there.”
“Are you shitting?”
“No. Some of the other girls met him alone in his private Pig Pen.” A separate bungalow on the property which housed his euphemistically titled bedroom, Hog Heaven. “I never went to his Pig Pen.”
“Again.” He leaned forward. “Are you shitting?”
“No. I didn’t want to humiliate my parents or embarrass myself.”
That wasn’t what shocked him. “You were going to marry a man you didn’t know and hadn’t spent any time alone with?”
“I know it sounds crazy.” From beneath the fish head on her hat, she lifted her gaze to the picture of the Pesuta shipwreck on the wall behind him as if to gather her thoughts. “But the show was crazy.” Her brows lowered. “We got caught up in it. At least I did.”
He held up one finger. “Your parents didn’t want you to marry him.” A second finger. “You didn’t want to marry him.” Then a third. “So why in the hell were you getting ready to marry him?”
She returned her gaze to his and said as if it made perfect sense, “Our pictures were on the tea towels, as the saying goes.”
What saying? And what the hell was a tea towel?
“We did manage to have a few moments alone when the camera crew packed up for the day. Like after the surf challenge.” She took another drink and shook her head. “He did seem really moody that day. Like someone forgot to put sprinkles on his birthday cake.” Her nose wrinkled. “We were still on the beach and I was busy trying not to stare at his disturbingly long toenail.”
“What?”
“That should have been my first clue that I couldn’t marry him.” She set her cup on the table. “Then he said he doesn’t like little dogs—which normally qualifies as a deal breaker.”
His toenails and dislike of dogs were probably the least of the problems between them. “A lot of people don’t like little dogs.”
One brow winged up her forehead. “In my experience, men who don’t like little dogs are compensating for something.”
He leaned back and reached for his glass. “Like what?” He knew what she meant; he just wanted to hear her say it.
Beneath the brim of her cap, her eyes moved back and forth as if she was a perp in a room filled with cops. Her cheeks turned pink and she lowered her voice like she was going to say something shockingly vulgar. “Small penis.”
