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“I put the potato salad and macaroni salad in the cooler,” she told me as we drove toward the club. “So be careful when you take it out of the truck so you don’t tip them over.”
“Are they on ice?” I hadn’t even seen her go outside that morning.
“Yeah.” She wrinkled her nose as she looked up at me. “I had to take like forty-five trips from the ice machine in the fridge to the cooler because I didn’t want to buy a bag at the store.”
“Why didn’t you just bring the cooler inside? And where the hell was I?”
“Because it would’ve been too heavy to carry back outside once the ice was in it and you were in the shower.”
She patted my leg consolingly as I scowled.
It was shit like that all the time. I could’ve carried the cooler to the truck. Did she ask me? Nope. She just carried smaller cups of ice from the kitchen to the driveway over and over, making it ten times harder than it needed to be because she refused to ask for help.
“Bags of ice are only two dollars,” I reminded her. She shrugged.
“Gramps?” Rhett asked suddenly, leaning forward as far as he could to look out the back window.
“Yeah, man, I told you Gramps will be there, too.”
“Like Gramps.”
“That’s because he gives you candy,” Emilia teased, tickling him.
“I like candy.”
“Really,” I replied dryly. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Guess that.”
“I’m looking forward to this,” Emilia said happily as she leaned against my shoulder. “And I’m glad we took the truck.”
“We should’ve sent Rhett to my mom’s and we could’ve taken the bike,” I said with a wink, making her grin. After a particularly… bendy date night, Emilia had a new appreciation for my Harley.
“Do you think that Rumi will bring a date?” she asked, sitting up in her seat.
“You need to stay out of that,” I warned.
Emilia had easily found her place in the extended Aces family, and she hung out with Olive and Nova pretty often which was great. What wasn’t great was the fact that she had it in her head that Nova was in love with my little brother and had decided that it was her responsibility to protect the poor girl from Rumi’s manwhoring.
“You saw her face,” she shot back fiercely. “When he brought that girl over.”
“She was nice,” I mused. “What was her name? Mandy? Margo? Something with an M.”
“Her name was Candace,” Emilia said, looking at me like I was an idiot.
“I can’t keep ’em straight,” I muttered, shrugging as I rolled down my window at the club’s gate.
“My man Rhett in there?” Gray asked, coming up to the window.
“Gray!” Rhett squealed.
“What the hell are you doin’ on the gate?” I asked with a laugh.
“Prospects are shittin’ their guts out,” he replied with a scoff. “I told ’em I’d watch it for an hour while people were gettin’ here, so no one had to deal with that.”
“Are they sick?” Emilia asked worriedly.
“More like they ate some expired ass seafood and chased it with Ouzo,” Gray said flatly. He looked at his watch. “They better get their nasty asses up here in the next fifteen, or I’m gonna bust some heads.”
