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“To the Network Knight,” Liam proposed as a toast once we all had glasses. Katie told me that had been Nick’s hacker handle.
The smile on Nick’s face was priceless. My man had won him over.
I started on my burger as Nick recounted the evidence he and Katie had discovered on Winterbourne. The man was truly a skunk.
I lifted a fry to my mouth.
“There you are.” The voice came from behind me——a voice out of my past.
I quickly swallowed and turned. “Mama, Daddy.” I rushed to hug my parents. It couldn’t be. My parents never traveled out of state, except to Vermont on occasion.
Vivienne trailed behind them.
“Liam made me promise to come,” my father explained after I released him from my hug.
I couldn’t believe Liam had accomplished this. In college, I’d begged them to visit me in Providence, which was only a few hours away, but it had been too far.
“When?” I asked Daddy.
“The day he came to ask for my blessing to marry you.”
I gasped and turned to Liam. “You did that? You never told me that.”
He smiled. “A gentleman follows certain conventions, and that’s an important one. I wanted your father’s blessing before proposing to you.”
I was flabbergasted. I knew he took the gentleman code seriously, but I’d never even suspected he’d met my parents. We had a trip to Greenfield scheduled for next weekend, and my mother hadn’t let it slip.
“I thought it was a damned decent thing to do,” my father said. “Anyway, Liam here promised to always take care of you, and only asked me for one favor in return, so here I am.”
“But, the cows?” I asked.
Daddy patted my fiancé on the shoulder. “Liam hired the Jones boys to come over for the week,” Daddy told me.
“A week?”
Daddy put his arm around Liam’s shoulder. “All week. Liam’s paying ’em double what they’re worth, if you ask me.”
“You sneak. You knew about this and didn’t tell me,” I accused Vivienne, giving her a big hug. “Is that why you didn’t return my calls yesterday?”
“Look, blame Liam. It was his idea. Me, I would have told you a week ago.”
We pulled another table over and added chairs.
Daddy ordered his usual beer, but Mama said I should order for her. She was in for a surprise.
“Got room for one more?” Josh, Liam’s partner, came strolling over.
“Sure,” Liam yelled, “If you’re paying.”
Josh laughed and I caught my sister eyeing him hungrily as he was introduced around.
Josh had cut Brinna loose, with only a bandage on his arm now to show for the experience.
Brinna had turned out to be the one writing the blog posts and tabloid features about Liam. It seems she’d lost her job at a company Liam and Josh had acquired last year and blamed them. It didn’t matter to her that she’d been let go four months before the purchase. Angry people needed someone to blame, and she’d fixated on Liam and Josh.
“What’s the story with the bandage? Your girlfriend bite you?” Nick asked, laughing.
Josh patted the bandage. “That would have been better. She gave me some nasty burn marks with a stun gun.”
