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Lucy balks in shock before folding her arms over her chest and standing her ground.
“Now, Lucy. And don’t come down until you’re ready to apologize.” The threat in his tone doesn’t budge her an inch until he locks his narrowed eyes with me and snarls, “And you…” He works his jaw side to side. “You can do the same.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Room. Now!” He shunts us away with a wave of his spatula.
“I’m not a child. You can’t order me to my room.”
The anguish on Lucy’s face switches to excitement when Brodie steps closer to me while licking his lips. Remembering how delicious they taste instantly drops my defenses, not to mention what he says next. “You’re hungover. She only got six hours.” He points the spatula at Lucy during his second sentence. “So I’m not dealing with either of you until you go back to bed and wake up on the right fucking side.”
“Hey!”
Brodie grabs his wallet off the bench and hands it to Lucy, his eyes never once leaving mine. They expose he isn’t relieved about my wish to leave. He’s angry. Real fucking angry.
After pulling two dollars from the bills section of his wallet and dumping it back onto the island, Lucy curls her empty hand around mine and guides me to the stairs.
In my shock that Brodie wants me to stay, I go with her.
19
BRODIE
I’m clutching the spatula so firmly, it takes Thane prying back two fingers from its handle to free it from my hold. His breathy chuckles fan my cheek when he replaces it with a wooden spoon. “It’s a little more durable than the spatula, though I wouldn’t recommend testing it out on Lucy. Supposedly, there are rules now about parents not spanking their kids.” He laughs before plucking a strip of bacon from a plate and shrugging. “The occasional spank on my butt when I was being a brat didn’t hurt me. It was probably the only thing that stopped me from joining Thorin on ‘vacation.’” He air-quotes his last word.
Thorin is Lucy’s second favorite uncle, so instead of telling her he’s doing a stint in prison, Thane tells her he’s on vacation. His extended leave creates fewer questions. Its value can’t be calculated for a kid as inquisitive as Lucy.
“What do you think that’s about?” As he uses the spatula to remove burned pancakes from the skillet, Thane nudges his head to Henley’s suitcase.
“I don’t know.” I’m not being deceitful. I truly don’t know.
Our conversation downstairs was lighter than the one we had upstairs, but I can’t recall anything that would cause a knee-jerk reaction like Henley believing she had to leave to make things right.
Vomiting for hours isn’t pleasant, but I’ve dealt with worse.
While shuddering off the image of my wife lying bloody and lifeless, I say, “Probably the email she thinks I sent.”
Thane groans like he’s not buying my suggestion. I understand why when he says, “She’s known about that for days.” He shifts on his feet to face me. “Did anything happen last night?”
I shoot daggers at him. “Are you seriously asking me that? She was drunk.”
“And the original box of condoms in your bedside table went out of date before Lucy was born.” His teeth crunch through a crispy strip of bacon. “You’re welcome, by the way,” he says through a mouthful of lard. “If I hadn’t forced you to take the box, you might have had to pay for your baby mama to watch her own kid.” When I glare at him, he barks out a laugh. “What? It’s true, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have stopped even if you hadn’t found a condom. I sure wouldn’t have.”
I could have lived without his last four words.
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
I don’t know why I bother trying to lie to Thane. He can read me like a book. “You did, hence why you moved the box from your bedside table to the drawer in your desk.”
“You’re a fucking snoop.”
He shrugs but doesn’t deny my claim.
Then he hits me where it hurts. “Maybe it’s time to get a new mattress. Then it won’t matter where the action happens.”
“How the fuck do you know—” My eyes bulge when one revelation makes room for another. “Did Lucy see us?”
“What?” Thane looks as ill as I feel. “No!” He furrows his brows, then wets his lips. “Well, if she did, she hasn’t mentioned anything to me.”
“Then she didn’t see anything,” we say at the same time.
Lucy keeps nothing from Thane. Before Henley arrived, he was her only BFF.
“I saw how your cheeks whitened when you walked Henley toward your bed last night. You were white, man. Pasty the Fucking Ghost.”
“It’s Casper the Ghost.”
He continues talking as if I never interrupted him. “Then I remembered the stuff I helped you move out of the house you shared with Caroline.” I inconspicuously roll my eyes when he says, “She wouldn’t be mad, you know. She only ever wanted you to be happy. That’s why she was working so much. She was hoping maybe a big pay stub would convince you to switch roles.”
