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My gaze crashed into Cameron’s, and I raised one eyebrow, asking the unspoken question. Did she know? Cameron pursed her lips and shook her head. We lost it. I laughed hard enough that my head felt like it would explode. Cameron leaned on the countertop to keep from falling to the floor.
Each time our eyes met, we descended into another round of silliness. It did more to alleviate my hangover than a handful of Advil would.
“What is so funny?” Bailey looked at us like we were still drunk. And if I’d felt less like death, I might have considered that a real possibility.
“My name.Hold on,” I said between chuckles, trying to explain to Bailey. She wasn’t getting it.
“You know, only women make that joke. Never men,” I told Cameron in an aside.
“Men had questionable taste in music in the nineties.” Cameron shrugged and wiped a tear on her cheek with a dishcloth.
“What joke?” Only a teenager could fill a single question with such snark. I didn’t have to look at her to know she had a hand propped on one hip and a fierce wrinkle of confusion marring her smooth, youthful forehead.
“There is a band named Wilson Phillips. Their biggest hit isHold On.” Cameron looked almost ashamed of her daughter’s lack of 1990s music trivia knowledge.
“Got it. Why did your parents name you after some old band? Was it like a tribute?”
I sighed. The world was going to be in trouble when this generation inherited the earth. “I was born long before the band came into existence.”
“Got it. Now why are you here?”
“Jalapeño martinis.”
And for a few golden moments, the teenager was silent. I sipped my coffee and basked in the glory of my triumph. It was short-lived.
“That’s code for hooking up, right? Bow chicka bow wow!” She wiggled her eyebrows and hips in time to the raunchy ditty.
“No!” Cameron grabbed a dish towel and attempted to smack her daughter’s butt with it. “Go to school!”
“If you say so, Mom.” She grabbed a sheet of foil and wrapped it around one of the completed breakfast biscuits from the pile next to the stove, scooped up a hot pink coffee thermos and a set of car keys. “Peace out, old people. I’m off to get educated.”
She kissed Cameron’s cheek and sashayed out the door, leaving a cloud of fruity floral perfume in her wake.
“That was my daughter.” Cameron leaned next to the stove, looking overwhelmed.
“I gathered as much.” I pulled a chair out from the far end of the kitchen table and sat. With Bailey’s departure, the kitchen descended into a tense silence. At a loss of what to do with my hands, I fiddled with the placemat on the table, adjusting it this way and that until it was perfectly parallel to the wood grain.
A startlingly vivid replay of last night’s near kiss ran through my head. Considering the amount of vodka I had drunk, the technicolor perfection of my recollection was remarkable, from the erotic press of her breasts against my chest to the softness of her cheek in my palm. The lyrics toCrazyechoed softly in my head.
Fuck, I knew better than to lust after any woman when money tainted the interaction. With a sigh, I rubbed my throbbing temples.
Muttering a curse, Cameron returned to her pan of sausage frying on the stove. “If I burn these, I’ll never hear the end of it from my brother.”
“Why does your brother care about the sausage?” Food was a totally safe topic.
As I asked my question, the kitchen door opened, and a man, whom I could only assume was her brother based on the family resemblance and the sheriff’s uniform, walked in.
“I’m going to hope the topic of conversation is my delicious homemade smoked sausage and not some sort of sex thing you two are discussing.” His tone may have been playful, but the sharp look he shot in my direction was a loud and clear warning to stay away from his sister.
The men of this family guarded Cameron like she was the teenager, not Bailey.
“No, sir. Definitely not a sex thing,” I answered, using the ass-kissing voice I had employed every time a cop pulled me over to give me a speeding ticket. I wasn’t sure why, other than it being a knee-jerk reaction to the uniform.
“Colton! Do not embarrass me and Wilson like that!” The blush on Cameron’s face and my tone of voice made us look guilty.
After another death glare at me, Colton plucked a small bit of sausage from the hot pan, tossing it back and forth between his fingers, blowing on it before he popped it into his mouth. Chewing, he kissed Cameron on the cheek.
“Looking out for my big sister and my sausage.”
