by Sarah Monzon
He slowed for a traffic light and looked at her when the car rolled to a complete stop. “You’re not crashing her party.”
“What do you call it when someone comes to a planned event unannounced?”
Depended. But for Olivia… “If you’re the unannounced person, then I call it a nice surprise.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is this where I’m supposed to swoon into a puddle from your excessive flirting?”
He glanced back at the light. Still red. “No, this is when you’re supposed to swoon from my excessive charm.” He said the last word with a wink and what he hoped resembled a self-assured smile. One she’d laugh at. He felt a bit victorious that the light was coming back to her eyes, replacing the dull glazed-over look she’d been using to stare out the window.
She waved her hand in the air. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“Totally different things, sweetheart.”
A grin poked at her mouth. “Whatever you say, Kennedy.”
“Kennedy?”
Her finger stilled on her knee. Then she brought her hands up to cross over her chest as she gave him a smug look. “Yes, Kennedy. While Casanova would be a better example of your type, I thought it a bit cliché, and you are not a cliché.”
The light turned green, and he pressed the accelerator. “No, I’m not. I’m also not that type, as you called it.”
“Hmm…you’re right. You’re not.”
“Thank you.”
She planted her elbow against the back of the headrest and leaned her temple on the palm of her hand. “Which begs the question, what type are you?”
He squirmed under her scrutiny as he turned into his parents’ driveway. “Maybe the type not comfortable fitting into a labeled box.” He pushed the gear into park. “We’re here.”
She turned her attention to the brick ranch-style home before looking back at him with uncertainty. “Are you sure they won’t mind?”
He walked around the car and opened her door. “Don’t worry—they’re going to love you.” And that was the problem. They would love her, but more importantly, they’d expect that he loved her. And he was pretty sure nothing he would say would change their minds.
He used his knuckles to rap on the door, then turned the knob and opened the front entrance, his hand pressed against Olivia’s lower back to usher her into the house.
“Adam? Is that you?” His mom rounded the corner, drying her hands on a dish towel. Her steps faltered when she saw Olivia at his side, but she recovered quickly and extended her hand with a warm smile. “I’m Anita Carrington.”
Trent followed behind their mom, shoving a chip with salsa into his mouth. “Dude, you’re late. You know how Mom gets when—” His feet and mouth stopped working as soon as he raised his head and spotted Olivia.
The grandfather clock in the dining room recorded each second with its tick, tock, tick, tock as they all just looked at each other. Heels clipped across the tile floor before Summer peeked her head around the corner, red hair falling across her shoulder. “What’s the holdup, guys? I thought we were going to play—” Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
Okay. Now they were acting ridiculous. He put pressure against Olivia’s back, not surprised when she leaned into his hand instead of following the nonverbal cue to step forward. His family was acting cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. “Everyone, this is Olivia. Olivia, that’s my mom. My brother Trent, and his wife, Summer.” He swept a look over them all, hoping his behave expectations had gotten through clearly.
Olivia lifted her hand in a tiny wave. “Umm…nice to meet you?”
Adam rolled his eyes as his family continued to stand there and stare with open mouths. This time when he pressed on her back, he took a step as well, glad when she moved by his side. “Come on and I’ll introduce you to my dad. Maybe the body snatchers haven’t gotten to him yet.”
They walked past the study, and Olivia looked over her shoulder. She leaned close and lowered her voice. “They’re acting like you’ve never brought a girl home before. I mean, not that you brought me here for that, obviously, but still.”
Wait a minute. Why was that obvious? He looked down at her, and a wave of appreciation and attraction heated his blood. She was beautiful with her silky straight hair and high cheekbones. With her quick mind and tenacity. Why would she think it was so obvious he hadn’t brought her to meet his family because they were together as a couple? They weren’t, of course, but he didn’t find anything obvious about it. Unless she meant she obviously wouldn’t be with someone like him. And if that were true, what about him did she so obviously disdain?
Ugh. Now he was acting as crazy as his family.
They entered the dining room, where his dad leaned over a tower of board games. Adam let his hand drop from Olivia’s back and lengthened his stride, whispering as he passed, “It’s because I’ve never brought a girl home.” He smiled and gave his dad a hug, turning back to Olivia with his arm resting over his dad’s shoulders. “Olivia, I’d like for you to meet my father, George.”
Olivia shook his hand and smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carrington.”
George used her hand in his to tug her forward and give her a hug. “None of that Mr. Carrington nonsense, you hear? Now…” He let her go and held up two boxes. “What’s your pleasure? Apples to Apples or Taboo?”
“You need teams to play Taboo, and we’re an uneven number tonight, Dad.” Amber walked in with a pitcher of lemonade. She set the pitcher down and gave Olivia a mischievous look. “So you’re the reason Trent and Summer are having such an engrossing conversation in the corner.”
“Ummm…” Olivia cast a wide-eyed glance Adam’s way.
Adam huffed out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “Seriously. Does no one know how to be polite anymore?”
His mom walked in and patted his shoulder, while Amber grinned at him. “Should have called ahead to warn everyone, bro.”
He pulled out a chair for Olivia and fell into the one beside it. “Let’s just get this thing started.”
Trent and Summer walked in, one looking way too pleased for himself and the other a bit resigned. Summer lowered into the chair on Olivia’s other side as she flashed one more hard look at her husband. Shaking her head, she turned to Olivia. “I apologize in advance for anything that man”—she thrust her finger at Trent—“is going to say. He’s a small child in a grown man’s body.”
“Hey!” Trent objected.
“Okay, that’s enough!” Adam jumped to his feet, sending a glare around the room before softening his expression to look down at Olivia. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea, and my family has entered some kind of Twilight Zone. I don’t know what’s gotten into them, but—”
“I do.” She folded her arms and looked at him like the fault lay at his feet.
“Oh, this is going to be good.”
Adam flicked his gaze to Trent as his brother settled into his chair with a smirk on his face.
“Shh.” Summer shushed him while Amber slapped his shoulder.
Adam returned his gaze to Olivia, his outrage being toppled by uncertainty as she continued to scowl at him. “Umm…you…do?”
“Yes!” She flung her hands in the air. “You really thought you’d show up to family game night with a girl for the first time ever and expect the people who love you the most to have absolutely no reaction whatsoever?”
“Well…I…”
“Oh, I like her.” Trent’s grin could be heard through his words.
“Let’s keep her,” Amber added.
Olivia stopped glowering at him long enough to smile sweetly at his father. “Apples to Apples sounds wonderful, Mr. Carrington. Thank you.” She let her gaze encompass the rest of the group. “And in case you’re wondering, Adam and I met yesterday when I practically forced him into hiring me to help with his truck. We were together trying out some recipes when I received some news that I didn’t really want to deal with right now, so he invited me to tag along to keep my m
ind off it.” She gave him the stink eye. “Seriously, you should have called to make sure it was okay or warn them or something.”
His father’s mustache twitched, but he hid his laugh behind a cough.
Adam slowly lowered back to his seat, his face heating. “Umm…I don’t…”
“My brother, so articulate he can sway juries to his way of thinking, speechless.” Trent’s grin grew as he leaned forward in his chair and swung his gaze to Olivia. “Game night. Same time each week. Consider this your standing invitation.” His head swung side to side. “Man, game night hasn’t been this interesting since Amber guessed abstinence in that epic game of Pictionary.”
“Trent!” Three female voices—Summer, Amber, and Anita—exclaimed at the same time.
Anita slid a plate of cookies onto the table and took a seat next to her husband. “Olivia, forgive my children. They seem to have forgotten all the manners I spent so much time trying to hammer into their thick skulls.”
Olivia laughed. “No apology necessary, Mrs. Carrington. I’m sure my mom has said the same thing about me more than once as well.”
Adam settled into his chair, the nervousness of bringing Olivia slipping away at their acceptance of her. The glint in Trent’s eye promised that, as far as his brother was concerned, the conversation about her and any perceived relationship between them wasn’t over. Trent would corner him later. In private. Where he could hound Adam and Mom or Summer wouldn’t step in to intervene. It was a waste of time though, and Trent would be barking up the wrong tree. Game night with Olivia was obviously nothing but a way to distract her for the evening until she could come up with the words to confront her parents.
Chapter 13
It had taken all of two rounds of Apples to Apples for Olivia to figure everyone out. Anita and George would pick the answer that best matched the green card. Trent and Adam picked the answers that were the most ridiculous comparison, and Amber and Summer tended to choose ones that were only slightly silly.
Olivia eyed the green card lying on the table. Extreme. Definitions listed—exceptional, superlative, radical. She glanced back at the cards in her hands. New Orleans, lightning, Darth Vader, hair transplants, chicken pox, and bumper stickers. She ran her finger along the top of the cards, the edges gouging into the ridges of the pad of her fingertip. Trent was judging this round, which meant she had to go with the most absurd match. The last person to select their pick, she threw down the Darth Vader card. Although now that she thought about it, she should’ve gone with bumper stickers. Darth Vader was pretty extreme with his use of the Dark Side.
Trent picked up all the red cards and flipped them over face up one at a time, reading the answers as he went. “My sixteenth birthday. Hmm…that must be Amber’s card and rather an oxymoron since I do not consider her staying home so she could, and I quote, read a good book, as being anything extreme. Nuclear power plants. Okay, I can see that. Truck stops? Never. Online shopping.” He glanced up and eyed Anita. “Your card, Mom?”
Anita shrugged and smiled.
Trent flipped over the last two cards. “Darth Vader or friction. Well, Darth Vader is rather extreme with his whole I am your father reveal. Friction…” He held the card up higher and read the description at the bottom. “Resistance to the motion of a body in contact with another body…”
Summer’s face flushed pink, the shade darkening as Trent eyed his wife from across the table.
“Oh, this is no contest. Friction is definitely the most extreme.”
There were so many personal marriage only–appropriate innuendos going on that Olivia shifted in her chair the same time Adam cleared his throat.
Amber leaned over and stage whispered, “Think you can keep it PG, Casanova?”
Cue to exit, and the pressure in her bladder was a handy excuse. Olivia turned to Anita. “May I use your restroom?”
“Of course. Down the hall, second door to the right.”
George collected everyone’s cards as Olivia excused herself and made her way to the other side of the house. She found the powder room easy enough and quickly used the facilities. Exiting the washroom, she paused at the gallery wall of family pictures hanging along the hallway. Amber as a baby with a big bow in her hair. Trent building a sandcastle on the beach. Michael in his navy dress blues. Adam in a graduation cap and gown. Many family pictures with all of them, which had been taken sporadically through their growing-up years.
She meandered through the pictures, smiling at gap-toothed grins and awful fashion choices. A photo on the bottom made her pause. Adam standing beside a shiny Porsche in a suit that probably cost more than a full scholarship to culinary school, hair slicked back with an air of importance about him. If not for his telltale smirk and the twinkle in his impossibly light eyes, she might not have recognized him.
“He’s changed a lot since that picture, hasn’t he?”
Olivia started, then notice Anita at her side. “I was just thinking how different and yet the same he looked.” Adam seemed more comfortable in cargo shorts and an untucked button-up, though she had to admit he cut a fine figure in that tailored suit. She preferred his wavy hair mussed and falling across his forehead, or even curling under his hat, to the oiled look he had going on in the picture. But what about the Porsche? No one she knew would give up a ride like that and trade it in for a Jetta without a good reason.
Anita ran a finger over the wood frame housing the photo, her eyes soft as she took in her son. “It’s more than his looks that have changed. Everything you see there, he sold. The Porsche, the suits, his beachside condo. But atonement can’t be bought, can it?” She stared at the photo as if talking more to the man in the picture than to Olivia. “He was so zealous when he passed the bar. Determined to give a voice to the downtrodden and defend those unjustly accused. To right wrongs and make the world a better place.”
A defender. Protector. She’d been on the receiving end of his determination that evil not claim a victim, though she wasn’t sure what the evil had been or how he thought she’d end up one of its casualties. She wasn’t even sure how she knew. He hadn’t justified his actions at the farmers’ market, but even then, without an explanation, she’d understood that he’d been driven by an innate need to defend someone in perceived danger.
Olivia studied the photo. The man in it seemed so sure of himself, of the world and his place in it. Not so unlike the Adam she knew, but the man now faltered a bit when she was sure the one in the photo wouldn’t have wavered. Adam exuded a confidence in every decision he made, but beneath that exterior she sensed someone weighed down with the knowledge of responsibility. Culpability. Guilt. Regret.
“What happened?” Olivia asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Anita caressed the glass of the frame before lowering her hand. “Sin. Sin happened, and each of us is faced with the consequences of that. Some, it seems, more beaten and bruised by that than others. Which isn’t fair, is it? That beautiful girl…” She shook her head and looked at Olivia, her voice more in the present than the past, as it had been. “Adam…” She shook her head and sniffed as emotions overtook her. “Excuse me. A mama’s heart never stops feeling for her children. Even when her children grow up to be such capable men. But…” She met Olivia’s eyes. “I should let him tell you.”
Anita slipped around her and continued down the hallway, retreating behind one of the closed doors. Olivia let her gaze sweep the collage of photos once more before making her way back to Adam and the rest of his family. The dining room was deserted, the stack of board games absent as well as the pitcher of lemonade they’d nearly finished off and the plate of chocolate chip cookies that only had crumbs remaining. She spotted a lone glass and picked it up to take to the kitchen. Summer stood at the sink, loading the cookie plate into the dishwasher, so Olivia flipped the glass in her hand and set it on the top rack.
“Thanks.” Summer smiled at her.
“Can I help with anything?” Olivia looked at the sink, but it w
as empty.
Summer turned off the faucet. “Nope. All finished. Everyone else went into the living room to watch a movie or something.” She chewed on her bottom lip, uncertain, then held out her hand. “Can I see your phone?”
Olivia felt her brows dip over her eyes, but she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone and handed it to Summer.
Summer bent over it, finger tapping on the screen before she cradled it between her palms, her thumbs inputting something. “There.” She handed the phone back.
Olivia peered down at the screen, Summer’s contact information now stored in her digital list.
“I don’t want to be nosey, and Adam is great and everything, but I thought if you ever needed a girlfriend to talk to about whatever it is you’re avoiding tonight by being here…well…now you have my number.”
Olivia blinked against the heat in her eyes. She wasn’t usually this emotional, but everything in her world had gotten so off kilter that she wasn’t really sure when the spinning would stop, and when it did, if she’d still be standing upright.
She swallowed past thick emotion as she looked up at Summer. “Thanks. That’s…really sweet.”
Summer shrugged as if no big deal. “It’s what friends do. And you heard my husband and Amber. We plan on keeping you around.” She reached over and squeezed Olivia’s wrist. “You’re stuck with us now.”
Funny how being stuck felt an awful lot like being offered a helping hand.
“You ladies going to join us anytime soon? Adam’s making us watch the news until you get in here,” Trent called from the other room.
Summer rolled her eyes with a smile but raised her voice to answer, “Serves you right for insisting on watching Raiders of the Lost Ark again.”
“It’s a classic!”
She hooked her arm through Olivia’s and tugged her toward the living room, where everyone lounged on an overlarge sectional. Summer made a move-over motion with her hand, and a spot opened between Trent and Adam. Summer plopped down, pulling Olivia with her. The space wasn’t big enough for both women, so Olivia ended up half in Adam’s lap.