Page 15 of Holding On To Good

She shook her head.

“We’ve got plenty,” Toby put in over his shoulder from the stove.

“How about some coffee?” Miles asked, already pouring some into a clean cup, as if her staying was a foregone conclusion.

He was confident that way.

Kat looked ready to bolt. Verity sent a longing glance at the stairway, thought wistfully of her cozy, warm, comfortable bed. Then she sighed and stepped into the kitchen.

“Please stay,” she said. “I’m always, like, so outnumbered. It’d be nice to have some more estrogen in the house.”

Kat scowled but she now looked torn.

Verity had no qualms about using Kat’s feelings for her to guilt her into staying. Like Urban said, guilt worked. And the only way Kat was going to realize that the Jennings brothers were good guys—annoying brothers, but decent to the rest of the world—was if she spent time with them.

“I don’t want to intrude,” Kat said.

“You’re not,” Urban said, pulling out a seat at the table for her.

“Please?” Verity asked.

Still frowning, Kat sat and accepted her own capitulation along with the cup of coffee Miles handed her. “Thanks,” she muttered.

Then she sniffed the coffee before taking a tiny, cautious sip. Just in case Mount Laurel’s assistant chief of police had put a drop or two of poison in it.

Miles was Kat’s least favorite of them all.

Except, of course, for Silas.

Couldn’t blame her there. It was that whole got her pregnant then left her to raise their kid alone while he played All-American Hero thing.

Not that Kat was alone. She and Ian had Verity and her brothers.

Though Verity figured the fact that Silas’s family had stepped up in his stead pissed Kat off more than him leaving in the first place.

Verity didn’t blame her. Her brothers were a lot.

Verity yawned so wide her jaw cracked. “Great. Now let’s eat so I can go back to sleep.”

Miles glanced at her then froze, his eyes widening in horror. “What happened to you? You’re like the Crypt Keeper.”

Verity lifted a hand to her hair. Maybe she should have brushed it, but when she’d gone into the bathroom before coming downstairs, she hadn’t bothered turning on the light. Not when the one Urban had left on in her bedroom had burned her eyes so much.

Besides, when you summoned someone at the ungodly hour of seven thirty a.m.—on the first day of summer vacation, the day after that someone graduated from high school—you got what you deserved.

And what they were getting was her. Snarled hair, gritty eyes, morning breath and all.

“I’m going to have nightmares for weeks,” Miles continued because he never knew when to just shut it already.

She flipped him off—discreetly because she was a lady and Ian was here—and took a lurching step toward the coffeepot, only to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the microwave. She winced.

Her hair was super frizzy and huge, there was a definite green tint to her complexion, and last night’s makeup was smudged and smeared around her eyes.

Crypt Keeper, indeed.

At least next to her brothers. Nothing new there.

Her three eldest brothers resembled their father, with brown hair and eyes. Both Urban and Miles kept their hair cut short, but Urban sported a full beard while Miles was clean-shaven. Toby’s eyes were lighter, more gold than brown, his hair long enough to wave wildly around his face, his cheeks and chin covered with dark scruff. Blond, blue-eyed Silas took after their mother, and Elijah, the youngest Jennings until Verity had come along, was the perfect blend of both parents with dark hair, blue eyes, their father’s height and their mother’s smile.

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