Page 16 of Holding On To Good

They were all varying degrees of tall, muscular, and handsome.

And her? She was the family anomaly. Hair more red than brown, eyes more green than blue and average height. Though she did have her mother’s above-average curves.

Genetics could be so unfair sometimes.

Because it was unfair, and because there were some fights you couldn’t win no matter how many miles you ran, she poured half-and-half into her coffee and damn the calories.

“You want my best look?” she asked her obnoxious, irritating family. “Don’t wake me so early or demand I come downstairs within five minutes. This” —she circled her finger around her face— “is your own fault. Deal with it.”

“You’re like a zombie,” Miles said as she added two… okay, three… teaspoons of sugar to her coffee. “Minus the blood and gore. Stay back.” Brandishing a loaf of bread, he waved it at Verity like a sword. Held his other arm out as if protecting Ian from an attack. “Back.”

“Zombies eat brains,” Ian told Miles, giving Verity a half-horrified, half-thrilled look, as if she might really be one of the walking dead.

“Then Uncle Miles is safe,” she assured Ian. “A zombie’d starve to death going after him.”

Miles, still swinging the bread, was now making sounds like it was a lightsaber. As if he’d ever be Jedi material. So delusional.

“Stop waving the bread around,” Toby said, not even looking over from cracking eggs onto the hash. “She’s not gluten intolerant. She’s hungover.”

Which, of course, had Miles stiffening and slowly lowering the bread back to the counter. “She can’t be hungover. She’s not old enough to drink.”

Toby smirked at him. “Like you never had alcohol before you turned twenty-one.”

“We’re not talking about me,” Miles said, his lips barely moving, which, she had to admit, was a neat trick. He glowered at Verity, all big and cop-like, arms crossed, mouth tight, the whole shebang. “Did you drive?”

“I would never drive.” She wasn’t stupid. “Not even after just one drink.”

“Who is he?” Miles asked.

It was getting really hard to follow this conversation. Miles’s fault, of course. He liked to twist and turn things so much not even an official high-school-graduated adult could keep up. Classic cop trick. “Who?”

“The guy who brought you home. The guy who plied you with alcohol.”

“No one plied me with alcohol. God. Are you for real?”

As if she was so helpless, so needy for male attention she’d let some guy pour alcohol down her throat then get in the car with him.

She had five—count ’em, five—older brothers. She had more than enough male attention in her life.

“The badge I wear says I’m very much for real,” Miles said. “And I want the asshole’s name so I can arrest him for corruption of a minor.”

Toby glanced at her. “A boy gave you beer?”

She leaned back against the counter. Patted his arm. “No, Toby. I don’t even like boys. They’re dumb.”

He gave her a nod. “That’s my girl.”

And he shifted to the side to start pouring pancake batter onto the electric griddle.

She really, really wished the rest of her brothers were as easily soothed.

“If no one provided you with alcohol,” Miles said, “how did you get drunk?”

“Well, someone provided it, obviously. It’s not like there’s a beer stream where we can all fill our red plastic cups. Though that is the dream. And I didn’t get drunk.”

Toby snorted, Urban stared at her blandly, Miles’s jaw tightened and Katarina’s eyebrows rose. Even Bella shot her a disbelieving look.

Verity rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. Maybe I got a little tipsy. But only because I kept refilling my cup and tipping it up to my mouth. Oops.”

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