Page 118 of Rescued by the Single Dad

Clint splashed on a smile and nodded. “Noted.” Then he caught Jagger’s eye. “We’ll refrain from following and accusing anyone from now on, right?”

Jagger glared at him, then grunted, gave one final death-stare to Raina, who didn’t cower at all, before turning around and stomping over to the buffet table.

Clint and his brothers hightailed it after him.

“What the actual fuck?” Bennett demanded, catching up and falling in line with Jagger, who grabbed a plate from one end of the buffet and started loading it with food. “Word is definitely going to get back to the elders about your little temper tantrum.”

Jagger merely grunted.

“Are you fucking following her?” Bennett asked.

“No,” Jagger said, though his tone wasn’t exactly convincing.

“So what if she is visiting the elders?” Clint asked. “We could visit them, too. Maybe we should?”

“It’s not the fact that she’s visiting them and paying her respects,” Jagger said, scooping some pasta salad onto his paper plate. “It’s her fucking attitude. She’s infuriating. She’s got such a big ego.”

Everyone’s eyebrows nearly shot clear off their foreheads.

“Sorry, she has a big ego?” Wyatt asked.

Jagger grunted again and placed two satay skewers on his plate. “Know-it-all.”

“And how would you know this? Do the two of you interact with each other a lot?” Dom asked.

“We’re in the same book club.”

Clint’s head threatened to erupt like a fucking volcano. And it appeared so were his other brothers. They all exchanged shocked and perplexed looks.

“You’re in a book club?” Wyatt asked. “Since when?”

Jagger’s left shoulder lifted slightly. He grabbed cutlery and wandered off to find an empty seat at a table. Like puppies eager for a scrap of food—or, in this case, information—Clint and his brothers followed. “I’ve been in the book club for a couple of years now. We meet once a month at the library. She joined last year. But she’s just ...” He pulled a piece of barbecued chicken off the satay skewer with his teeth and chewed, “annoying.”

“Still doesn’t excuse you for making a scene like that,” Dom murmured.

“No, it doesn’t,” Clint agreed. “That certainly didn’t help our case.”

Jagger rolled his eyes and chewed. “She’s so fake. All ‘Oh, Sunflower, I love your dress. Did you make it?’ Blah, blah, blah.” He made sure to make his impression of her as whiny and nasally as possible. It didn’t sound at all like Raina, who actually had a very nice voice.

Clint, Bennett, Wyatt and Dom all did more talking with their eyes.

“That doesn’t sound fake,” Wyatt said. “That sounds like she’s making conversation and being kind.”

Jagger pulled off another piece of chicken from the skewer. “You needed to hear her tone. So fake.”

“Anyway,” Clint said, “no more of that shit. Don’t follow her. Don’t engage. Pretend she doesn’t exist. We can’t have anymore of your quarreling. And definitely not in public. Let her make friends with the elders and clean their gutters or whatever.”

“You don’t think that’s a euphemism, do you?” Wyatt muttered to Dom.

“For what?” Dom asked. “Sex?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“No, she legit cleaned Abe’s gutters for him,” Jagger said with an eye roll behind his glasses.

“Well, let her clean every elder’s gutters on the fucking island,” Clint said. “Mind your own business. No more fighting. Got it?” He made sure to do his best stern dad voice. The voice he used with Talia when she was being overly cheeky and pushing buttons and boundaries. Not that she did it very often, but she was still a kid and kids tried to get away with shit.

Jagger heaved a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”

---