Page 71 of Royally Bad

Now that he mentioned it, I hadn’t seen Costello at the weddingorthe dinner I’d organized. “He must have burned her pretty bad to get so ostracized.”

Hawthorne glanced away. “In a way.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Not my place. Sorry.” I didn’t think he was sorry, but I didn’t argue. I had enough on my plate, I wasn’t ready to dive into more family politics.

Deciding the conversation was over, I walked toward the door. Hawthorne clasped my wrist, halting me so abruptly I stumbled. “Hey,” he said, an uncertainty in his dark eyes that I hadn’t seen before. “Why are you doing this?”

Pulling away, I asked, “What, helping Fran?”

“Not just that—you’re asking for my father to be there to watch. He’s locked you in a room for almost two weeks. I’d want to kick his nuts in, if I were you.”

My head moved side to side. “Even if I did want to hurt him, Fran isn’t part of that. No matter what he’s done, she loves him, she’d want him there ... and she deserves a happily ever after.”

“A happily ever after,” he mused. His angled brows crawled higher. “If I see my parents, I’ll tell them to come by the gazebo tonight. No promises they will.”

It might have been something in his pose, but I believed him. With a real smile on my lips, I said, “Thanks.”

Hawthorne shrugged into his ears, acting like he didn’t give a shit one way or the other.

I suspected he definitely did.

Night came on too slowly. I was eager to make things happen.

Kain was helping me decorate the gazebo in the backyard. Matilda was on lookout, her job to warn us if Fran came anywhere near us before we wanted her to.

“You know,” he said, hooking a light up on one of the tall beams. He reached it without stretching. “I think we’ve got one small problem.”

I’d stopped working, too busy eating up the sight of him in his tight, white dress shirt that he’d left undone at the collar. Damn, he always looked delicious when he cleaned up.

He caught me staring; I looked away quickly. “What’s the problem?”

“Well ... don’t we need a priest to officiate this thing?”

A private grin broke out on my face. “Let me tell you a funny story.”

“Ha, all right.” Leaning against the structure, he tied off another light. In the growing evening, the balls blinked like tiny fairies.

Tossing some flowers I’d pilfered from the garden over the beams, I flicked a loose twig away. “Few years ago, I decided to go to New York—design school and all. Wanted to show the world what I could do.”That feels so long ago now.It was a bubble where my father still lived and my mother was still healthy.

Walking down memory lane made my stomach flip, especially when I thought about going for ice cream with Kain. As we’d sat there eating, I’d looked into the store at all the happy families ... and I’d actually thought that I’d seen my father.

It was impossible, and still, that moment had stayed with me.

But he was dead.

No one came back from dead.

Shaking off the trickle of black mood, I tied off another vine. “My friends wanted to take me out before I left town. We ... went a little wild.”

“You’ve got my attention.”

Stringing up the last of the long ivy vines, I said, “The short of it is that things got a little crazy.”

“Oh-ho,” he chuckled. “This is getting even better. Tell me this is going to end with you kissing some chick.” Kain inched closer to me, eager for more of my story.

Rolling my eyes, I picked a leaf off of his head. “It ends with me filling out a form online.”

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