Page 111 of Fourth Point Of Contact

She’s rescuing me. It’s a long story.

Not hard to figure out. You cried about Mommy, and she’s coming to save the day. End of story.

Just get your ass over here.

“Mom! I’m running to the airport to pick up a friend!” I called out, grabbing my crutches and hobbling toward the door. I thought that would be enough to get her off my back, but I should have known better. She walked out of her room, rollers still in her hair.

“What friend?”

“A lady friend.”

Her eyes lit with excitement. This was exactly what I wanted. “A lady friend. Well, I’d better come with.”

I remembered her text about being drunk and quickly shut that down. “She’s not a great flier.”

“Oh, nonsense. I don’t care about that.”

“Mom, I’d really like to meet her on my own. I haven’t seen this woman in weeks.”

If anything, that only made things worse for me. “Weeks is nothing. When I met your father, he was in the military. My father wouldn’t let me see him without a chaperone. I was lucky if I saw him alone for ten minutes before the wedding!”

“There is no wedding!” Panic hit hard at her words. She didn’t really think I was going to get married to this woman, did she? Crap, that was not my intention. I just thought I’d brush the whole thing off and get my mother to back down.

“Patrick, I’m not saying you have to marry this woman, but if she’s flying out here when she knows your mother is visiting, she must be pretty special. I just want to be there to welcome her.”

My heart pounded in my chest as I thought of all the ways this could go wrong. My mother was not supposed to be therewith me when I met Piper. I thought I’d have at least a little time with her to myself to explain the situation.

“She’s shy!” I shouted, taking my mom by surprise. “I just think it would be easier for her if she just met me at the airport. She knows she’s meeting you, but maybe it would be better if it was just one person at a time.”

That seemed to finally get through to my mother. “Oh, well, that’s perfectly understandable. While you pick her up, I’ll get dinner going for tonight. I’ll make something really special.”

“Perfect. And if you need anything, just give Nick a call. He can drive you to the store. His number is on the fridge.”

“I’ll do that.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and then I was out the door, heading to Chase’s vehicle.

“What the fuck took you so long?”

I shoved the crutches in the back and slid into the passenger seat. “You’ve been waiting a whole two minutes.”

“Two minutes where I was bored out of my mind. I almost thought I was gonna have to go in there and talk to your mom.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with my mom,” I scowled.

“I know that, but that doesn’t mean I want to get dragged into another conversation where she tells me I should be having kids and taking them to Sunday school.”

She had done that to a few of the guys. “She tried to come along. I had to get her to stay back.”

“How’d you do that?” he snorted.

“I told her Piper was shy.”

“Ha! Fat chance getting Piper to be timid around your mother.”

“All I have to do is tell her to be shy at first. Her true personality can come out once my mom’s warmed up to her.”

“Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

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