Page 22 of Tangled
“Just about,” Brad responded, returning to the living room and handing each of his parents a glass of red wine.
“And can we assume that since you’re here…” Anthony raised his eyebrows in question.
“Let them tell us their way,” Beth said, admonishing her husband.
“My mother is far less nosy than my father,” Brad said to her with a smile.
“Nonsense,” Anthony retorted. “She doesn’t need to be nosy because I am. But I assure you, if she didn’t have me to take the lead, she’d be all up in your business.”
Both she and Brad glanced at his mom. She dipped her head. “It’s true, I would.”
“See,” Anthony said. “So why don’t you jump to the end of the current story? Are we going to have another wedding?”
Scarlett choked on her ginger ale, and Brad dropped his head. After a beat, he raised it and looked at her. “I’m sorry. I did warn you.”
Laughter burbled up her chest. She hadn’t believed him, but he had warned her about his father. “It’s fine,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“You sure?” Brad asked. She nodded. “Okay, here goes.” He took a breath and faced his parents. “So the thing is, we noticed each other in a bar—”
“Your eyes caught across a smoky room?” Anthony asked, waggling his eyebrows.
Brad shot his dad a flat look. “No one smokes inside anymore. She was there to track down a drug dealer she thought might have played a part in her friend’s death. I was there for a burger. But then I noticed she was watching three sketchy guysand, well, with all my experience here at the lodge, I knew they weren’t good news.”
“He didn’t know me. We hadn’t even said a word to each other, but somehow, he knew what I was going to do,” Scarlett said, not wanting Brad to carry the burden of telling his parents on his own. After all, she was as much a part of the story as he was.
“And I couldn’t let her follow them on her own,” he said. “So I went after them.”
“I followed him out because I knew they were bad news. I was prepared to ditchmyplans for the night, but I didn’t wanthimalone with them.”
“The short version is, we witnessed a murder and then ended up in my hotel room and, well, one thing led to another. She sneaked out the next morning—”
“Oh, don’t say that like it was a surprise,” Scarlett interjected, poking him. “I made it clear I didn’t want you involved because I thought it might be dangerous.”
Brad raised an eyebrow at her. “It might not have been a surprise, but did you or did you not sneak out the next morning?”
She glared at him. Sort of. Then sighed. “Fine, I did.”
Brad lifted his hand in a “see” gesture and continued. “We didn’t know each other’s names, so had no way of finding each other. But yesterday I asked Ava to track her down.”
“Only he didn’t need to. I was here the entire time. I’d heard that the people I was looking into were after me, so I left LA and came up here to be close to Kara. Even though she didn’t know I was here. I got a job as a cleaning lady and have been working at the lodge for two months. But a woman was killed two days ago, and Ryan now thinks it was a case of mistaken identity and the killer was really after me.”
“And when Ryan and I went to talk to her, well, I found her,” Brad said, looking at her with a soft sort of affection that had her smiling back.
“And it wasn’t just me he found,” she said.
He reached over and took her hand. “It wasn’t,” he said. Then, turning to his parents, he dropped the biggest bomb. “Scarlett is pregnant with our baby.”
A deafening silence filled the living room. Scarlett’s eyes darted from Anthony to Beth. She and Brad had gotten so caught up in telling the story that they’d all but forgotten his parents might need a little time to process.
But then Anthony sniffed, and Beth snagged a tissue from the box on the coffee table and leaned over to hand it to him. With a sigh, she flashed her son such a look of disappointment that Scarlett’s heart stuttered.
“How many times do I have to tell you boysnotto say things like that without a little warning,” Beth said. Anthony sniffed again and dabbed his eyes.
“My dad is a crier,” Brad whispered to her. “I forgot to tell you that.”
“A baby? Another one?” Anthony said. Then, without warning, he jumped up and pulled Scarlett into another all-encompassing hug. “We’re going to have another grandbaby, Annie,” he said. When he released her, he took only one step back, again keeping his hands on her shoulders. “When are you due? How are you feeling? Do you need anything? Tia and Cody chose pale green for their nursery, not my favorite color, but it’s nice. What do you want? That back guest room that overlooks the mountain would make the best nursery. I’d like my grandson or -daughter to get used to seeing the skiers, be inspired by them.”
“He also coaches the ski team,” Brad said. “Three of his students have gone on to the Olympics. He’d like nothing more than for one of his grandkids to join the ranks.”
