The Bookworm's Guide to Faking (The Bookworm's Guide #2) - Emma Hart Page 0,46
had any,” Kinsley remarked. “Is that a coat?”
“Mm.” Grandma Rosie’s eyes narrowed with disapproval as she surveyed the scene in front of us. “She’s going to break a hip trying to dress those ducks.”
“But why is she trying to dress the ducks?” I questioned.
“I have no clue, dear,” Grandma replied, then finished the last of her tea. “I’m bored. I’m going inside to watch The Price is Right. Are you coming?”
“Uh…”
“Oh, God, what is he doing?” Kinsley stomped off toward the pond.
I glanced at my grandmother. “You go on,” I said. “I’m just gonna help Kinsley. Oh, and if you take my purse, you’ll find your book in there.”
Grandma didn’t need telling twice. She’d been waiting for eight months for the next book in the regency romance series she’d been reading, and it didn’t even release for another few days.
This was me in her good books.
“You’re such a good granddaughter. Better than your sister,” she mused.
“She just had a baby,” I reminded her. “She can barely pee comfortably, never mind anything else.”
“That’s too much information, Holley.”
“Welcome to my world,” I muttered as Ivy’s text from this morning flashed in my mind.
“No, thank you.” Grandma stood and took my purse from me. “I’ll pass on that. Help Kinsley sort those lunatics out then come in and tell me all about your new boyfriend.”
I froze. “My new boyfriend?”
She raised one heavily penciled eyebrow over the top of her glasses. “Yes, Holley. Your new boyfriend. Sebastian.” She said his name slowly, over-pronouncing every syllable and finishing with a real drawn out ‘n’ sound.
Well, at least I had an answer to my question now.
“Right. Of course.” I laughed nervously and reached under my scarf to scratch the back of my neck. “I’ll just—yeah. Go.”
I left her to take my purse inside, thanking God I’d already put my phone in my pocket, and turned toward the commotion.
But not before I pulled out said phone, removed my glove with my teeth, and fired off a very awkward, one-handed text to Sebastian.
ME: Mu grsndma tjinks were dstung
Close enough.
I quickly put it back into my pocket and put my glove back on before my fingers froze and fell off and joined Kinsley.
“Mabel, you can’t put coats on the ducks!” Kinsley said, I assumed not for the first time. “They don’t need coats, and you’re going to fall and break a bone trying to put one on them.”
“I tried telling her that,” Randy, her grandpa, grumbled, crunching some snow with the bottom of his cane. “But she won’t come inside, and I can’t leave her out here.”
“Why isn’t a nurse out here? This weather is awful,” I said.
“Because I’m a grown woman and I can do what I want!” Mabel protested, brandishing one little houndstooth coat at us. “I pay them!”
Well, technically, her daughter paid them, but whatever.
I wasn’t going to correct her with the mood she was in.
Her cheeks were flushed red, and her scarf was all but covering her nose, making her passionate protests somewhat muffled and a little hard to understand, actually.
She sounded a bit like a drunken drill sergeant…
“I got one, Mabel!” Amos bumbled over with his cane rapping against the path and a duck tucked under his arm. “He almost got away!”
“That’s Cheese,” I muttered. “Where’s Quackers?”
“Taken up residence in their brain, because they are quackers,” Kinsley muttered back.
“Amos, be careful!” I rushed to his side and reached him just as he steadied himself. “Maybe you should put the duck down.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m fine.” He brushed off my concern. “Where’s my grandson?”
“At his doctor appointment,” I replied, taking Cheese the duck from him.
That was a bad idea.
“Uh, what do I do with the duck?” I held her at arm’s length. Thankfully, her wings were pinned under my hands so she couldn’t flap. That didn’t stop her doing her best to try and get away from the weird stranger holding her.
Kinsley pulled out her phone and held it up in my direction.
I glared directly at her camera. “I’m going to kill you.”
“I know.” She grinned before she tucked it back in her pocket. Unlike me, she was wearing gloves that reacted to the touchscreen of her phone because she was smart.
“Help me,” I whimpered.
“What the—”
I turned at the faint sound of Sebastian’s voice. “Help me!” I shouted at him.
Hey, he was my fake boyfriend. He could real life rescue me right now and look good.
“Why are you holding a duck?” he asked as he approached us all.