The Girl Next Door - Emma Hart Page 0,56
a gift to you for the baby. If it’s a girl, she can keep it. If it’s a boy, he can use it to propose to his future wife if he wants.” He shrugged as he put the ice cream back in the freezer. “Like I said. Simple.”
That… was hard to argue with.
Ugh.
Rational points.
I hated it when people made those.
I approached the island. “Damn it. Stop making rational arguments,” I said. “I can’t yell at you when you do that.”
“Would you like to yell at me?”
I dropped my gaze when he slid the ice cream across the counter at me. “I can’t shout at you now, can I? You just gave me ice cream. That would be a cardinal sin.”
“A cardinal sin? Do you swear like that in front of your grandmother?”
I froze. “Shit, my grandmother.”
“What?”
“She wants us to go to bingo with her tomorrow.”
“Bingo? With your grandmother?”
Grimacing, I nodded. “And there’s absolutely no way to get out of it. She knows you’re working at the school this week building the new special education resource building so if you don’t come, she’s going to show up there.”
Kai sighed. “Okay, fine. Do I need to bring my own bingo markers, or…?”
“Seriously? Just like that? You agree?”
“What else do you want me to say? No?” He dug his spoon into his ice cream. “I’ve decided that you obviously have feelings for me, so now we’re dating, which means I have to entertain your eccentric grandma. Now, are you going to eat your ice cream, or are you going to leave it to melt? I don’t want you waking me up at three a.m. bleating about being hungry because you didn’t get a midnight snack.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I could see it was futile.
Well, it wasn’t. I knew if I opened my mouth right now and told Kai I didn’t want to officially date under the guise of our fake marriage, he’d accept that. That was the kind of person he was… even if he had had a Fred Flintstone moment tonight.
But what would I be fighting? The inevitable? The obvious? The thing I really wanted?
“Stop looking at me like you’re trying to decide whether or not to fight with me,” he said, turning and searching through my fridge. “Ooh, chocolate sauce.”
I took that right out of his hand and lathered my ice cream in it before handing it back. “You can’t have sex with me and demand I be your girlfriend.”
“Ivy, I had sex with you and made you the mother of my child. A girlfriend seems like a relatively low commitment compared to that.”
“Ugh!” I grabbed my bowl and spun around, losing my towel in the process. I ignored it completely and sat on the sofa totally naked, with my bowl of chocolate sauce covered ice cream and my hair twisted in a striped towel.
“Are you just going to eat that ice cream naked?”
“Yes. Yes, I am, Kai, and I’m going to enjoy every minute.”
“Does that mean I win?”
“It means you need to sleep with one eye open, motherfucker.”
He grinned.
Jerk.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – IVY
“Bingo!” Grandma Rosie jumped out of her seat with far too much energy for her age. “I call bingo!”
Unfortunately for her, Agatha Cates also called bingo at the same time.
“No!” Grams yelled. “That’s mine!”
“Rosie! I yelled it first!”
Mumbles erupted across the bingo hall.
Well, I said mumbles. Elderly people weren’t so great at the whole quiet thing.
“Susanna!” Grams yelled in the direction of the regular bingo caller, waving her card in the air. “It was me!”
“It was me!” Agatha shouted, doing the same with her card. “Susanna!”
“Shut it, Hagatha!” Grams spat, grabbing her cane so she could get to the front quicker than her longtime rival.
Kai leaned over and whispered, “Did she just call her Hagatha?”
I nodded.
“Genius,” he murmured.
“No,” I replied. “Agatha is Tori’s grandmother. It’s a point of contention that both our moms and us are best friends.”
“Do they really hate each other?”
I pointed in the direction of poor Susanna who’d never quite gotten used to their ruckus at the weekly bingo sessions. They were currently jostling for position in front of her which, for two women of their age, was really quite concerning.
They’d break a hip if they fell over.
Naturally, nobody helped.
Apparently old people liked a cat fight as much as everyone else.
They were only human.
“Shouldn’t someone stop them?” Kai asked, eying the way they were jostling each other.
I shook my head. “They’ll call the orderlies soon.”
“The orderlies?”
“Well, I think they’re technically the nurses, but