He's Coming in Hot (Salacious Summer Singe #6) - J. D. Light Page 0,1

and probably the furthest out of my league.

I was actually surprised he remembered me. Maddox had said that he did, but he'd also implied… other impossible things, so I wasn't all that inclined to believe him. Had Maddox told him to come find me?

My best friend could be mischievous, but he wasn't mean, so if he did do this, he either thought I was completely over my big crush and was messing with me to see how I reacted, or he thought he was match making. God help him if he was match making.

"Did Maddox invite you to the Saturday night dinner?" he asked after a long moment of us just standing there staring at each other. "He was supposed to. Da's really excited to meet you."

"Who's Da?"

"My omega father." He chuckled, shaking his head. "He's wanted to get to know you since my senior year."

"He has?" I asked, completely baffled.

His senior year would have been my junior year. It had been one of the best years of my life. I'd lived in the most stable home I could remember with a woman who seemed to love having me around. I'd finally made a friend, and even though I was still completely invisible to the general populous, being friends with Maddox had meant not being alone all the time.

It had also been the year I'd been asked to help Lawton with some things in chemistry and had gotten to spend several evenings sitting next to him in the library, breathing in his straight from practice scent… which was actually a lot better than it sounded, since he'd smelled somewhere between hard work and hasty shower with just enough sweat to make a seventeen year old's body take notice.

"Yeah. Ever since you helped me memorize the periodic table," he said, smiling brightly.

"I barely even helped," I whispered, surprised he even remembered that, much less talked to his Da about it. "It was just memory. You had it in no time."

"Oh." He laughed, shaking his head. "That wasn't why he wanted to meet you."

But didn't he just say… This man is confusing as hell. "Oh," I said anyway, like any of this actually made sense.

"Are you coming? And keep in mind that if you don't, your best friend will be harassed by Da, and even his kids don't really know what all that entails because we're all too afraid to cross him. It could mean he is simply going to whine and whine and whine until he gets his way or Dad drags him off to the bedroom to ruin our lives and taint our poor innocent little minds, or it could be as complicated as you identifying your friend's remains."

I blinked in surprise, not really sure what to even say to something like that, and he pursed his lips, looking to the ceiling like he was deep in thought. "I doubt it will come to that last one. He really seems to like Maddox."

I licked my lips, nodding slightly. "I've heard of this all powerful Da," I said, sounding like a major dork, and his smile grew, a small chuckle leaving his throat.

"Yeah, we don't like to disappoint the Da," he smiled softly, moving back toward the door. "There are always weird and terrifying consequences."

I bit my lip, nodding. "I'll be there."

I didn't really have a choice anyway. Maddox had already threatened me, and there was no way I was going to pass up an invitation that had been seconded by Lawton.

His smile was huge when he nodded. "My parents are going to love you."

I doubted that. More likely, they wouldn't even notice I was there. Maddox had told me how big their family was, and the amount of people who showed up at these dinners. I was sure to blend into the background, but happy endorphins swamped my system, making my stomach do a weird swoopy thing I hadn't felt in years.

Probably since high school when I'd been in the presence of this man.

Lawton Foster might be saying all these things and inviting me to his family's house because Maddox put him up to it, but I couldn't help the tiny seed of excitement that germinated in my chest. The cell of hope that mitoted.

Eh. Probably should have stopped at seed.

***

I frowned as I watched this Casey child work. He had the two twins that weren't twins––just another fun layer of complicated to add to the growing list of things I didn't understand about this family––on one end of the