My Vegas Groom (The Greene Family #3) - Piper Rayne Page 0,27

plead with my eyes for her to stop asking.

“How about Sunday?” She looks between the two of us hopefully.

“Mom, he’s not ready for the entire family yet.”

She smiles and I know that she’s not going to accept no as an answer. “A big MMA fighter can’t handle a big family?” Again, she puts her sole attention on Logan.

“It’s no problem. Sunday should be great,” he says, smiling as though he might actually mean it.

She claps again. “Then it’s settled. Around three work?”

I groan and Logan chuckles. “Sounds good.”

“See you then, Mom.” I slide my hand in Logan’s to walk back over to my house.

“Hey, Nik, give me a call when you get some time,” she says.

“Sure thing.” I smile and wave.

But I have no plans of calling her. She’s only going to figure out what Logan and I are doing, then I’ll have to hear the speech again about my dad and how not all men are horrible disappointments, just look at Hank, Jed, and my stepbrothers, there are good men out in the world.

I’m not in the mood.

We reach the bottom of the hill and Logan stops at the sidewalk. “You okay with that?”

I look back and see my mom is on the porch, watching us. I make a mental note to tell her how creepy she looks doing that. “You know that whole question game we played last night?”

His face grows serious. “Yeah.”

“Tonight we’re playing fast five, because if we’re going to fool everyone into thinking we’re madly in love, we have to fool Marla Greene first. She’s our harshest critic.”

“Bring it on.” He smiles.

Sometimes I think he likes what’s going on with us. That he wants us to be more. He didn’t have to do all that yesterday for me—the show and expensive dinner. But the thought that he’s doing it because he wants something more gives me butterflies. I have to make sure that feeling dies. Otherwise, I might as well hand him my heart now and watch him smash it into smithereens against the concrete.

“Then let’s get my stuff moved into the Linville house and make up some flashcards.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” he asks.

I stop with my key in the lock of my house. “Not when it comes to my mom. She’s going to dig deep. Believe me.”

He laughs as we step into the house I share with my sisters, but he has no idea. Marla Greene missed her calling as a police detective. Or her motherly intuition and skills are just fine-tuned. Regardless, she’s already sniffing around, which means I’m too transparent.

Game on.

Chapter Twelve

“I heard Ethel and Dori were looking for you.”

Logan

I knew my time alone with Nikki would come to an end, but it came crashing down when my team arrived an hour ago. Luckily, she’s at the radio station. The chef has overtaken the kitchen, and my team of trainers is settling in the back guest house. Right now, I’m thankful Vince decided to stay down in Vegas and come up in a month or so to make sure we’re staying on track. He has his own feelings in regard to this marriage with Nikki, and I don’t care to have him around.

My head trainer, Craig, walks in as I’m discussing with the chef, Iris, what Nikki likes. “Sugar with her coffee,” I say, and she nods, putting away some key ingredients she brought with her. The entire group seems to think I moved them to Greenland and they won’t be able to get anything up here.

“I figured we’d go for a run,” Craig says, stretching.

“You just got in. What the hell?”

“There’s a gym in town I want to check out. See if we can make an arrangement with them to get in there.” He rotates his head. “Come on. You’re on a time crunch and need to get started. You’ve been having fun long enough.”

“Fun?” I ask.

He punches me in the shoulder. “Bedroom exercise doesn’t count, you know that.” He laughs.

Iris shakes her head. “You two can leave my kitchen now.”

I stand from the stool. Craig is right though. I need to get my ass in gear. “I’m picking up Nikki after work.”

“Man, you’ve got it bad.” He walks out, still stretching his arms. “I’ll be outside.”

He leaves the house and I put on my shoes before joining him. Usually no one has to push me to work out, but lately, all I want to do is sit around and heal from the last fight. I won’t tell