Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,110

the next table gasps in horror.

“I wasn’t telling her what to do with her body.” God forbid I have my tires slashed by morning.

“Yes, you were!” She snatches her drink off the table with a marked aggression—I’m expecting to wear it any minute now. “Liar, liar, nose as long as a telephone wire! You and your entire family!” Her face is just as red as her hair against this dark, moonless night. “You’re going to pay for this!” she screeches as she takes off toward Cutler Tower.

“Pay for what?” I’m both perplexed and frightened of what exactly I’m about to pay for. “You’re a nut job just like your father!”

A large iced mocha coffee, coconut milk, decaf—her order, comes tumbling from the sky and narrowly misses my temple.

“Crap!” I touch the side of my head as if it had struck me.

One of the dudes who works here comes at me with a broom and dustpan, ready and willing to clean up her mess.

“Sorry.” I pick up her cup, the loose lid, and straw that rolled under the next table just to help the guy out. “She’s a little psychotic.”

He chuckles while sweeping up the ice. “The good ones always are.”

“She’s not a good one. Trust me on that.”

But my stomach wrenches, and my boxers twitch like maybe she is.

Is there something going on with Scarlett? Sabrina hinted at it. She mentioned it would be very upsetting but wouldn’t give details. Any information you could get would be valuable. Bradley is losing his mind. He says she can be a firecracker when she wants to. Please watch over her. She is practically your sister!

I stare at my mother’s text for a little longer than necessary. It’s early afternoon on Saturday, and I’ve trekked to the outskirts of Hollow Brook where my father traded his Bel Terra mansion for a split-level with wall-to-wall carpeting, an act my mother found both humiliating and repugnant.

I’ll see what I can find out. I fire off the text and get out of my truck, taking in the scent bleeding from the pines mixing with the hint of something floral drifting in this heated, early summer air.

I happen to know exactly what is up with that little firecracker. It’s me. It sounds as if Scarlett’s scantly engineered plan of getting her sister to think we’re going at it has crested its first wave, ready and willing to crash over us at any moment. I’ll bring it up to her and see what she wants to do. I get it. She’s hurting. The pain in her eyes last night was palpable. A part of me wanted to let her know that it will all work out, that no matter what the outcome, we would survive this. But I also happen to know how much divorce hurts and how the wounds never seem to heal, and lastly, and pathetically so, no matter how old you get, you still have that underlying craving for your parents to fall madly back in love and stitch your family up again. And, ironically, that’s exactly why I’m here.

I head up the driveway to the sunny yellow house with its chipped brown trim. Knox’s truck and Trixie’s Beamer are parked in the driveway, so I know they’re home. Just as I’m about to give a wallop over the front door, it glides open, and I’m greeted with my father’s smiling face—a mirror image of my own if you add about twenty-eight years.

“Hold your fire,” he teases, pulling me in. “Saw you walking up the driveway, kiddo.”

He feels strong, safe, is wearing the same cologne I’ve known him to since the day I was born, and everything about this one simple physical exchange makes me miss him a hundred times more.

“You don’t have to be such a stranger, you know.” He leans back, his hand clasping over mine as he leads me inside.

“I don’t want to be.” But I have been. The last three years have been the toughest. First, there was the divorce—an axe that drove itself through the forehead of my family—then my mother’s far more painful spiral, the nails securely set in the Toberman family coffin. No thanks to the questionable moves of my father’s business partner, Toberman Global has disbanded and is no longer a viable entity. But he’s rebuilding his life, one dollar at a time, and my mother is rebuilding her life with Bradley.

“Your brother and sister are in the pool. You can borrow a suit if you like.