faced some intimidating people in his life, but Thea Scott would go down as one of the scariest. She stood barely five three and weighed less than one of his legs, but if she so much as twitched right now, he’d shit himself.
Gavin had dragged him inside the house to tell her what happened. He gulped again. “I swear to God, Thea, that’s all I know.”
How the hell was Mack supposed to know that Liv wouldn’t have told her own sister by now that she’d been fired last night? It was almost one o’clock for fuck’s sake. He looked at the other guys for help, but they all suddenly found something super interesting in the carpet or on the walls or in the backyard. Lotta fucking help they were.
“She said she’s on her way here?” Gavin asked his wife cautiously.
Thea nodded, arms crossed and jaw clenched.
“Uncle Mack, come play with us!” Ava and Amelia ran into the room trailed by Butter Ball. Ava threw her arms around Mack’s legs. He hoisted her upside down in the air and tossed her over his shoulder. Ava shrieked in delight. Amelia hopped up and down, screaming, “Me next, me next!”
Thank God for kids. “Wanna jump on the trampoline?”
Both girls exclaimed, “Yeah!”
“Uncle Mack is grounded,” Thea said. “Why don’t you see if one of the other guys will go outside with you.”
The guys couldn’t move fast enough. They raced en masse toward the back door and collided all at once. Malcolm shoved Derek out of the way. Derek fell to his knees. Del wrestled his hand onto the door handle. The Russian batted it away and managed to throw the door open. All four men fell out in a heap of cowardice. Someone yelled he was bleeding and someone else responded to just run.
“Start from the beginning,” Thea said as soon as the girls had run out back.
“I saw her at Savoy. I might have gotten her in trouble with her boss, and then later—”
Gavin held up a hand. “Might have gotten her in trouble with her boss? What the hell does that mean?”
“I ordered that thousand-dollar cupcake—”
Thea made a choking sound. Mack shrugged. “I was trying to impress Gretchen.”
“Which obviously backfired,” Gavin said.
Mack flipped him off.
“Continue,” Thea seethed.
“Anyway, I guess she has to deliver the damn thing as part of the package, and so I recognized her, and I said, ‘Hey, I know you,’ and she said, ‘No, you don’t,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re Gavin’s sister-in-law,’ and I called her Liv, but Royce calls her Olivia—”
“For fuck’s sake,” Gavin growled. “Does this story have an end?”
“She dropped it,” he blurted.
Thea choked again. “She dropped the cupcake?”
“In Gretchen’s lap.”
“Oh my God,” Thea breathed. She even swayed a little.
“She was working, Mack,” Gavin said. “Couldn’t you have just left her alone?”
“Was I supposed to ignore her? How fucking rude would that be?”
“Maybe she’d still be employed if you had!”
There was a knock at the front door followed immediately by Butter’s rapid bark. Thea held up her hand to silence them. Mack swallowed hard and tried to calm his breathing. Shitshitshit. Liv was here, and she was gonna be so pissed at him. More pissed than even last night. And he was pretty sure the only person scarier than Thea when she was pissed was Liv, and he was even more sure that he’d only gotten a small taste of Liv’s capacity for pissed-offed-ness last night.
Thea crossed the living room to the hallway that led to their front door. Butter barked and bounced alongside her, oblivious to the fact that a ticking time bomb waited on the porch.
Gavin looked at him, dragged his finger across his throat, and mouthed, You’re dead.
It was followed moments later by a now-familiar voice.
“You asshole. You couldn’t wait to share the good news?” Liv stomped through the small entryway of her sister’s house and nearly ran into Mack around the corner. She’d been working on her résumé all morning, trying to figure out just how to tell Thea what had happened, when the phone had rung and her sister had screeched, “You got fired?!”
Mack threw his hands in the air. “Why the hell didn’t you tell them?”
Liv shoved a finger in his chest. “Because my sister has a tendency to freak out about things, and I was trying to figure out how to break it to them. But thanks to you—”
Thea was right behind her. “Hey, I do not freak out about things.”