“Adrian told me all about you.” She smiles a cat that ate the canary smile, but when her words registered in my head, my eyes go wide, and my own smile slips right off my face. I look up at him and watch in horror as he turns to me with one dark brow arched sardonically over his eye. He’s clearly wondering what I had told my mother. What I could have possibly shared with her between our torrid affair and all of the toxic communications after fucking, I’m not sure.
“It wasn’t me,” I blurt out.
Mom, still smiling happily, jumps and replies, “Oh, it was Adrian… the elder one,” she explain. “My ex-husband.”
“Ah,” he says noncommittally, and I can’t help but feel like I’ll pay for the whole thing later, even though I didn’t do anything and none of it was my fault. It makes me feel jittery and off balance… again. I need to get rid of all of my excess baggage and find my way back to center again.
“So…” I trail off to redirect the conversation. “The enormous amount of food Hugo is probably mowing through on the patio…?”
“Oh!” She jumps. “Yes. Let’s. But just to add, even if he did decide to go counter-surfing while I was greeting my darling daughter—”
“Youronlydaughter.”
“My only darling daughter,” she corrects with a laugh, “there is still plenty to go around. But just to say, we should go in before he makes his way to the sheet cake.”
“Sounds good, Mom.”
“Who is Hugo?” King whispers the question in my ear on our way through the front door.
“A very lovable old man.”
“Where is my naughty boy?” We hear Mom coo from inside the house.
The minute I step through the door, there is abark, barkand then the footsteps.
“Jesus,” King says. “It sounds like a herd of elephants.”
“Have you ever heard a herd of elephants before?” I ask but don’t turn back to look at him. I can’t take my eyes off the impending attack.
“Don’t try to cute your way out of this,” he warns, and his voice rumbles in my ear with sexual promise.
“I’m not,” I reply. “And I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We’ll see.”
I open my mouth to respond, but then Hugo rounds the corner, and I have to brace. He jumps up and hits me dead-center of my chest, and as much as I tried to ready myself for a large dog who loves me just a little too much, I was never going to be prepared for how hard he hits me in his enthusiasm, and we both go down to the ground. I land on my back in the middle of the rug with a ninety-pound dog on top of me, licking my face while I laugh until I cry.
“They really are ridiculous,” Mom says from somewhere in the room. “These two. They love each other so much.”
“This is the notorious Hugo, I take it?” King asks.
“Of course.”
And then King lets out a shrill whistle, and Hugo leaves my person. King holds out a hand to me, and I take it so that he can pull me to my feet.
“If you love dogs so much, then why don’t you have one?”
“I’m never home,” I reply with a shrug.
“You seem home a lot to me,” he murmurs, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m still training,” I answer. “And psychotic murderers and all that.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Just a tilt of his chin as we walk through the sliding glass door to the patio behind Mom and Hugo.
“I should do a perimeter check,” he says, clearly trying to put a little distance between us. “That is if it’s all right with you.”
“Of course,” Mom says. “But do come back and join us for lunch when you’re done.”
