“Mom.” Theo sighed.
She changed the subject. “How is work going?”
Everyone homed in on the kid, and Gavin felt bad. Theo went through jobs like Linda went through assistants. Nothing satisfied the guy. But then, working at a place for more than a few weeks might prove the key to finding the perfect fit. Theo grew bored at the drop of a hat. The Marine Corps would chew that shit right up.
“Where are you working now?” Gavin asked. “You said you were going to leave the coffee shop a week ago. Did you? Are you back to unplugging toilets with Flynn and Brody?” His cousins, the plumbers.
Theo glared at him.
“Yes, son. Where?” Van asked.
With everyone focused on Theo, Gavin felt safe to sneak to the kitchen, away from the limelight, with his dirty plate.
Hope soon joined him. “Man, Mom really had me going.”
“Me too. Guess this means we have to include them in the war. I’ll TP Dad’s car; you short-sheet Mom’s bed. It’ll drive her nuts,” he suggested, only half teasing.
“Hmm. Not a bad idea.”
“I was kidding.”
“Yeah.” Yet Hope looked too speculative for her own good. “So what’s this I hear about you and some woman at the gym?”
He swallowed a groan. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Where else?” She smiled. “Before you got here, Landon was telling everyone how Zoe York keeps shooting you down. I like her already.”
“Yeah? Well, she and I have a date tomorrow night. Guess you don’t know everything, do you?”
“Seriously? The woman who’s been rejecting you for months said yes? What did you do? Spike her Gatorade?”
“You know, sometimes you’re sassy and smart and pretty,” he said with enthusiasm. “Just like Mom.”
“That’s just mean.”
“Yes, it is.” He laughed.
“So back to you and Zoe.”
He groaned. “Persistent, just like Mom.” He gave himself a point for annoying her into a scowl. Then, before she could pull his hair, knee him in the balls, or pinch him, he said, “What do you want to know?”
Hope was nearly thirty and still clueless about crap Gavin would have thought she’d know by now. She had a decent job working with their cousin, Cameron, in finance, and she rented a nice apartment away from home. Had friends, a family who cared, obviously. But her personal life had been worse than his for too long. She dated losers, and their mother never let her forget how much growing up she still had to do.
“You like her.” Hope blinked. “For real.”
For all her needed maturation, his sister had an uncanny way of seeing through bullshit to the heart of a thing. She’d always been able to read him, and that chafed because Gavin was older, the one supposed to protect and guideher.
“So what? She’s pretty. I like her. Yeah.”
“No, youlike-like her.”
He sighed. “We’re past the third grade, honey.”
“Well,honey, do you want a second date or not? I have some advice I’m willing to share for free. Just because you’ve been so pathetic lately.”
“And because you owe me from the wedding? You remember, when you tried to get my ass handed to me by Goliath and his friends, the Titans?”
“Maybe,” she muttered. “Look, do you want my advice or not?”
