He laughed. “Well then. Maybe we should get our moms together. They can try to out-better each other, and points if they do it from inside a jail cell.”
She held up her near-empty cocoa, and he grabbed his empty cup for a toast.
Then he shocked her by running a callused finger over her cheek. “Man, you are so cute. It’ll be tough not to send any dick pics, but I made a promise.” He smirked. “See you soon, Miss Mean.”
He left with her staring after him, bemused at how much she was coming to like the guy and imagined their moms in jail together.
She laughed and went to the counter to order another cocoa, heavy on the whipped cream.
CHAPTER 5
Damon rushed home to find his parents arguing.
Rather, his mother ranted at his father, who stared at her like a besotted dope.
“I told you we needed to sign up last week. But now we missed the deadline.” Leila Sinclair looked on the verge of tears, a beautiful woman with clear blue eyes and yellow hair threaded with white.
His father sighed. “Sweetheart, it won’t kill us to miss this seminar. You’re so good at recognizing dysfunction in our relationship. I’m better at communicating, aren’t I?” Big Mike appeared and sounded like a growling bear, but he looked at his wife as if she could do no wrong.
Damon’s parents had always had a weird dynamic. From a very small age, he’d watched his sweet mother dominate her behemoth of a husband.
Anyone looking on from the outside wouldn’t understand it, but Damon could see the power dynamic for what it was.
Mike Sinclair had been a juvenile delinquent with a talent for ice hockey. He’d played in the now defunct Continental Hockey League for a few seasons but ended up getting incarcerated for brawling outside the rink. He’d done enough damage to earn two and a half years in prison.
Being jailed only made the giant tougher. Upon release, he’d found employment with friends of his prison mates who made their money illegally. He’d worked as enforcement. No one wanted to mess with the man with the iron fists.
And then he met Leila, Damon’s mom.
That fateful event as they bumped into each other outside a grocery store turned into love at first sight. Or as his father called it, the Sinclair Gift. The pair married a month later, had Damon’s sister two years after that. And in three more years, Damon was born.
Leila had turned Mike’s life around. The rough bruiser still looked and acted like he owned the streets, but he’d shifted his talents from beating people up into making treasures from wood.
Leila had helped the business flourish until Mike could stand on his own and hired people to do his books and assist with his carpentry, leaving her to do what she really wanted.
Raise children and a family.
She did it well, so well with her understated charm and kindness that she had everyone dancing to her tune before they knew it.
Which was why Damon’s sister had joined the military and left home as soon as she could, and why Damon had also escaped, entering the AHL then transitioning to the NHL soon after.
He loved his parents dearly, but living with them? That was another matter entirely.
He realized they’d stopped arguing and were staring at him, both from their positions on the couch and recliner.
His father had bruised his left femur and broken both his left tibia and fibula in the car accident, hence his cast below the knee. His mother had broken her right arm, which now ended in a cast to protect her broken radius in addition to her sling to prevent her from doing more damage to a bruised collar bone. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. Their SUV had been crushed. Fortunately, the driver who’d hit them had his license suspended and had been charged on his second DUI.
Damon had thought about paying the guy a visit, but his dad had persuaded him to let it go.
In the past three weeks, Mike and Leila had been sleeping a lot and dealing with nagging pain. It killed Damon to see it. But now that they started to feel a little better, they’d turned into demanding monsters.
No patience as patients, he thought with amusement then hurriedly wiped the smirk off his face when they both scowled at him.
“Sorry. What’s the emergency?” This time, he wanted to add but didn’t.
His mother gave him a sweet smile that put him on immediate alert. “Honey, I was hoping to have a small get-together with Brenda and Lee Friday night, but I’ll need you to make the dinner.”
He just stared at her. “You’re barely healed. You can’t have people over.” Not to mention he wasn’t the best cook.
