“She's a badass,” Noah said.
“Have you ever thought of modeling?” Felix asked.
Lola pretended to push back her wild hair, smiling and preening. “Stop,” she said in a tone that clearly saidgo on.
“No, seriously,” Felix said. “Call me. You’d be killer in my spring line.”
“Can we focus on the task at hand?” Aiden asked, sounding exasperated.
Lola tsked. “Don’t be mad ‘cause I’m prettier than you.”
Asa’s eyes lit up. “I like her so much. Let’s adopt her. We need more girls in this family.”
Cricket, who had left the girls with the nanny, gave Lola a flat stare. “Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap. They’ll just try to use you for breeding purposes.”
“We would have gorgeous babies,” Felix said, giving Lola an appraising look.
“Easy, kitten,” Avi said. “Let’s at least meet her face to face before we start trying to mine her girl parts.”
“Did you actually find anything?” Aiden said loudly.
“Well, maybe?” she hedged. “But when I say I had to go way back, I mean way,wayback. Most of the people who were involved in the ‘accident’ are long dead.”
“Why are you air-quoting accident?” Aiden asked.
Lola took a sip of her coffee, eyeing him over the brim. “Like you don’t know? It wasn’t an accident. It was a murder-suicide. It was a cover-up. A really good cover-up, but a cover-up nonetheless.”
“If it was a good cover-up, how did you figure out it wasn’t an accident?” August asked.
“Since the deaths occurred at the lake house, which is in an unincorporated part of the community, it was handled by the local cops. There were only three of them and to say they were ill-equipped to handle a mass murder is an understatement. The sheriff was Methuselah old when it happened, died not long after the crime itself, one deputy took over as chief but died in a car crash five years later. The third deputy moved far away. I finally chased down the third deputy who was no longer a cop but a politician. He was…uncooperative.”
“Uncooperative?” Jericho parroted.
Lola nodded. “Yeah, implied that there are a lot of ways nosey people tend to go missing.”
“He threatened you?” Aiden snapped.
Lola teetered her hand back and forth. “Meh, nothing as overt as that but I was definitely picking up what he was putting down. He was telling me to just forget about it.”
“And did you?” Thomas asked. “Forget about it?”
Lola’s gaze snapped to him, giving him a hard once-over, eyes locking on where Aiden’s fingers threaded with his own on the arm rest. “I see you’ve finally decided to stop being a dumbass.”
“Whoa,” Seven whispered. “Did she just call a Mulvaney a dumbass?”
Noah’s spine straightened, his expression turning stormy. “Don’t talk to my dad like that.”
“Yes, he’s stopped being a dumbass,” Calliope said. “For now, anyway. Can we just not do the male posturing today? Too much testosterone gives me a headache.”
Lola gave Calliope a once-over of an entirely different kind, biting her full lower lip before smiling. “Me too. I can only take men in small doses. Women, though…that’s entirely different.”
Thomas turned as Calliope rocked in her chair, giving a smile he had never seen on her before. She held up her hand in acall megesture.
“What is happening?” Zane asked, looking back and forth between the two women.
“I’m pretty sure Lola is hitting on my mom,” Dimitri said, not sounding even remotely bothered by this turn of events. “Happens all the time. She’s hot.”
“Your mom is so cool,” Nico whispered.
