Ryan's neck flushed. "Amaya?—"
"You don't want to talk to her." Amaya pointed at Aelin, and Ryan's expression hardened.
"That's not?—"
"You stayed in the car this morning."
Ryan exhaled. "I'm not going to talk about this with you right now."
Aelin held up a hand, ignoring whatever was happeningbetween Amaya and Ryan at the moment.He didn't want to talk with her?"I don't understand. Why did you two need us to meet?"
Amaya gave her dad a sidelong glance, then looked up at Aelin. "We want to come to the lake with you."
Ryan coughed on his ice cream. "Amaya?—"
"He switched his week off so it's the same as yours, and I don't want to go on a road trip. I want to go to the lake?—"
"Okay. Car. Now." Ryan stood from the bench.
Amaya's eyes grew glassy. "I'm sorry, Dad. I just thought if you talked with her you'd see that they want us to come. And then I could learn how to water ski—" Her voice caught, and she nearly choked as she started crying over her ice cream cup.
Ryan set his ice cream on the bench and pulled her against his chest. He exhaled, and it sounded a lot like, "What the hell is happening right now?"
Bailey looked up at Aelin, her eyes refilling with tears. "Mom?—"
"Hey, Ryan?" Aelin took her last bite of ice cream and dropped it in the trash can. "Can I talk with you for a second?" She pressed her hands into her hips and stalked toward a set of poles protruding from the ground that looked nothing like children's playground equipment.
Ryan settled Amaya on the bench, then followed after her. They stopped next to a blue spruce and stared at each other.
"Our children are psychopaths." She swallowed, her pulse jumping under her skin. All of Bailey's behaviour that day tumbled into place. The lack of resistance at dinner, the attention to time. She'd played her like a fiddle.
"Maybe goal-oriented is a better term?" Ryan put a scoop of ice cream in his mouth, and a little zing shot down her spine as he licked his spoon.
"Miscreants."
He nodded. "No hope for either of them." He scraped his cup and walked to the bin next to them, dropping it in. He moseyedback to stand in front of her. "I'm sorry about this. I think it was mostly Amaya's idea."
Aelin sighed. "No, I think Bailey might have been the instigator. She has cousins coming, but they're all older than her. The one closest to her in age is a boy, and while they always got along while she was younger, he's twelve now. I think she's nervous he'll be too cool to hang out with a little kid."
Ryan nodded. "Should we just stand here and pretend to talk for a bit? Then they'll have to accept the answer?"
Aelin wet her lips. "What is the answer?"
Ryan put a hand in his pocket. "No. I already told her it's your family vacation."
Aelin’s insides started playing musical chairs to the tune of“Ryan at the lake? Ryan in a bathing suit?”The idea of him sitting in an Adirondack chair looking out over the water with her next to him made her brain short-circuit.
But it wasn’t about that.They needed people to fill the cabins, didn’t they?
"Well . . ." Aelin kicked a piece of mulch off the concrete. All the calculations she'd done to figure out exactly how many people would need to come for her to be able to pay her share of the cabin rentals flashed through her head. If they filled one more cabin, she'd be able to pay Mariah in only two installments. One at the end of July and one in August.
"Well, what?" Ryan studied her.
"It was supposed to be a family trip. It has been the past four years, but this year, my little brother bailed, and my cousin who usually comes with his family couldn't commit. So it's just my parents and my sister, but we booked six cabins.
"Okay."
Aelin swallowed hard. "So my sister Mariah and I have been scrounging for more people to fill the last three because we're on the hook for the full bill. My brother was supposed to bring some friends—anyway, it's a whole thing. We've asked around and haven't had any luck."
