Not even because Sunny has her hands on her hips, muttering, “This damn girl. What the hell you done did? You like a boomerang from hell.”
But because next to all of them is Jonathan, disheveled and wearing a suit, holding a bouquet of flowers.
Shit.
Thirty-Eight
Jail would be preferable to this busy steakhouse that is in no way the one Nash and I were supposed to be in.Alone.
Once the officer—who knew Nash—found out I didn’t have a record and was, in fact, looking for missing gold, he let me off with a good laugh and a warning.
But when I saw who he was turning me over to, I almost begged him to take me with him. Leeds Avenue, as Leroy called it, sounded like a night at the Ritz compared to this.
Yet here we are.
At a round table, I’m sitting opposite Sunny, whose brows are so high they might hit the ceiling.
On my left is Jonathan, who reeks of whiskey.
On my right is Nash and my dad, both of whom have eyes locked on Jonathan.
Everyone stares at me when I order straight tequila from the waitress and tell her to keep them coming. Only alcohol will get me through this meal.
Jonathan, who wanted to surprise me by coming down for the weekend, found me by tracking my phone with the location sharing app we use.
Which led him to meet Sunny and Cap.
Which led him to drinking half a bottle of whiskey as he sat in the office, insisting that me cancelling our engagement was a simple misunderstanding.
Which led them all to Nash and the cemetery of my crimes.
“This is a funny situation,” I hear myself say.
It must be opposite day because it’s the opposite of how I feel and the opposite of funny and the opposite of what I envisioned this dinner of just Nash and I being. I’m wound more tightly than I’ve ever been wound. And it’s not just Jonathan being here and hammered, making me cringe every time he opens his mouth, it’s the fact I didn’t get a chance to tell him Nash doesn’t know about Bennie. In his oiled-up-on-whiskey state, he is in prime condition to spill every secret.
“Rue tells me you’re a dentist,” Nash says around the rim of his glass.
“That’s right,” Jonathan says, slight drag to hiss’s andr’s. “And you’re a tour guide it seems?”
“It seems.” Nash sends a taunting glance my way that makes my stomach churn. “And married to your former fiancé.”
Cap grunts a laugh at this; I dump tequila down my throat and raise the empty glass.
I don’t care if Nash is a finger-sucking guru: I will kill him.
“Well,” Jonathan says, raising his glass. “To not-so-sloppy seconds.” He squeezes my knee under the table and I push it away.
“Definitely sloppy last night,” Nash volleys with a lift of his beer.
Sonofabitch.I kick him under the table. He merely smiles and pins my foot against the floor with his.
“I knew you still had some sex in you,” Sunny calls so every table in the restaurant can hear. “Honey child got her groove back. Hear that, Cappy baby? Bet she a real freak.”
Cap, that sicko, raises his glass my way. “Iris was a freak too.”
I will bleach that visual from my mind later.
“Jonathan,” I say through gritted teeth. “I said in my voicemail that I would see you when we got back and that?—”
