“Something seems different tonight Stinky Pants. You have a certain glow about you.”

A damning burst of blush-induced heat gathered at the back of his neck. The only thing saving his dignity was the fact that they were outside on the terrace where a moonless night provided plenty of shadows and darkness.

Patsy was playing with him. The amused tinkle in her otherwise gruff delivery was the giveaway.

Swirling the two olives on a cocktail pick in his standard dirty martini, David knew the attempt he made to deflect her attention was going to be lame at best. His aunt had some sort of radar or internal bullshit detector.

A convoluted tale, to cover a lie in order to shift attention, stuck in his throat. Why fucking bother?

But he wasn’t ready to concede defeat and spill his guts—what fun would that be—so he decided to play off his aunt’s outrageously inappropriate sense of humor and spread it on thick.

Doing a quick mental mea culpa for the macho-pig raft of shit about to tumble off his tongue, he snickered before taking a half sip of his drink.

She beat him to the starting line though and stole his thunder with neat, Patsy Loman precision.

“Getting laid then, are you?”

Oh, Jesus Christ. How the hell had he and Missy turned out anywhere near normal? David chuckled and shook his head.

Rather than admit to anything he came back with a familiar taunt. “Jealous, much?”

“I knew it!” she shrieked after landing a swat on his arm for emphasis. “I told Quinn it’s the only explanation for your dewy glow and shit eating smirk.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s fucked up that you and my mother gossip about my sex life.”

She laughed, leaned closer and cackled right in his face. “Twelve hours of labor and an alley cat as a husband gives her, and me, the right.”

“Tell me again how my mother’s labor and delivery involved you?”

Patsy laughed, shoved him with her elbow and blew smoke into the dark sky above their heads. For reasons that were currently a mystery, his aunt had a sudden, deep interest in cigars. Her present annoying habit involved smoking Swisher Sweets, bad enough, but this new ritual required intermittent gulps of Jim Bean.

“Just to be clear, we’ll be doubling back to the getting laid thing.”

He sipped the martini and peered at her over the glass with an angelic smile.

“Save it for someone else,” she said with a rude hand gesture. “Since you brought up your father...”

“Did not,” he grumbled.

“Shut up Stinky. As I was saying,” she tartly drawled, “How is the old fart? Still rum-running in the Florida Keys?”

Okay, now that was funny, he thought. Patsy gave good snark.

“He runs a charter fishing operation, and the last time Missy went with me to visit, I looked around and found no evidence of pirated rum.” He stuck out his tongue like a snotty kid and ended with, “Hmph, so there.”

“I can’t believe you even talk to him.”

“I can’t believe after all this time that you care.”

His bald statement shut her down for less than five seconds.

“He hurt your mother,” she stated.

David sensed the old wound opening up and wondered why now of all times this subject was coming up.

“They hurt each other, Patsy.” He said the words quietly but with firm assurance. “She wanted one thing, and he wanted something else.”

It was the politest way he’d ever found for describing the painful truth about his parents' unhappy marriage.

He rested his hips against the stone balustrade and set his drink down. If they were going to get into it, he didn’t want to be holding a potentially dangerous object.

Expecting the same old, same old—a rehashing of the groan-inducing tale about the beautiful but cold heiress and her ill-fated union with a man who thought he was marrying a flesh and blood woman only to discover his folly—it took him a few seconds to catch up when Patsy went off on a different tear.

“She figured it out, you know. Eventually.” Patsy’s shoulder lifted. She puffed on the thin cigar and blew some pretty spectacular smoke rings into the blackness.

“I blame your grandparents. They filled her head with nonsense. You know the drill,” she murmured. “Duty. Responsibility. Appearances. All priorities. Feelings and stupid shit like dreams or aspirations were off limits.”

Every word was truth. His mother’s parents were paper doll cut-outs of what old school society, wealth, and way too fucking many privileges looked like. He and Missy used to joke that their grandparents didn’t need a refrigerator because they were both so cold.

“What are you saying?”

She looked at him with a weird expression on her face. When she answered, his world wobbled ever so slightly.

“Did you know it was a set-up? Jimmy and Quinn.”

He blinked. “Say again?”

“Yeah,” Patsy answered. “I wouldn’t say theirs was an arranged marriage, but it came awfully damn close.”

“What. The. Fuck.”

“Sorry, Stinky. The unvarnished truth comes down to this - your grandparents picked him. He was a junior executive at a competing company.”

He didn’t know what to say. What to do. So he sat frozen and gaped at his aunt while she spoke.

“Jimmy Sanderson was what everyone called a nice guy.”

David inwardly cringed when she added air quotes. Being described as a nice guy was second only to being called a pussy.

“He fell for Quinn hook, line, and sinker.” She laughed, and he frowned. “Sorry, had to throw in the fishing reference for shits and grins.”

Discarding the cigar, she polished off the tumbler of bourbon and sat across from him in a swiveling wicker chair.

“I think in her own way, she was fond of him.”

He cringed again. Fond. Ugh. Nothing quite beats finding out he and his sister were the products of fond.

“Buuuut,” Patsy added, “Some part of her hated him for being so nice. Her parents chewed Jimmy up and spat him out.”

Feeling compelled to defend his dad he sulkily muttered, “She treated him like shit.”

“Yeah, I know.” Patsy caught his gaze. “She knows it too.”

Whoa. Hold on. What? This was huge. Nah, fuck that. This was bigger than that. Maybe huge’s older brother, gargantuan.

“Mistakes were made by both parties.” His aunt’s tone left a lot to wonder about.

A question circled in his mind, so he asked it. “Why the retrospect? What are you guys up to?”

She glanced at a window partially obscured by climbing vines. Inside the palatial manor, his mother's weekly cocktail event was rolling along.

The Mayor and her husband were the evening’s star guests. Quinn handily navigated the social scene in a way that, while somewhat scripted, never failed to make her guests feel welcome.

Missy was somewhere—probably canoodling in a corner with her professor boyfriend.

He liked Tom Wilkerson well enough. Missy thought he walked on water and that’s what mattered. Their mother’s tedious attitude toward the unpretentious scholar was just par for the course. Because Tom was just a regular guy who wasn’t eyeing up a run for Senate and didn’t have a big bank account, Quinn showed little interest in him personally.

A shame too because the guy was Big Bang Theory smart and could babble for hours about time-space theories and all sorts of random subjects.

His date for the evening was also somewhere in the small group of people. When he walked off to share a private moment with Patsy, he noticed Violet was talking some poor guy’s face off. He didn’t recognize the man, but by his expression, David was going to assume he was deciding whether to jump ship or not.

“Did you meet Judge Karalis?”

He felt his eyebrows shoot up. Yeah, he met the guy. He was short and beefy with a gregarious personality. Odd company for his mom to be keeping.

“Well, you might want to get to know him.”

“Why?”

“Mmm,” she growled with a shrug. “Just sayin’.”

If this conversation got any weirder, he was going to need another drink.

“Your date looks bored.”

He took the olives from his empty glass and pulled them off the pick with his teeth. “She always looks bored. It’s the Botox. I figure she can only give two expressions. Frozen bored or Soul Sucking bored. Take your pick.”

“Sounds like a love match,” she snigger-snorted.

“Well, you know what they say. A surrender a day keeps Mommy at bay.”

“So, what’s that mean? Quinn fucks with your head by making you pretend-date some empty Louboutins, and you just surrender?”

“Surrender may be giving more credit than necessary. Let’s just call Violet Brubaker the low road. Sometimes going low is easier than maneuvering the defensive driving course.”

“Does any of this strike you as familiar?”

“Familiar?” He shrugged. “Very familiar. It’s my mother’s way.”

Patsy grunted. “You’re an idiot.”

“Why? Because I see what she’s doing? Because Missy and I play along just enough to avoid her drama?”

“No, you little shit. Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”

“Are you serious?” he grumbled. “Patsy, come on. I don’t know if it’s just you being you or the Jim Beam taking over, but you’ve circled the globe in this conversation. Honestly? I have no idea what we’re even talking about.”

“You getting secretly laid. Your mother finally admitting the mistakes she’s made. The fact that her parents tried to run her life. Any of this ringing a bell?”

He crossed his arms and sighed. “Is there some reason why we have to dance around? Can’t you just spit it out?”

She stood up and yanked on her sweater. “Fine. Here goes.”

He watched and waited.

“She’s doing to you and Missy what her parents did to her.”

“Okay.”

“David, for Christ’s sake. Wake up. She needs you to fight back. She needs you to do what she couldn’t. Choose your own life—not the life your parents lay out.”

His head swiveled. He looked through the window. Was that really what was happening? In a way, it made sense. Quinn Sanderson sense.

“Don’t let her get away with it.”

“Be specific,” he ground out.

“Violet. Put your damn foot down, Stinky.”

“But…”

His aunt did the unexpected and came to him for a brief hug. “I’m going to give you two pieces of insider information. What you do with it is on you.”

This is one of those times when he wanted Amy at his side. She wouldn’t be much help because Patsy scared the shit from her but just having her nearby would calm his nerves.

“First. Your mother thinks Violet is a twunt.”

He laughed at the bitchy word.

“And second, stake your claim you stupid boy before Mommy hooks you up with a society-page date for the project launch.”

He jolted as if a cattle prod struck his nuts. Date for the launch? Stake his claim? Was she saying what he thought she was? Wait a minute…

“Oh, and get your stinky pants in there and make nice with the Judge.”

“Why?”

Patsy gave a heavy sigh and shook her head. “Men are so fucking dumb that it’s painful.”

He barked out the words that exploded in his thoughts. “Hold on. Are you saying Quinn and the Judge?”

She patted his cheek gently and ended with a smart slap for good measure. Typical Aunt Patsy.

“Be the man she raised, David. Not the cookie cutter son.”

They crossed the terrace in silence, her arm looped with his. He had a lot to think about.

As they stepped through the French doors into the salon to rejoin the group, she winked and got in a parting shot, “Oh, and tell the young woman you keep hidden in the shadows that despite my meddling, the black and white theme is inspired!”

He nearly tripped over his clumsy feet as she laughed and walked away, leaving him solo to navigate the rest of this incredibly weird night.

* * *

Amy glared at the phone on the side table when the vibrations signaling a text made it wobble. Sometimes she hated the constant presence of the communication device.

Pressing her thumb on the home button, she waited for the notifications to appear and focused on the most recent.

A message from Missy.

She sat up so quick that the bowl of chips on her lap dumped out. Shit. Bumbling with the phone, she was nothing but thumbs as she brought up the text box.

Hey. Cocktail update. Vio-lotta-bullshit just got in a cab and left. Mom has a bad case of pinched mouth. Patsy may or may not be drunk. Tom’s stomach is gurgling from apprehension. Some little fat guy named the Judge keeps trying to hold Quinn’s hand. The Mayor has a penchant for insanely dirty jokes. Oh yeah, and Davy looks like he has twelve hours to find the final Horcrux before all hell breaks loose. WTF?????

Holy crap-a-looza! Violet left?

She scooted into a more comfortable position and texted back.

Whadayamean she left? Was there a scene?

Waiting for a reply took a dog’s age. She pushed hair behind her ears and chewed a nail. What did this mean? Did David pull the plug in the middle of Quinn’s soiree? That didn’t seem like him. He wasn’t a big fan of public theatrics.

No scene. She was laughing as the cab pulled up. Mom and Davy were both outside.

None of this made sense. Laughing? What the hell? She checked out the time on her TV’s cable box and quickly responded.

Is David still there? Is he okay?

Missy replied a few minutes later. Check this out.

Two seconds went by and a picture appeared. David and a portly looking gentleman engaged in a deep conversation. Barely visible in the corner was Quinn wearing an expression that almost appeared happy.

Who’s that? She’d barely pressed send when Missy’s next comment appeared.

A judge. He’s Greek. Something hinky is going on.

Amy jumped up and started pacing back and forth in her small, childhood bedroom. The last time she went downstairs, their backyard neighbor was helping her dad drag a bunch of crap out of the garage as Mom and her brother Doug shouted unhelpful directions. Joanie, of course, was out running around.

She couldn’t have been more wrong about seeking distraction in her family’s daily life. She should have stayed at the apartment and made David come straight there after the get together at Quinn’s.

What should she do? Texting him on his personal phone would be breaking protocol, but her burner phone was turned off and in her purse. Downstairs.

Plus, she didn’t want to be that girl. The one who crawled up her man’s ass every opportunity she got.

The sapphire bracelet twinkled in the light. First of many, he’d said. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt and wait, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to squeeze every drop of available information out of Missy.

How drunk is your aunt? Epic drunk or shit stirring drunk?

Another picture appeared. This one was slightly blurry as if hurriedly and probably surreptitiously taken. It showed Patsy and the Mayor falling over with laughter.

The sort of drunk that falls in between OH NO SHE DIDN’T and OH GOD PLEASE DON’T.

She quickly typed, Who’s the grey haired gent in the corner?

Missy responded with the nerdy looking emoji and typed, Quinn’s lawyer.

A series of cry laughing emojis followed. Davy just gave me a look. He saw me texting.

You better go before we get in trouble. Thanks for the heads up. Don’t respond. TTYL.

She dropped the phone on the bed. A surge of happy excitement filled her up. Was Violet history? Were she and David really going to go public with their relationship?

Oh. My. God.

Creeping quietly from her room, she carefully stepped over every known floor squeak and tiptoed downstairs where she stopped and listened.

It sounded like everyone was still outside. Good. She made a mad dash into the den and searched for her purse. She might not want to initiate a conversation but maybe David would and for that to happen, she needed her top-secret phone.

She was making a hasty retreat when the house phone rang and scared the living daylights out of her. Who the hell would call in the evening, on the damn land line? Sheesh.

She was just putting her foot on the second step when her mother called out, “Amy? Is that you?”

Sighing with resignation, she turned toward the rear of the house and answered. “Yep. What’s up?”

Her mother’s face appeared around the corner of the doorway into the kitchen. She looked bemused.

“Uh, I think your boss is on the phone.”

“What?”

“Your boss. Well, one of them. David Sanderson, right? He’s on the phone.”

Amy booked at high speed from the front stairs, down the hallway and burst into the kitchen with a crazed expression. “Give me the phone.”

Her mother smirked, raised a brow and murmured, “Uh huh.”

If only from the sheer number of hours she and David spent together, her parents knew she was involved with someone. They also knew that because she and her hidden boyfriend worked together and it was against company policy—they had to keep things discreet and private. Her mom objected to the secrecy, but Amy had a great comeback. She simply pointed out that it would be stupid to rock the boat over a man until they had a chance to discover whether the relationship had staying power.

She took the receiver from her mom’s hand and took a steadying breath. She felt like a goofy thirteen-year-old getting her first phone call from a boy.

“Hello?”

David’s voice, deep, husky and amused came across the line. “Ms. Peters? It’s David Sanderson. We met at the office.”

She glanced at her mother, blushed and whirled around. Before wandering away, Jennifer Peters laughed softly.

“Yes. I remember. Good evening Mr. Sanderson. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” he began. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Beck has an important project launch coming up. You worked on it I believe.”

She snickered into the phone. Worked on it. Fuck. She did a lot more than just work on it. He was enjoying this, so she smiled and gave a tiny pushback.

“Actually yes. My name is in the presentation folder.”

He snickered. She grinned.

“How perfect,” he murmured. “In that case, you’ll be attending the launch party, yes?”

“Of course,” she replied. Her heart picked up and beat faster with each passing second.

“I’d be delighted to escort you to the launch, Ms. Peters.”

She giggled. Couldn’t help it. “Are you asking me for a date, Mr. Sanderson?”

“Why, yes. I am. And quite publically I might add.”

She almost exploded with happiness. “Is that why you called the house phone?”

He laughed. “If I recall correctly, your exact words when I asked previously were, ‘Ask me when there isn’t another woman waiting on your sorry ass.’”

She gasped into the phone but couldn’t find her words.

“My sorry ass is completely free Ms. Peters, so I thought we’d start with the basics and do this out in the open. Starting with your parents being in the know.”

“And your mother? Does she figure into this?”

He paused. She sensed he wanted to tell her something but now was not the time. What he did say was intriguing enough. “My mother may surprise us yet.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“For what?”

Admitting stupidity wasn’t easy, but she did it. “I was a baby for coming home. I should have stayed at the apartment.”

“No,” he quickly asserted. “You were right to put your foot down. I’m glad you did, and I’m glad we have to do this on the phone—out in the open. No more hiding, honey.”

“Oh, David.”

She heard his smile when he softly asked, “Are you wearing it?”

She held up the sapphire bangle and shook it on her wrist. “Yes.”

“Good,” he replied with a cheeky sounding laugh. “Now be a good girl and finger your pussy while wearing it and…”

She barked with laughter and outrage. “Seriously?”

He was laughing his ass off, so she said, “Mr. Sanderson, feel free to suck my dick.”

He laughed even harder, and she hung up on him while a monster smile spread on her face.

No more hiding.

Oh. My. God.