Chapter Twenty-eight
“So, is your name Nick, Jesus, God, or Oh-My-God-Don’t-Ever-Stop? I’m confused because I heard you called a lot of things last night.”
Grace stabbed her fork in Gage’s direction and mumbled around a mouthful of pancakes, “Keep your mouth shut, Gage.”
Nick just smirked and dove into his own breakfast, not looking the least bit embarrassed that half the hotel knew what they’d been doing all night. But then again, what did he have to be embarrassed about? From all the screaming she’d done, he came off looking like a sex god.
Which, now that she thought about it, wasn’t at all far from the truth.
“Ugh,” Gage muttered, reaching across Grace to grab the coffee decanter. “You have absolutely no shame. The fact that you’re blushing so hard right now, Grace, just tells me you’re replaying the whole thing in your head.”
Grace took a sip of her orange juice before scoffing and saying, “I am not.”
She totally was, though.
Grace lifted her eyes from her plate and found Nick pinning her with a look so hot and potent it let her know that he too was reliving their evening (and morning) in his head, right here at the breakfast table. One corner of his mouth lifted as their gazes held, and she had a brief fantasy about him throwing her down on the breakfast table and fucking her right there amid the pancakes and French toast and bacon platters.
So sticky.
She could honestly say that was the first sexual fantasy she’d ever had in a Cracker Barrel. Not sure if that was necessarily a good thing, but there was no denying it was kind of fun.
Gage grumbled, “Now you’re just being smug about it. That kind of joy this early in the morning is just gratuitous, really.”
“Jealous?” Nick asked mildly, snagging a piece of bacon off the plate in front of Grace. Seeing as he’d given her more orgasms than she’d ever had in her life over the course of one night, Grace decided she wouldn’t stab Nick’s hand with her fork for daring to touch her bacon. A lesser man would’ve been hospital-bound for fork-removal by now.
Gage glanced up as Sadie approached their table. “Totally,” he said quietly, his eyes not leaving her face.
Sadie flushed a deep red, and shrugged out of her jacket, taking a seat next to Nick. “Sorry we’re late,” she said, slightly out of breath.
Michael came in behind her and threw himself down in the chair next to Grace. “Pass the coffee and keep it coming,” he muttered.
“Sure thing, princess,” Gage said, shoving the decanter to Grace, who passed it over to Michael.
Michael glared at him. “Really? The princess thing again?”
He shrugged. “If the tiara fits.”
Sadie quickly turned a giggle into a cough when Michael leveled her with a sharp glare. When she grabbed a plate and reached for the platter of pancakes, Michael cleared his throat pointedly and said, “I thought you were worried about fitting into that wedding dress.”
Sadie drew her hand back from the platter as if it had scalded her. “Oh. Yeah. You’re right. Maybe I’ll just have some coffee, too,” she said quietly.
Grace wanted to shake her. No! Don’t let anyone talk to you like that! Tell him to go fuck himself while you shovel pancakes down your throat, if that’s what you want to do!
And she wanted to smack her little brother upside the head. What was the matter with him? This wasn’t the sweet kid she’d helped raise. When had Michael turned into such a monumental douchecanoe? Was it just the stress of the wedding that was causing him to turn into a groomzilla, or was there more to it than that?
Not that it really mattered at this point. She’d promised Nick she would stay out of Sadie and Michael’s relationship. So, here she was, quietly (with gritted teeth) staying out of it.
And it really kind of sucked this time.
One look at Nick and she knew it sucked for him, too. He was looking at Michael with an expression only slightly friendlier than the one he usually gave Brad.
But Gage, who hadn’t made any promises to stay out of anyone’s business, swore under his breath and reached forward to stab a stack of pancakes with his fork. He dumped them on Sadie’s plate without ceremony. “You should eat what you want. And a few pancakes today aren’t going to keep you from fitting into a dress tomorrow.” Then he jabbed his fork in Michael’s direction and added, “And it’s none of your damn business what anyone eats.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed on Gage. “It’s not any of your business, either. She’s not any of your business.”
Well, well, Grace thought, it looked like her formerly clueless little brother was finally noticing that something weird was going on with Sadie and Gage. Good for him. But the breakfast table was hardly the place for such a discussion, so she tried to lighten the mood by saying, “I think I’m going to have T-shirts made up that say, ‘It’s none of your damn business what anyone eats.’ I’d wear mine every time I went to a restaurant.”
Nick grinned at her, but there was still tension in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but whatever it was got swallowed whole by the sound of trinkets, wooden checkers sets, and jars of BBQ sauce hitting the floor in the little general store in front of the restaurant. The sounds of heated debate followed.
“What on earth is that all about?” Grace asked.
Gage raised a brow at her. “I’ll give you three guesses,” he began dryly, “and the first two don’t count.”
Right on cue, Ruthie rolled around the corner, looking fairly pleased with herself, with Brad behind her, pushing her wheelchair. Brad looked more embarrassed than Grace had ever seen him, which, childishly, brightened her mood considerably.
“Grace,” Ruthie said as Brad parked her chair at the head of the table, “isn’t it against the law to have an entryway in a public place that’s so filled with crap you can’t fit a wheelchair through?”
“I’m not helping you sue Cracker Barrel,” Grace said with an eye roll.
Ruthie scowled at her. “Well, what good are you, then?”
“Ask Nick,” Gage said mildly. “He knows what good Grace is.”
Grace resisted the childish urge to flip him off, instead saying, “Who’s a grumpy bastard?”
“Of course I’m a grumpy bastard. I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Technically, neither did I,” Grace muttered.
“I didn’t sleep either,” Ruthie announced. “I heard Wild Kingdom noises all night.”
Grace, who’d just taken a big drink, promptly spewed a mouthful of orange juice in Gage’s direction.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he grumbled, grabbing a stack of napkins to mop up the mess.
“Sorry,” she choked out.
Not one to ever pick up on a social cue, Brad asked, “What do you mean by Wild Kingdom noises?”
Grace did a mental face-palm, but outwardly schooled her features into a mask of indifference, so as not to draw any more attention to herself, or to Nick, who looked altogether too pleased with himself.
“I mean Wild Kingdom noises,” Ruthie repeated. “You know, like wild animals humping. Like a television special about horny monkeys.”
Nick’s smirk grew, and Grace leveled a scowl on him to let him know she was rethinking her earlier decision not to stab him with her fork.
“At least someone got lucky last night, because God knows I didn’t,” Michael groused quietly, which drew a sharp gasp from Sadie. Grace glanced over at Nick, who didn’t seem to have heard Michael’s comment. But Gage sure had, she noticed with no small amount of alarm.
An angry vein popped up in his forehead as Gage leaned forward in his seat, and in a low voice that Grace had never before heard him use, said, “Start showing her some god damned respect, asshole, or I’ll drag you outside by the hair and beat the ever-lovin’ fuck out of you.”
Grace’s breath caught. “Gage,” she whispered.
Michael blinked at Gage like he’d never seen him before, but regained his composure quickly. Kind of.
His chair shrieked as Michael shoved away from the table. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, man, but I’m over it.” With that, he stood up and tossed a few bills on the table to cover the cost of the breakfast he’d barely touched. “I’m going back to the hotel.”
When Sadie started to stand up, he waved her off. “Stay. I need some time alone anyway.”
Then he was gone.
A full minute of tense silence passed. Nick reached over and give Sadie’s hand a squeeze. “You okay?” he asked her.
She nodded, but still looked pale and shaky when she shifted her gaze to Gage. “That wasn’t necessary,” she said in a voice so quiet Grace had to strain to hear her. “The pancakes…saying that to him. You probably shouldn’t have done it. But…thank you.”
In the silence that followed, as Sadie and Gage locked eyes and seemed to get stuck that way, Brad cleared his throat and said, “Well, this has all been very awkward.” Then he punctuated his statement with a nervous hyena giggle that made Grace cringe.
Ruthie sniffed. “No more awkward than you sitting here trying to win back a woman who was up all night making Wild Kingdom noises with an Irishman who probably goes through her purse while she’s sleeping.”
“Sometimes I don’t even wait until she’s asleep,” Nick fired back without missing a beat. “Fill ‘em up with sperm, then rob ‘em blind while they search for their panties,” he added in a dead-on Irish accent that would’ve done Colin Farrell proud. “It’s the Irish way.”
Grace practically had a snark-induced orgasm at that point. A snarkgasm. Had there ever been a more eloquently executed example of snark? It was perfect.
Grace had been falling in love with Nick for a while. But it was in that moment she realized she wasn’t falling anymore. She’d already fallen. Anyone who could snark like Nick just had was a keeper.
Gage and Sadie stifled chuckles, while Ruthie harrumphed into her coffee cup, and Brad looked like he might have a stroke at any moment. Tossing his napkin to the table much like Michael had, Brad stood up and left, after announcing he needed some air.
“I hear the air is nice in Canada,” Gage called after him. “You should go there to get some.”
Grace couldn’t agree more.
Ruthie, completely unfazed by Brad’s departure, threw her hands up and said, “Where’s the damn apple butter?”
Sadie handed Ruthie the apple butter while Grace silently thanked God that her parents had decided to skip breakfast. Having her dad hear about her sexcapades the previous night (and this morning) rated very low on her list of must-do’s, somewhere between getting food poisoning again, and jabbing a fork in her eye.
“Is it too early to go somewhere and get drunk?” Nick asked, not really sounding like he was kidding.
“They really should serve vodka at family restaurants,” Grace said. “When does anyone need a drink more than when they’re with family?”
Gage nodded and added, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Sadie smiled wanly at them. “I’m so sorry for ruining breakfast, everyone.”
Nick opened his mouth to reply, but Gage beat him to the punch, saying, “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’ll talk with Michael. We’ll get everything worked out.”
Yeah, Grace thought, Gage, who was halfway in love with the bride-to-be, should have a chat with the groom-to-be. Good plan. “How about I talk to Michael after breakfast, so that Nick and Sadie can spend some time together?” So that maybe, God willing, one of us can get to the bottom of whatever the fuck is going on with these two kids and this rushed, ill-advised wedding clusterfuck.
“You know,” Ruthie said as she smeared apple butter all over a biscuit, “Mavis Tarley in my book club says it’s perfectly acceptable these days for girls to become lesbians. Not just ugly girls, either. Pretty ones like you can do it, too, Sadie. Just something to think about before you decide to marry into this family.”
Everyone took a few moments of silence to digest that little nugget of crazy.