Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(32)
Ford’s next-to-youngest sister, an emergency room nurse whose resting facial expression promised she would put up with exactly zero amount of bullshit, shook her head at her mother’s description. Someone near the stove, it was too crowded in the kitchen to know for sure who, mumbled something about Fallon being sweet as long as she got her way. Kate either didn’t hear it or decided to ignore it, because she kept going.
“Then the Lord blessed us with Felicia and—”
“I was so small, they knew it was time to stop,” Felicia said as she walked around the massive kitchen table, putting down plates while her fiancé, Hudson, followed a step behind, laying down the napkins.
Everyone chuckled at what had to be a long-told family joke, because unlike the rest of the towering Hartigans, Felicia was pocket-sized.
“Don’t listen to them, Matches,” Hudson said. “You’re the perfect size.”
A mournful cat wail sounded from the cat carrier in the corner at the sound of Hudson’s voice. He laid down the last napkin and squatted down to the carrier. She couldn’t hear what he said to the kitty inside, but it must have done the trick because the yowling stopped.
“Now, Gina,” Kate said, steering her toward the table. “Why don’t you tell us about yourself. Do you have any siblings?”
Ford stiffened beside her, and Fallon gave her an appraising look that said without words that she knew exactly who Gina’s family was, but Gina was saved from answering that question by the calming, computerized voice of Alexa announcing the first timer was up.
“Oh, dinner’s done. Everyone sit down.”
What happened next was a prime example of controlled chaos as people crowded into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She ended up next to Ford as the beaming Kate looked on. Everyone was pretty much elbow-to-elbow but no one complained, instead everyone just got to passing the platter of ham, a huge bowl of garlic mashed potatoes, trays of veggies, and more around the table.
“So, Gina darling, when did you two start dating?” Kate asked.
Embarrassed at being singled out, Gina lowered her gaze to her plate. “We’re not.”
“I knew it,” Frankie said with a teasing laugh as he poured gravy on his potatoes. “She’s way too normal for Ford.”
Okay, well, in the realm of descriptors that had been used to describe her looks, normal was one of the nicer ones. She pushed the peas around her plate and concentrated on keeping the expression on her “normal” face neutral.
“Remember Olive?” Finian asked.
Fallon cocked her head to one side and squished up her mouth for a second. “Is that the one who corrected everyone’s grammar?”
A collective groan filled the room. Frank Sr let out a disgusted snort mid-drink, which made the milk go down the wrong pipe. He started coughing hard enough that everyone was hollering at him to hold up his arms while Kate whacked him on the back until he told her that he wasn’t going into the dirt today and she could just calm down already.
“No, that was Patrice with the grammar,” Felicia said from her spot at the end of the table next to Hudson. “Olive was the one who hated hockey.”
“Better to hate hockey than to root against the Ice Knights,” Fiona said.
Gina turned to Ford. The tips of his ears were red, but he continued on eating his peas and potatoes as if he wasn’t getting the business from his family. It was good-natured, yeah, but still it had her tensing up on his behalf.
“Oh, like what’s-her-name who had a Cajun Rage tattoo?” Faith asked with a sneer.
Gina almost dropped her fork. A Rage tattoo? This was Waterbury. They were Ice Knights fans. The Rage were the Knights’s biggest rivals. For hockey fans in and around Harbor City, rooting for the Rage was like declaring you hated indoor plumbing.
“You dated a Rage fan?” she asked, looking at Ford like he’d grown a second head. “That’s just wrong.”
She thought back to the Ice Knights blanket she’d given him. That wasn’t just a blanket, it was a promise of loyalty. Ford turned to her, a chagrined expression on his face because he must have known that he’d done wrong by dating a Rage fan.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” he agreed with a good-natured chuckle and then turned to his family. “But I’m not the only one here who’s had some crazy dates.” He looked at Finian. “Remember the woman who kept showing up at the firehouse in nothing but a trench coat?” His attention moved down to his sisters, who were giggling at how red Finian’s ears had turned. “Or the guy who told Fallon he didn’t believe in women having college degrees? Then there was the guy who took Fiona on a very romantic date to Chuck E. Cheese’s?”
By the time he got that last bit out, everyone at the table was laughing. Then the stories really started. Faith recounted how she thought she was going on a date and it turned out to be a vacation timeshare pitch. Frankie told a story about a woman who spent an entire dinner date talking about her love of sloths. Felicia and Hudson tag-teamed the retelling of how they’d gotten together because he was helping her land another man.
“How about you, Gina?” Frankie asked. “What’s your worst date?”
Still giggling a little, she went over her very limited dating history for some small disaster nugget she could share, and her gut dropped—because in that instant, she realized that she was probably the nightmare part of the date. Her smile froze, and her lungs stopped working. Then, she felt Ford’s hand on her thigh. He gave her a squeeze. It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t a come on—it was reassuring, as weird as that seemed. The tension seeped out of her, but she still didn’t have any dating horror stories to share.