Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(36)

Stella shrugged my question off, and it was clear she didn’t want to give me a real answer.

Cade saved us the trouble of an awkward silence when he walked up and slung his arm around my shoulder. “I have an idea, and before you say no—”

“No,” I said.

He groaned. “What if my idea was that we should find a totally sensible way to legally purchase one of them there dinosaur bones? Hmm? What then? Would you wish you’d let me finish my damn sentence?”

“And was that your idea?” I asked dryly.

“No. But you shouldn’t just assume you know what people are going to say before they say it. It’s dickish.”

“You were going to say we should steal one of the bones, weren’t you?”

“Not permanently. I thought it’d be hilarious to see if we could make it out of here with one. I’d put money on that one trying to tackle us if he saw.” Cade nodded toward an elderly man with broad shoulders, a prominent belly, and a mustache that made him look like a walrus.

“I wish I didn’t know you as well as I do, because then I could just laugh this off and assume you were kidding.”

“Why would I joke about something like this?”

“Good luck with him,” Stella said. “I’m going to get out of here before you two end up getting a cavity search from security.”

“Cavity search?” Cade asked. “What kind of dinosaur bone could we fit up our asses?”

From the way Cade asked, I didn’t think it was a hypothetical question.

“If you want to jam dinosaur bones up your ass,” I said, “then you can count me out of the plan. If you actually wanted to see about buying them, then you could count me in.”

“I wasn’t thinking about my ass. I was thinking about yours.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

Cade pulled a face and did a not-so-subtle oh shit, look at that kind of bulge of his eyes.

I turned to follow his gaze and saw my parents approaching. Cade started slowly trying to back away, but I grabbed his elbow. “You’re not weaseling out of this.”

“Ass,” he muttered.

“Are you two behaving for once?” my father asked.

“Of course,” I said.

My mother stood a half step behind my father with her lips pursed like she’d been sucking on lemons. Sometimes I wondered what would actually satisfy the woman, but I thought it was a pointless question. Some people walked into a restaurant planning to be disappointed. Even if the service and the food were almost perfect, they’d ask for a manager and complain about the nearby group that was too rowdy or about the water spots on the silverware. That was my mother. She woke every morning with the unshakable belief that the world and everything in it was going to utterly fail to impress her, and she made sure she was never wrong.

“Would it kill you to run a comb through your hair, Cadwick?” asked my mother.

I covered a laugh with my hand. No matter how many times I heard my mother use Cade’s real name, it cracked me up.

Cade straightened. “Cade,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Honestly. I don’t know what possessed you to start going by such a crude name. Cadwick was your grandfather’s—”

“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe he was tired of people assuming he was an eighteenth-century butler?”

“Or,” Cade added, “maybe it was just that my name sounded like some deadly disease a sailor would come down with before shitting his guts out.”

My father’s lips trembled. I almost burst out laughing at the sight of it. Of all the things that could actually get a laugh out of my father, it was making fun of the name my mother had chosen for Cade. My father had named me, and my mother had named Cadwick. After Cadwick, they’d agreed to compromise on Nick’s name. That was the arrangement, and though my father would never admit it, I knew he thought Cadwick was just as ridiculous a name as we did.

“Your grandfather would be rolling over in his grave if he could hear you two,” my mother said.

“Then maybe we should go have this conversation over his grave. I’ve always wanted to see a zombie,” Cade said.

“Cadwick!” my mother said through tight lips.

“As good as it has been to catch up, Cade and I were just getting ready to retire for the night,” I said.

“Cade and you?” asked my father. “Shouldn’t you be retiring somewhere with your lovely girlfriend? I’ve given you a long leash with Stella, but people are starting to whisper. The two of you are never seen touching. You hardly speak to one another. And now there are rumors you’ve been spending an obscene amount of time following around this local girl.”

My mother clicked her tongue. “Locals. It’s obscene.”

I held on to my patience with white knuckles. Obscene was one of their favorite buzzwords. Anything that might make people think we weren’t as wealthy or prestigious was obscene. Chewing gum was obscene. Scratching your neck was obscene. Showing an interest in a local girl with no money to her name was probably the obscenity of all obscenities, in their eyes.

“My relationships are my business,” I said. “You’re my parents, and I show you as much respect as I think you deserve for that. I let Cade and Nick shower you with money. I let you follow us around the country like hungry puppies hoping for table scraps. I even let you think you have some kind of say in who I will date because it gets you off my fucking back.”