Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered #1)(62)

The utter betrayal on Morty’s face was hard to witness. He slowly set down his fork and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on the table.

“You stage, Bethany,” Vivian said softly. “You chose that role yourself.”

“I know I did, but now I want to try more.”

“Maybe it was a mistake, leaving the business to my children,” Morty said. “Is that what you’re saying? I’ve only been retired a handful of years and already you’re dismantling the company.”

“Bethany wants a more active role. That’s the opposite of dismantling, Dad. That’s—”

Morty held up a hand. “Let the adults talk, Georgie.”

Travis’s fist slammed on the table so fast, everyone jumped. He hadn’t planned it. But anger went ripping through him so fast, his hand moved on its own. That single action hadn’t taken the air out of his ire, either. Not even a speck. “I have a lot of respect for you, Mr. Castle. More respect than I have for my own father. But I can’t sit here and listen to you treat Georgie like her voice doesn’t count for something. You’re better than that. And she’s damn sure too important to be cut off or spoken to like a child.”

Everyone had a different reaction to his outburst. Stephen stared at him, surprised and thoughtful. Bethany appeared ready to cheer, Morty properly chastised. But Travis couldn’t get his damn eyes off Georgie long enough to acknowledge much of it. He got even angrier, actually, because this girl who’d forced him to climb out of his hole all those weeks ago looked so grateful when she should have expected someone to come to her defense. She deserved that and more.

“Travis is right,” Morty said, his expression contrite. “Georgie, I apologize. Please finish what you were going to say.”

Georgie and Travis had been staring at each other since the Great Fist-Pounding Incident. Christ, he liked being on her side. Liked the idea of her counting on it way too much. He also liked those pretty parted lips. Remembering how they felt against his sent blood rushing to his cock. There he was, with a hard-on for the youngest daughter at the Castle family dinner. No help for it. Her dress had scooted up so fucking high on her leg—enough to see the shadow between her thighs. A few inches above that would be her panties. Her wet pussy.

I know you’re wet, baby girl.

“I, um . . .” Georgie cleared the rust from her voice. “I was just going to say, Dad, that, uh . . .” Bethany snickered into her napkin and Georgie shot her a look. “Bethany loves Brick & Morty and she’s one of the main reasons it’s so successful. She wants to help it expand. If Stephen takes the time to guide her on a flip, they could double the number of projects the company takes on. She’s never failed at anything, relationships notwithstanding—”

“Thanks, sis.”

“Beth deserves a shot.” Georgie turned her attention to Stephen. “You hate change and need control. We all get it. But this isn’t like the rope swing at the lake when we were kids—and yeah, I’m still salty you made us go through a sign-up sheet to take a turn. It was a rope swing, dude. But we’re adults now and we shouldn’t hold each other back in the name of tradition. Compromise, Stephen.”

“I’ll think about it,” their brother said after a moment, tucking back into his meal. “That’ll have to be good enough for now.”

“Fine,” Bethany responded with a curt nod.

“Fine,” echoed everyone at the table, save Travis.

A few ticks of silence passed.

“Where is Coco?” Vivian said, looking around the room. “Did we bring the dog in from the backyard, Morty?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Georgie, would you mind going out and having a look for Coco? God forbid she ate those toadstools—”

“Sure, Mom.”

Georgie was already up from the table, heading in the direction of the living room. Unable to stop himself from following her progress, Travis nonetheless caught Vivian’s gaze.

She winked at him.

Caught between laughter and keeling over from shock, Travis tossed his napkin on the table. “I’ll go help her.”





Chapter Eighteen


Oh my God.

Georgie floated into the backyard, calling Coco’s name in a croak. Her knees had the consistency of vapor; her heart rapped loudly in her rib cage. If her mother hadn’t sent her outside, she would have burst into flames. Need concentrated itself between her legs, pulsing and tugging and relentless. How was she going to handle the rest of this dinner, Travis sitting so close by, acting like a hero?

“Coco?” she called, tugging her neckline away from her skin and blowing cold air down into her cleavage. Oh, cool. Look at that—her nipples were rocks. “Come here, girl.”

Nothing. No jingling of the dog’s collar.

She walked farther into the backyard, hooking a left and heading down the small slope toward the pool. Walking past the tall oak tree she used to climb in her youth brought back so many memories. The only ones she could conjure at that moment involved Travis. How she’d had the beginnings of a sexual awakening perched in that tree as a preteen, wistfully wishing she had boobs.

The culmination of her feverish daydreams had veered into more adult territory one afternoon when Georgie had been tapped to clean out her parents’ attic. She’d found a box of old VHS tapes, among them a tape labeled FEAR. Since her parents were gone for the day, she’d fired up the ancient VCR in the den, which Morty and Vivian never used anymore but still hadn’t thrown away. Stephen wasn’t the only member of the family who hated change. She’d been pleasantly surprised to find out the movie starred Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon and decided the tape probably belonged to Bethany—but around the one-hour mark, the scene happened.