Four Day Fling(19)

I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Just after lunch. Thank God my orders are to test all the cocktails.”

“All the cocktails? How many are there?”

“Six. I have to narrow to three.”

“Sounds fun. Need a hand?”

“Wanna have lunch with my mother?” I asked wryly. “Do you think she honestly trusts me to leave me alone to do such an important job?”

He gripped the knot that kept his towel in place and pulled open the closet door, looking over at me. “Seriously? She can’t even let you do cocktails?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him. “Here’s how today is gonna go. My mom is gonna freak out like a fly around shit until my grandpa arrives here safely. When he gets here, he’s going to tell everyone he meets about some eccentrically wild story from his crazy life. That, in turn, will drive my sister to insanity, because while Mark’s parents are used to him, everybody else is not. Something will inevitably go wrong, because that’s how it works in this family. Rosie will go Bridezilla—she’s already on the verge—and then, Mom will freak out because she’s freaking out. My dad will keep a small flask of whiskey tucked somewhere on his person, and I will sneak to a small secluded corner of the hotel and steal that flask from him.”

Adam blinked at me. “Can I have a family emergency? I know I said I could handle it, but after meeting your mother… In the nicest possible way, she can be worse?”

“Oh, hockey boy. You have no idea.”





CHAPTER SEVEN – POPPY


Life’s a Beach… Then You Meet One

“All right,” Adam said, holding up a piece of melon. “What happens between now and the cocktail extravaganza at lunch?”

“Well,” I started. “For one, we need to get you a disguise. I have no idea who that teenage girl was, but I’d like her to return my eardrum.”

“She didn’t scream that loud.”

I ripped a croissant in two and hit him with a glare. “Adam, she screamed so high at one point that only dogs could hear her. And those dogs were in Europe.”

“At least we were outside?”

“You’d just gone for a run. God knows why you did that after showering—”

“I planned to go before, but, well, you were naked.”

“Not an excuse,” I said. “Because by the time you got back, I was hungry.”

“You could eat without me.”

“Not without anyone screaming at you like they’re thirteen-year-old girls meeting Taylor freakin’ Swift.”

He tilted his head to the side. “To be fair, she’s kinda hot.”

“That’s not the point here.”

He held out his hands. “It’s not my fault I’m a handsome, famous, rich hockey player.”

I blinked at him. “Unless someone held a gun to your head and made you be a handsome, famous, rich hockey player, then uh, yeah, it is.”

“I hate to agree with you, but you’re right. I chose everything but the handsome part. I got lucky with that.”

“Ugh. I’m going to follow sports from now on to make sure I never, ever find myself getting a wedding date over omelets again,” I muttered, then tore off a bite of croissant.

“I’m an excellent wedding date.”

I swallowed the pastry and dropped the final bite on my plate. “Since you got here, you’ve been fawned over by my father, my nephew, my brother-in-law to be, my sister, three cousins, and now a teenage girl I’ve never seen in my life.”

“To be fair,” Adam said, picking up his cup of coffee, “I’ve also been fawned over by you.”

“I don’t fawn over people. I’m not a fan of anything.”

“Except graphic t-shirts.”

“This is a tank top, and it’s more of a public service announcement.”

“It says ‘Not today, Satan.’”

“What part of “my mother is here” do you not understand?”

He choked on his coffee. Actually choked. He had to put down his mug and thump his fist against his chest.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to kill you,” I told him. “But it is payback for the bathroom thing this morning.”

“What bathroom thing?” the sharp question came from—go on, guess—my mother.

Adam coughed again, leaning away from her.

Pussy.

“He got out of the shower and left the floor soaking wet,” I lied smoothly, picking up the piece of croissant I’d discarded a second ago. “I almost died.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “There’s no need to be so dramatic, Poppy.”

“That’s what I said,” Adam managed to scratch out. “I caught her. She was fine. She wasn’t close to injury, never mind death.”

I sniffed. “That’s what you think.”

Mom’s dark blue eyes flitted between us. “Late breakfast?”

She was like a dog with a bone. A big, granite-made bone that needed diamond to chip it.

“Yes,” I said. “Adam had to work out, and we said we’d have breakfast together since I have to do wedding stuff the rest of the day.”

“Makes sense. Have you seen your sister? Or your father? He’s supposed to pick up your grandfather, and I have something to ask Rosie.”