Nowhere But Here (Thunder Road #1)(66)

I sigh and the slant of her mouth tells me she caught it. I’ve played the game with her. Literally. Every card game imaginable, and I’ve even sat with her as we flipped through endless photos of people I care nothing about. “What more can you want from me? I’ve answered every question you’ve asked.”

“This isn’t a job interview,” she says. “You already have the position of my granddaughter. I want you to stick around until you actually believe you’re part of this family.”

I am never going to discover what transpired between my mom and Eli.

Olivia produces a fingernail file and that’s when I notice the split nail on the pointer finger of her right hand. I tap the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Olivia’s left side isn’t strong.

“Can I do it?” I ask.

Olivia shoots me a glare that makes me want to shrink into a corner. “I’m not a f*cking invalid.”

Won’t lie. She scares the hell out of me. “I never said you were, but this is the kind of thing Mom and I would do for each other—for fun. Fun.” I overemphasize the word. “Excuse me for trying to act like family.”

I kick away from the table, put the orange juice back in the fridge with more racket than needed, and right as I leave the kitchen, Olivia calls out, “Do you always resort to behaving like a two-year-old when someone yells at you?”

The muscles in my back tense. Who interacts this way? “Have you ever tried being nice, or is that what will cause you to melt? It must have been a bummer for you with what happened when water was poured on your sister.”

Olivia laughs. The deep one, and my lips twitch with it. I don’t understand her, but for some reason when she does laugh, I like it because it’s a confirmation I won at least one round.

She waves her hand in the air. “Get back in here.”

Reluctantly, I sit next to her. Relationships shouldn’t be this way—continual fights for dominance. I take the nail file and her hand then pause at the cold temperature of her skin. She’s freaking ice cubes. Crazy since the house is the desert at high noon.

I start filing and Olivia breaks the silence. “You don’t feel sorry for me because I’m dying, do you?”

An overwhelming chill causes my stomach to roil. “I do, but you make it easy to forget that you’re sick.” It’s the truth and I’m a horrible person. “Sorry for the witch comment.”

“Don’t apologize for that. Never for that. I like that you don’t treat me differently. You’ve done more good for my soul than you can know.” She breathes in deeply then releases the air at a slow pace. “Oz treats me differently.”

I nibble on my bottom lip. “How so?”

“The second tree on the left,” Olivia says. I should’ve known better than to expect a straight answer.

My hand freezes midfile. “What?”

“Where you’ll go today, there will be a large oak tree. The second tree from the left. Look there.”

“But I’m not going anywhere—”

She shushes me and Oz’s heavy boots clump against the hardwood floor of the hallway and then enter the kitchen. The skin on the back of my neck prickles with anticipation. I lift my eyes to the mirror on the wall and sure enough his are locked on me and Olivia.

His hair is damp and sticks up in various ways. It’s sexy as hell and my fingers flinch with the desire to run my hands through it again. Oz’s gaze switches to the mirror and the breath catches in my chest when his blue eyes meet mine. We hold it that way. One second. Two.

Olivia clears her throat and I focus crazily on her nail again.

The cupboard squeaks behind me and then closes. A few seconds later Oz drops into the seat on Olivia’s other side. “I would have gotten your coffee for you.”

“I’m perfectly fine getting it myself.”

I work hard to not look at either Oz or Olivia. She lied. Blatantly. She must have a reason for it, but I can’t fathom what. Lying doesn’t have a place for me. As I’ve mentioned to Oz, it creates integrity issues.

“I want you to take Emily swimming today,” Olivia says. “I have the doctor’s appointment in Louisville and it’s too hot for the two of you to stay around here.”

Um... “I don’t have a bathing suit.” I didn’t buy one in Nashville.

Olivia slips her hand from mine and appreciates my filing job. “Izzy told me there’s one in the bag of clothes she brought from Violet’s house. She hasn’t taken the bag back yet. I believe she left it in the hallway closet.”

My cheeks warm rapidly. That’s not a bathing suit. That’s tiny strips of cloth barely held together by dental floss.

Oz shifts back and folds his arms over his chest. The narrowed expression in Olivia’s direction tells me he’s as excited about this as I am. “Eli doesn’t want her off the property.” His eyes flicker to me. “Sorry.”

“I sort of figured something like that accompanied the whole escort thing.”

He smiles. I smile. I should eat breakfast so I can stop appearing and acting so stupid.

“I’m aware,” says Olivia. “I was referring to the pond. That’s on our property. It’s a half mile if you cut through the woods.”

A pond in the woods? Little tremors course through my bloodstream. “I don’t hike.” I don’t do woods.