The Gamble (Colorado Mountain #1)(195)

“Nina! Max!” I heard shouted and looked to the left to see Linda bearing down on our party, she got a good look at me, came to a juddering halt and kept shouting, “Oh my God! What on earth happened to you?”

“Damon,” Max answered without hesitation and my head snapped back to look at him.

“Max!” I hissed.

“Everyone’s gonna know,” Max told me.

“They will now,” I mumbled.

“Damon!” Linda yelled very loudly, proving my mumbled point.

“I’m fine,” I told Linda.

“Nina, that word I’d like to have privately…” Niles butted in.

“Babe, seriously, get rid of him,” Max’s voice was getting a little scary.

“Niles, go home,” I said to Niles.

“You don’t look fine,” Linda said to me, ignoring Niles.

“I am,” I promised her. “Really, it just feels a little bit tight.”

“That Damon Matthews,” Linda spat. “You know, take one letter out of his name and it spells ‘damn’ as in ‘damn, that kid’s a worthless sonovabitch’.”

“Nina! Max! Hey!” I heard and looked to the right to see Becca approaching. Then she caught sight of me and skidded to a halt two feet from Niles. “Whoa! What happened to your face?”

“Fuck me,” Max muttered.

“Damon,” I told her, talking over Max cursing.

“That dick!” Becca screeched.

“Nina! For God’s sake!” Niles bellowed and I looked at him.

“Niles! Go! Away!” I shouted at him.

Becca’s torso reared back, her eyes got wide and they were on Niles.

“Dude,” she said low, “you’re Niles?”

Niles just scowled at her so she looked at me.

“Seriously, Neens, Max is way better,” Becca informed me. “Not only is he hotter, he’s taller, has great hair, that awesome rough voice and he dresses nearly as hot as he just plain is.”

Becca was not wrong about that. Any of it. Therefore I had no response.

“Who’s Niles?” Linda asked Becca, finally examining Niles.

“I’m Nina’s fiancé,” Niles answered Linda, now scowling more irately at Becca.

“Ex!” I shouted.

“Jesus, enough!” Max cut in on a sharp, impatient bark and looked at Niles. “Man, it’s over. Deal with it but deal with it somewhere else.” He looked at his mother. “Mom, we gotta go in so Nina can swear out a statement. I’ll call you later.” He looked at Becca. “Babe, Nina’ll call you, yeah?”

“Cool,” Becca said on a grin.

“Is it pasta bake tonight?” Linda asked.

“No,” Max answered instantly.

“When am I gonna get pasta bake?” Linda pushed.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Max replied and I could tell he was losing it.

“Saturday,” I told her quickly. “That’s my parent’s last day here. We’ll have a little party.”

“Duchess,” Max said to me, sounding exasperated, “when I’m in England, we gotta get your shit sorted so you can move here and people’ll get used to having you around so maybe they’ll back the f**k off so I can spend some f**kin’ time with you.”

“You’re moving here?” Niles asked on a loud, horrified whisper.

“Yes, Niles,” I answered him.

“But you said you’d never leave Charlie’s house.”

Now he was hearing what I said a million times over the last year.

“I’m not leaving Charlie’s house, Max and I are going to…” I stopped speaking as it hit me, I looked at Max and whispered, “We can’t do that anymore, can we?”

Max’s arm at my shoulders gave me a squeeze. “We’ll talk about it later.”

I ignored him, remembering what he’d told me the morning before about taking the job in town and how wonderful it was that he’d make that sacrifice for me, taking over Curt’s business, but how he couldn’t do it, seeing as it was Curt’s business and Curt was a jerk, so I announced, “And you can’t take that job.”

“Babe, we’ll talk about it later.”

“What job?” Linda asked.

“Fuck,” Max clipped.

“Nothing, nothing,” I said quickly to Linda. “We need to go in.”

“What job?” Linda repeated.

“Mom, later,” Max bit out.

Linda’s hands came up. “All right, all right. Yeesh. Later.” Then she looked around Niles to Becca and asked, “Do you wanna get a coffee? I’m meeting Barb and Mindy at the café.”

“Awesome,” Becca answered.

“Mindy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Linda said to me then invited, “You guys finish, you can join us.”

I smiled at her and said, “That would be lovely.”

“Someone kill me,” Max muttered, I looked up at him to see he was looking up at the blue, cloudless sky.

“Darling,” I called, putting my free hand to his stomach, “we need to go into the Station and get this done so I can see Mins and get a coffee.”