LOL: Laugh Out Loud (After Oscar, #2)(82)

“That guy’s an idiot,” Marigold mumbled under her breath. “Wasting perfectly good vodka like that.”

Lolo wandered closer and toed the edge of the orange juice puddle from Collins’s spilled drink. “Someone should really clean that up.”

“Agreed,” Marigold said, nodding. Neither one of them moved to take care of it.

I was about to say I’d handle it when the doorbell rang. Marigold brightened. “I’ll get it! It’s probably my parents here to get Rosie,” she said, spinning away from the mess, clearly happy to have an excuse to avoid cleanup duty.

I let out a sigh and started toward the kitchen to grab paper towels when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at the screen: Oscar. I knew if I ignored him, he’d just keep calling, so I answered it. “Hey, I can’t really talk now,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

“Won’t take but a second,” he said. “Just wanted to give you the heads-up that Polly’s on her way up there.”

I twisted my lips. “Information that would have been useful five minutes ago.”

“Oh, she’s already there? Capital!” Only Oscar would use that word and get away with it.

I noticed that Scotty had settled my nieces back at the kitchen table to work on their snowflakes before grabbing a dish towel to blot up the spilled drink. I held the phone away from my ear to tell him, “Scotty, you don’t have to do that, I’ll take care of it.” He waved me off and continued cleaning.

“Who’s Scotty?” Oscar asked. “Is that Marigold’s new boyfriend? God I hope so—that last one was a complete dud. Kept stealing my cars, so I had to start hiding the keys.”

I grinned. “No, Scotty’s my new boyfriend.”

I purposefully said it loud enough for Scotty to hear and saw him smile, a blush tinging his cheeks. It made me want to drag him back upstairs to our bedroom and never let him leave.

“Ooooooh, Uncle Roman has a boyfriend,” Sonya chanted. Nay-Nay and Rosie quickly chimed in. Scotty’s blush deepened. It was fucking adorable.

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Since when did you get a boyfriend?”

Before I could answer, Marigold rounded the corner out of breath. “It’s the cops! I’m not here.” She bolted toward the mudroom and cursed roundly when she opened the door. “Crap! We’re out of cars.” She turned, a panicky look on her face.

Lolo unwound from where he’d been lounging on the couch. “The police, you say? Did one of them happen to have a deliciously full face of hair?”

Marigold threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I saw the badge through the window and bolted.”

“Wait, is that my sister?” Oscar asked. “Did she just say the cops are there?”

“Hold on,” I told him. To Marigold I said, “You didn’t even let them in?”

“Of course I didn’t!” Marigold shouted. “I’m not an idiot! Tell them to come back with a warrant.”

“Oh, I’ll be more than happy to convey that message,” Lolo said. He dabbed at the corners of his lips with his pinky and began gliding toward the front door.

Larry grabbed his arm. “Oh no you don’t.”

Lolo’s eyes went wide before narrowing to dangerously glittering slits. He looked at Larry’s fingers on his arm and then up at Larry’s face. Larry blanched, dropping his hand. Lolo said something under his breath that I couldn’t hear, and Larry began to quiver. I tried to tune out their disagreement.

“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. In the background the girls continued their off-key chant, growing louder when they felt that no one was listening.

In a word, it was chaos. I glanced toward Scotty, who’d finished cleaning the orange juice and was now trying to temper the volume of the girls’ chant.

“Did you hear me, Roman?” Oscar shouted into the phone. “Why are the cops there?”

“Oh, it could be any number of things, really,” I told him. I glanced outside and noted that Collins had reached Polly and was talking to her animatedly, his hands gesturing wildly. In normal circumstances I would have gone out to rescue her, but these weren’t normal circumstances.

Scotty must have noticed my concern because he left the girls and came over to place a hand on my arm. “Do you want me to go intervene?” he asked quietly, gesturing outside. It had started to snow again, and I hated asking him to go out in it to clean up my mess. I appreciated his willingness to help, but it wasn’t his job to try to control the craziness in my life, and I was afraid that if I asked too much too quickly, he’d get overwhelmed and bolt like Pete eventually had.

“No, I can handle it, thanks,” I told him. I turned back to the phone. “Oscar, look,” I told him, cutting him off midrant about his sister and her past with the police. “I really need to go—”

“Is that Oscar?” Marigold asked, pointing at the phone. “Ask him where the keys to the Bugatti are.”

I did as told. “Marigold wants to know where the keys to the Bugatti are.”

Oscar let out a string of curses. “The last time she drove that car, it ended up in the pond. Plus it has zero clearance—it wouldn’t even make it out of the garage this time of year.”