The Fix (The Carolina Connections, #1)(21)

I put my hand over her mouth and looked over her shoulder. “Little ears, Fee!”

She peeled my hand off her face. “He’s in the bathroom. I told him to brush his teeth so I could come back and eavesdrop.”

“You know he’s not brushing his teeth, right? He’ll be back out here in three minutes wearing only his underwear and asking what he was supposed to be doing in there,” I told her. “And Nate was not eye-fucking me! I can’t believe you invited him over here tomorrow!” I whisper-yelled.

“Maybe I should open my own matchmaking business—it’s coming back in style, you know. It could be Matched by Fiona.” She motioned an imaginary sign in the air in front of her. “Kind of like Nate’s company, Built by Murphy. It could be kind of a family thing.” She gave a giggle.

“Fair warning—I may kill you. In the meantime, do I owe you a portion of my dowry now or will later be fine?”

“Later works for me.”



A second dessert, one supervised round with the toothbrush, and three books later, Rocco was finally in bed and Fiona and I were relaxed on the couch with wine and girl talk.

“So, what happened to his dad?” Nate was still the topic at hand.

“Gavin said he had a heart attack a few weeks ago and Nate moved back to take over the family business until he recovers,” I told her. “I heard Nate talking on the phone about trying to find relaxing things for his dad to do with his time. Sounds like a fairly long recovery.”

“Oh my God,” Fiona gushed and put a hand to her face as though I’d just handed her a puppy with a giant pink bow. “That is so sweet. He said he just moved back but I didn’t know all of that. See? He’s hot and he loves his family.”

“Yeah, just what I’ve always wanted—a sexy man who loves his family and hates women,” I sniped. I was trying desperately to hold onto my mad but my resolve was fading. Evidently I was holding a puppy too, but mine had taken a roll in a pile of poo and still needed some work before it was as adorable as Fiona’s.

Fiona swiped at my arm. “He doesn’t hate women. So he was totally sexist yesterday—a real pig—but listen to us. We’ve been reducing him to a cut of brainless man meat for the last ten minutes! Face it—we all suck. But he apologized, didn’t he? And he did seem genuinely interested in helping you.” Her eyes sparked with a familiar shine. “And besides, did you see that ass? Like I said, ‘Boom!’” She did the fist-explosion thing.

“Stop. The last thing my ovaries need is encouragement to start sending out party invitations. Do I need to remind you what happened six years ago? And besides, you’re missing an important point. We kept our sexist talk private—he broadcast his to all and sundry!”

“‘All and sundry?’ Are we in a Jane Austen novel now?” She set down her wine glass and sat upright on the couch. “I say, that gentleman’s posterior looked positively fetching in those britches, don’t you concur?”

I threw a couch pillow at her.

“Anyway,” she continued. “It doesn’t matter now because he’s coming over tomorrow and there’s nothing you can do about it. Can I come over and watch? I’ll bring popcorn.”

“Give me that pillow back. I need something to smother you with.”

“Aww, I love you too, Laney.”

A voice came from the kitchen. “There is a God. I think they’re gonna kiss.”

Fabulous, Gavin and his trusty side-kick were home.

“You know that’s my sister, right?”

“She’s not my sister,” came the response from Brett, Gavin’s best friend since high school. They both stood at the half wall watching us on the couch.

“Hi, Brett,” Fiona and I chimed in unison. It’s fun to play with dumb animals.

He may have whimpered a little while Gavin continued moving into the living room. “Who’s coming over tomorrow?”

I arranged my face into what I hoped was an innocent look.

“Your hot new boss.” Fiona threw my ass under the bus.

“No no no No NO,” Gavin’s voice escalated as he moved closer to me. “You promised me you were going to stay out of this! Jesus, Laney! You’ve spent the last two years nagging me to ‘get over it’ and I finally do exactly what you wanted and you start fucking it all up!”

“Be quiet! Rocco is sleeping!” I responded in only a slightly lower tone.

“You be quiet! I can’t believe you! Call him back and tell him you made a terrible mistake and you and the mom squad are backing down for good. I actually like this job and I don’t want to get fired before my first paycheck!”

“Get your damn feathers out of a twist, Donald Duck. Nobody’s getting fired. I didn’t even invite him over tomorrow. He invited himself.”

“Well, technically I invited him.” Fiona meekly raised her hand. We both ignored her.

“When exactly did this happen? How was it you and Nate were even talking to each other?”

“Listen, it’s no big deal. He stopped by earlier to apologize for being a dick yesterday—” I held up my hand to keep him from interrupting. “And he noticed a few things that needed fixing so he offered to come by tomorrow to help out.”