The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(101)

She fortunately quit banging his plates around and turned to him, looking confused. “Why did you fight with her? This stoneware is rad.”

“One place setting cost a hundred bucks.”

Her gaze coasted down to the sink as she breathed, “Holy shit.”

“And I only know what the term ‘place setting’ means because Margot said it fifteen hundred times when we were arguing about those plates.”

She shot him a grin.

“She found it for me at some art festival in Owensboro,” Toby told her. “Texted me a picture. Said it went with my couches. So with full disclosure, we argued for forty-five minutes via text that I did not need over a thousand dollars-worth of dishes, seein’ as she said I had to have serving bowls and platters and shit too. We only argued on the phone for fifteen minutes.”

Addie held up a plate, looked to his couch, to the plate, which was matte black on the outside with some ridges, speckled like an egg on a blueish-gray cream on the inside, and then she looked to him.

“It does match your couch,” she noted.

He smiled at her.

She jerked the rinsed plate at him and declared, “I hate you have to talk to that woman.”

“Baby, you’re the one who said I should listen so I know all her shit is her shit.”

“I take that back,” she muttered to the sink.

“You were right and Margot’s right, and Johnny and I will listen and then it’ll be done.”

“I said that before we knew about Margot or the fact that woman would darken the town of Matlock imminently.”

“Well, that’s how it happened. We deal. We move on. It’ll be over by this time tomorrow.”

Or he hoped, since Addie had worked late that night, so now it was even later, and he had a feeling it would not be fun to have to rap with Sierra for much longer than, say, ten minutes.

“I hope so,” she said his thoughts out loud, holding some silverware his way without looking at him.

“Babe,” he called.

Her eyes turned to him.

“I get what this is. But Johnny and Izzy essentially have a two-room house, and you and Iz can’t huddle in the bathroom with Brooklyn so you can be close to your men while we talk to Sierra.”

“So meet the woman here,” she returned. “We’ll hang in the loft.”

Yeah.

That was what it was.

Both of them hated their men were facing this without them close.

“That mill was Dad’s.”

She shut up.

“We want that in her face.”

She picked up the handled scrubber that had dishwashing liquid in it and started to go to town on a pot.

She did this and muttered, “Whatever.”

He decided to move them along.

To do that, he shut the dishwasher door, leaned a hip against the counter and announced, “After we’re done here, I’ve got some ideas about what I wanna do to the shack. I want you to look.”

She again turned his way. “The shack?”

“I’m gutting it, for the most part.”

She stopped looking at him and started staring at him.

He just kept talking.

“New kitchen, new bathrooms, add a laundry room. Fresh paint through the place and maybe fresh carpet. Though I’m thinkin’ wood or maybe tile. And there’s space over the garage that’s unfinished. I wanna make it into a playroom and put bunkbeds up there. It’s only got two bedrooms. If we’re all there together, Johnny and Izzy start making babies, you and me add to that, they get older, we’ll want privacy, they will too, and the kids can hang together over the garage and have cousin time.”

She set the pot on the drying pad and turned to him. “There’s a lot to unpack there, Talon.”

“Sock it to me, Lollipop.”

“I’m not sure I understand the concept of the shack.”

Fuck.

Shit.

That was where Stu had taken Brooklyn when he kidnapped him.

Christ, Toby hadn’t even thought of that.

“You want me to get rid of it?” he asked carefully, only for her brows to draw together.

“Why would I want you to do that?”

Even more carefully, he said, “Because of Stuart Bray.”

She waved a wet hand in front of her face and went back to the last pot. “He caused enough drama, no reason for him to make you lose your man retreat.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a man retreat. Or at least I thought it was. Therefore, I don’t get the concept of the shack, because I don’t know why you’d need laundry and a brand-new kitchen if you dudes just go up there to slaughter innocent fish and scratch your testicles.”

He wanted to laugh.

But he didn’t because he had to push, “I mean about Bray.”

Slowly, she turned her head his way. “He gets nothing more from me, Tobias. He took what he has from my life, which was four hours of sheer terror, and that’s the end of it. And honest to God, that man rotting in prison for a mandatory twenty years, that’s actually the end of it.”

Granite and steel.

“Okay, baby,” he whispered. “And just to say, it was a man retreat. My grandmother wasn’t big on cleaning fish, or since Gramps hunted, game, so she avoided it. My mother, as you know, was history. Now there are women with the Gamble Men. So it’s gonna be a family retreat.”