Okay, well, in the realm of descriptors that had been used to describe her looks, normal was one of the nicer ones. She pushed the peas around her plate and concentrated on keeping the expression on her “normal” face neutral.
“Remember Olive?” Finian asked.
Fallon cocked her head to one side and squished up her mouth for a second. “Is that the one who corrected everyone’s grammar?”
A collective groan filled the room. Frank Sr let out a disgusted snort mid-drink, which made the milk go down the wrong pipe. He started coughing hard enough that everyone was hollering at him to hold up his arms while Kate whacked him on the back until he told her that he wasn’t going into the dirt today and she could just calm down already.
“No, that was Patrice with the grammar,” Felicia said from her spot at the end of the table next to Hudson. “Olive was the one who hated hockey.”
“Better to hate hockey than to root against the Ice Knights,” Fiona said.
Gina turned to Ford. The tips of his ears were red, but he continued on eating his peas and potatoes as if he wasn’t getting the business from his family. It was good-natured, yeah, but still it had her tensing up on his behalf.
“Oh, like what’s-her-name who had a Cajun Rage tattoo?” Faith asked with a sneer.
Gina almost dropped her fork. A Rage tattoo? This was Waterbury. They were Ice Knights fans. The Rage were the Knights’s biggest rivals. For hockey fans in and around Harbor City, rooting for the Rage was like declaring you hated indoor plumbing.
“You dated a Rage fan?” she asked, looking at Ford like he’d grown a second head. “That’s just wrong.”
She thought back to the Ice Knights blanket she’d given him. That wasn’t just a blanket, it was a promise of loyalty. Ford turned to her, a chagrined expression on his face because he must have known that he’d done wrong by dating a Rage fan.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” he agreed with a good-natured chuckle and then turned to his family. “But I’m not the only one here who’s had some crazy dates.” He looked at Finian. “Remember the woman who kept showing up at the firehouse in nothing but a trench coat?” His attention moved down to his sisters, who were giggling at how red Finian’s ears had turned. “Or the guy who told Fallon he didn’t believe in women having college degrees? Then there was the guy who took Fiona on a very romantic date to Chuck E. Cheese’s?”
By the time he got that last bit out, everyone at the table was laughing. Then the stories really started. Faith recounted how she thought she was going on a date and it turned out to be a vacation timeshare pitch. Frankie told a story about a woman who spent an entire dinner date talking about her love of sloths. Felicia and Hudson tag-teamed the retelling of how they’d gotten together because he was helping her land another man.
“How about you, Gina?” Frankie asked. “What’s your worst date?”
Still giggling a little, she went over her very limited dating history for some small disaster nugget she could share, and her gut dropped—because in that instant, she realized that she was probably the nightmare part of the date. Her smile froze, and her lungs stopped working. Then, she felt Ford’s hand on her thigh. He gave her a squeeze. It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t a come on—it was reassuring, as weird as that seemed. The tension seeped out of her, but she still didn’t have any dating horror stories to share.
She was saved from the moment of exquisite awkwardness by an ear-piercing yowl, a loud clatter, and a flash of orange sprinting across the crowded kitchen table, headed straight for Felicia and Hudson.
“Honeypot!” Felicia yelled.
Hudson made a grab for the one-eyed cat, but it juked and avoided him, landing one paw in the bowl of mashed potatoes before sprinting onward. After that it was just total chaos.
Food went flying. Chairs fell over backward as everyone jumped up and tried to catch the crazed feline. Frankie reached for the furball, but the kitty blasted past him, taking a detour through the gravy boat, knocking it over and sending the brown liquid splashing across the table.
By the time Hudson managed to capture Honeypot, it looked like a tornado had landed in the Hartigan kitchen.
A piece of ham had somehow ended up hanging from the ceiling fan, Finian had applesauce splattered across his shirt, and Ford had a glob of mashed potatoes on his cheek. It wasn’t until she reached up to wipe it off that she realized quite how close she was to him. Really close. Like feel-the-heat-of-him-against-her-nipples kind of close. Then he gave her that super hot half-smile and all forebrain function ceased and she gave in to the wonderful want of it, as he started to lean down and she raised herself to her tiptoes to bring her right in line with his mouth. Her eyes started to flutter closed, she tilted her head, and—
Kate Hartigan’s voice cut through the lusty haze surrounding them. “So, you two aren’t dating?”
Gina leapt back like Ford was kryptonite, which—let’s face it—he was starting to feel like. “No ma’am,” she said, unable to meet the matriarch’s eyes.
“Huh.” Kate said in a tone that translated to that’s a bunch of B.S. “We’ll see about that.”
Mortified to infinity not only at Kate’s misunderstanding but at her own behavior, Gina prayed for what felt like the billionth time this week that the earth’s crust would open up and suck her into its bowels of molten magma.
When that didn’t happen, she followed Honeypot’s example and hustled across the room. She picked up the empty cat carrier and took the long way around the table to avoid Ford as she carried it to where Hudson and Felicia stood with the cat.
It was always a better choice to deal with a demon cat than her own personal horndog demons.
…
Getting stuck with kitchen duty was best avoided at all costs—especially when his mother was looking at him like that. He knew that look on Kate Hartigan’s face. He’d seen it every time he tried to get away with something and she managed to pull the truth out of him with the skill of a senior interrogator. That she was focused on him right now instead of the potato paw prints covering the counter meant there was no escape.
“So,” she started, her voice light, as if she wasn’t about to deliver a punch. “You and Gina, you’re just friends?”
“In a way.” His fingers were tapping against his thumb, and the tips of his ears burned.
“What way is that?” she asked.
“It’s complicated.” Understatement of the year right there.
“Yeah, so much so that he’s not sleeping at his apartment,” Fallon said as she loaded another stack of plates into the dishwasher.
He shot his sister a dirty look. She just grinned back at him, no doubt all too aware of how she was stirring the pot.
The thing was, no matter what his family thought, there was no way he could tell them everything about the situation with Gina—in no small part because he couldn’t understand it himself. Watching her may be his job, but it didn’t feel like one, and that was messing with him in all of the ways he never wanted.
“You’re living with her but she’s not your girlfriend?” his mom asked.
“I’m not living with her.” No, he was spying on her, a fact that was burning a hole in his gut, even if it was better that it was him than Gallo. He hated lying to her.
His mom crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Where are you sleeping?”
“Her house.” Not that he’d call it sleeping. It was more like staring up at the ceiling and imagining what she was doing alone in her bed while that damn couch spring did its best to cripple him.
“But you’re not living with her,” Fallon said, accepting a tower of bowls from Finian. “It’s just an extended pajama party?”
His brother snort-laughed. “Doubtful there are any PJs involved.”
“Shut up, Finian.”
“Boys,” his mom said in that voice that said cut the shit now. “So, help me understand what’s going on, because she seems lovely and she’s an Ice Knights fan.”
“It’s complicated.” Figuring out world peace would be easier than finding a way out of the mess he’d made for himself. “It’s work.”