Page 16 of Bad Habits
My heart started battering my chest. Was he right? Was I in love with his daughter?
“And if you don’t get your head out of your ass, you’re gonna lose her to that pretty boy, Knox. I’d hate like hell to see that happen.”
He wasn’t the only one. That would kill me.
Chapter 6
Cece
My mama and I had been getting along great, chatting while we prepared dinner, until she started trampling all over boundaries and telling me how me and my sister should be living our lives. Then the claws came out.
“Mama, would you just back off please,” I said, through clenched teeth. “Charli is gonna do whatever the hell she wants to do and so will I.”
She shook a blue-tipped fingernail in my face that matched the turquoise streak in her silver hair. “Don’t you sass me, young lady. I’m still your mama and that means you’ll respect me or else.”
She’d never made good on the ‘or else’ but was convinced it still scared us. It hadn’t since we were twelve years-old, but we let her cling to her delusions if it didn’t hurt anyone.
“Charli likes what she’s doing.” We’d had this argument before. Mama thought my sister was wasting her talent, and expensive degree, working as a V.A., but she was a people-person who’d always been obsessed with cleanliness, order, and schedules. I thought she’d found the perfect job.
“But she can barely support herself!” She threw her arms up in the air. “And those losers she dates couldn’t keep a puppy in kibble.”
She had a point. Charli had lousy taste in men. They usually tried to move into her small one bedroom apartment and mooch off her while they were ‘between jobs’. That continued for a few months before she wised up and kicked them out on their sorry asses.
“Still, it’s none of my business.” I loved my little sister and I wanted her to have security and the love of a good man, but she had to find those things without interference from her well-meaning family.
“How can you say that?” Mama snapped, setting the casserole dish on the counter with a little too much force. “She’s your baby sister! It’s your job to look out for her.” She shook her head, looking disgusted. “I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have my sisters to look out for me.”
I didn’t think it would help to point out her sisters hadn’t been able to prevent her from running off and marrying a menacing biker, who’d been skirting the law, when she was only twenty.
“You want me to look out for her,” I asked tongue in cheek. “I could always get her a job in Nashville… working for Dade Jarvis. You know he’s a good friend of ours and Knox told me he’s looking for an assistant.”
I smirked as I braced myself for the screaming. But it didn’t come. Instead Mama looked pensive, like she was actually considering my ridiculous proposal. This woman not only liked country music, she lived it, so there was no way she couldn’t know about Dade’s track record with women.
“Mama?” She was starting to make me nervous. No way could she think this was a good idea.
“He’s single again, ain’t he?”
Uh oh. “Yeah, so?”
“You know your sister’s been crushin’ on him since she was a teen.” She laughed, a raspy sound that exposed her many years as a smoker. “Said she was gonna marry him someday. You remember that?”
I rolled my eyes. “How could I forget?” She had his poster on her bedroom door. I’d never caught her, but I swear she kissed it every night before bed. “She’s still crushin’ on him.”
“She is, isn’t she?” Mama tapped her fingertip against her lips.
“I don’t know what you’re thinkin’, but there’s no way I’m sending my sweet, innocent little sister into that lion’s cave.” I snapped her bare arm with the tea towel, making her flinch. “And shame on you for thinking such a thing!”
“Oh please,” she said, snatching the towel before I could inflict more damage. “She’s hardly a virgin. She’s twenty six years-old, and how old is your friend Dade now?”
“Thirty four.” I did not like where this was going. Mama prided herself on being a matchmaker, even though she’d never introduced a single couple who’d lasted. “But Dade is a man-whore.” That may not have been fair. He’d been divorced twice and engaged one more time. I didn’t know that he’d slept around all that much in between, but I assumed he wasn’t a choir boy.
“So?” She pulled veggies out of the fridge and started slicing and dicing. “Maybe he just hasn’t met the right woman yet.”
“You do realize what you’re suggesting would give Daddy a coronary, don’t you?”
She giggled. “Oh, I have no doubt he’d be pissed.” She winked. “But don’t you worry ‘bout that. I know how to keep your daddy in line, sugar.”
“How?” I asked, smiling sweetly. “But lacing his sweet tea with antifreeze?” We’d both watched a program about that on TV and Mama joked that she was gonna serve Daddy some of that if he didn’t quit getting on her nerves.
