Page 182 of Sweet Ruin

Then she doesn’t.

“Wherever you like,” she says. She pivots on her heel and retreats into the kitchen with her spine very straight.

Kane’s hand touches my waist.

“Well done,” he murmurs.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“If so, do it before we eat. It’s rude the other way around.”

We take the two chairs at the far end of the table. He pulls mine out for me, then settles at my side and rests a huge hand spanning my thigh.

Aunt Virginia leans across the table.

“You look pretty,” she says to me. “Did you cut your hair?”

Normally, I’d lie and say I got a trim, or highlights, or something, just to avoid the horrifying ordeal of correcting someone.

But those days are over, too.

“Nope. Same as always.”

“Well, just a natural, healthy glow then.” She takes a sip of her wine, then glances at me slyly out of the corner of her eye. “That was a hell of a thing you did at Christmas.”

“Ginny,” warns her husband.

“It was! I’ve been in this family fifty-one years, and that was a first.” She points a finger at me. “Your father would’ve laughed himself into the grave a second time.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I think.”

“It was too much,” blurts an already-tipsy Aunt Sherry from her end. “It was too much, honey, you know I love you, but there were children in that house.”

“They were in the den,” I remind her. “I put them there myself so they didn’t hear anything inappropriate.”

“Still…”

“Oh, shut up, Sherry,” Aunt Virginia scolds. “Those kids are space cadets and Delilah here knew exactly what she was doing.”

Then her eyes roam over to Kane.

She proceeds to slurp up the sight of him and go back for seconds. From his polished shoes to the dark rings on his fingers, she seems to be a fan of everything her eyes pass over.

“Well,” she says. “At least one of you came bearing something worth looking at.”

“Aunt Ginny!” yelps one of my shyer cousins, Jenna.

“What?” she says. “I’m old, not dead.”

Kane takes her offered hand. “Kane Makov.”

“Virginia McKenna,” she says with a flirtatious grin, as if her husband isn’t sitting eight inches to her left. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Deciding at last to intervene, Virginia’s husband leans over and thrusts his own hand toward Kane. “Johnny McKenna,” he says. “What line of work are you in, Kane?”

“Property,” Kane says.

“Yeah? What kind?”