Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Sixteen
Fiona
If her mother could have seen Fiona standing on the porch and enjoying the absolute chaos that was a supposedly domesticated goose going after Dixon Beckett with full honking fury, Kate Hartigan would have offered up a few Hail Marys in penance for where she’d obviously gone wrong as a parent. Her mom may have been right, but Fiona had learned to appreciate the little gifts that the universe bestowed, since they were few and far between. Hearing Dixon shriek as he sprinted across the yard with a goose hot on his tail was definitely one of them.
Nash let out a chuckle. “Maurice never liked him.”
“That’s the same one?” Fiona started and whipped around to look at Nash, doing the math to figure out how old the goose had to be. “How long do geese live?”
“Oh, no,” he said and turned to Griff. “This is what, Maurice Two, or is it Three?”
Griff shrugged. “All the Maurices have hated him.”
Winding her arms around herself to ward off the chilly September air, Fiona turned back toward the yard, wondering if she could sneak a goose into her apartment in violation of the no-pets lease. Really, they were fucking fabulous fowl. Not only had Maurice refused to back down, but he kept going on the attack with absolute glee.
Finally, after at least three turns around the yard, Dixon, his hair going every which way from the blasts of unseasonably cold air coming off the lake, stood in the middle of the walk leading to the house. The white goose, his wings outstretched and spanning close to six feet, held his ground in front of the staircase leading up to the porch. An icy gust came through, shaking some of the fall leaves from the treetops, and Fiona wrapped her arms tighter around herself as she shivered, but there was no way she was missing Mr. Always Wins take a giant L at the hands of a goose.
Nash and Griff started inside.
“Where are you going?” Dixon hollered from the yard.
“Inside,” Griff said without even looking back. “Where it’s warm.”
Dixon blew on his hands and rubbed them together. “You guys suck.”
Griff and Nash exchanged a look that pretty much said so be it and walked inside. Yeah, those three would definitely fit in at the Hartigan table for Christmas dinner with the amount of smack talk and tough love that was passed around along with the mashed potatoes and gravy.
“I don’t suppose you’re staying to help?” Nash asked, his cheeks starting to turn pink from the cold.
“Nah.” She shook her head, the schadenfreude of the moment making her giddy. “I’m Team Maurice.”
He threw up his hands. “You hate dogs but geese are your animal?”
“They are now.” She blew a kiss at Maurice.
The whole situation was absolutely delicious. One of Harbor City’s richest men was literally being held off by a bird that was probably destined to be dinner. It should have made Dixon seem pathetic, but instead the dimple in his cheek just deepened as he grinned and looked down at his shoes as if he knew he’d been beaten and couldn’t quite believe it. That shouldn’t make him sexier, but it did. It removed some of the total dickhead, rich-guy sheen off him. If this guy walked into the local dive bar near her apartment, she’d definitely find a way to go say hi—or at least she’d want to. Of course, that’s how she’d met Chad the Cheater.
And that should tell you everything you need to know about that. Girl, get your head together.
“You have to agree not to tell my cousins,” he said as he took a step toward the goose like he hadn’t spent the past ten minutes running away. “It’s gotta be part of our agreement. You tell no one.”
“About what?”
“This.”
He opened his arms as he lowered down to one knee, and Maurice rushed him. Just as the bird was upon him, Dixon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie of red fruit and opened it up. Maurice dipped his head in and went to town, making all sorts of what Fiona assumed were happy goose snorts and quiet honks.
A surprised chuckle snuck out. “You bribe him?”
“‘Bribe’ is an ugly word.” Dixon grinned up at her, showing off a dimple in his other cheek. “I prefer to think of it as appealing to Maurice Puddle Wumps the Third’s love for snacks.”
Maurice.
Puddle.
Wumps.
The.
Third.
Stay strong, Fiona. Stay. Strong.
“What are you giving him?” she asked to try to distract herself from the sight of Dixon being absolutely unexpectedly adorable with a goose.
“Watermelon.”
She fisted her hands and gritted her teeth together.
It was not cute.
It was not sweet.
It was devious and exactly what a person should expect from a bastard billionaire.
It was— Maurice did a little flutter move with his wings and tapped Dixon’s chest with his beak as if to say thank you. If she’d been watching the video on TikTok, she would have been a puddle of awwwwwwwws. But she wouldn’t give in to that now. Even if she did let out a happy sigh, just a small one that would barely register. And the warm, mushy feeling in her stomach had to be the hot chocolate from the train ride. This was what happened when she drank a rich dessert that probably cost more than her entire pantry back home—it was a shock to her teacher’s salary system.
“And you don’t want Griff and Nash to know about this why?”
Dixon stood up and shoved the now-empty plastic baggie into his coat pocket. “I’d get enough shit from them if they found out my mom gave me this idea and that I went with it, I’d never hear the end of it.”
“You and your mom are close.” After the number of times he’d talked about her, it wasn’t so much a question as confirmation.
He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and started up the stairs to the porch. “Not in the Norman Bates way.”
She laughed, her breath forming little puffs of clouds around her. “That’s good. That would make you a liar about the whole not-being-a-serial-killer thing.” She was a fool—a damned fool—but here it was anyway. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“Thanks,” he said as he opened the door and stepped aside so she could go in first.
The foyer was huge and completely empty. The urge to say echo just to hear it bounce off the wood-paneled walls was almost overwhelming. To one side was a sitting room with a fireplace a person could stand up in. On the other side was a library that Belle would leave the Beast over. The shelves went up for two stories with a huge stained-glass dome skylight in the middle of the ceiling. She’d never seen anything like it.
“You weren’t lying about Grandma being an original,” she said as she stood in the middle of the library and did a three-sixty.
“This was actually our grandfather’s favorite room, but he died before I was born,” Dixon said. “She always kept it exactly how he had it, right down to some of the quirks.”
“Quirks?”
“Well.” He pointed to the circular stairs attached to the wall next to the door. “That is a staircase that goes nowhere.” He gestured to an oil painting on another wall showing a redhead in a Boho dress with purple flowers in a chain around her neck. “The painting of my grandma hides a completely empty safe. And then there’s this.” He reached over and tugged on a hardback copy of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
The bookshelf swung open on silent hinges. Fiona’s eyes just about bugged out and her jaw dropped. In the small area beyond was a reading room just big enough to fit a pair of chaise longues, one additional skinny bookshelf, and a stocked bar cart. A series of narrow leaded-glass windows circled the room, showing off the clear September sky.
“Grandma always said what fun was it to have your own estate if it didn’t have a few surprises?”
“Your grandma was right.” Seriously. Fiona was already planning on how to replicate this if she ever hit the Harbor City lotto and if anyone ever made a wine fridge that was actually for chocolate.
The soft thump and an unexplained puff of air across the back of her neck pulled her out of her snack imaginings. She turned to see the secret door had swung shut.
“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Anxiety crunched and munched its way up her spine, making her belly cramp. “Open it.”
“I didn’t do that, but anyway, it doesn’t matter; there’s—” He pulled on the long gold-colored braided cord hanging from the ceiling. Nothing happened. “An escape latch.”
“Dixon.” She reached out for him, needing him to understand that getting out of here wasn’t optional.
The walls already started to shrink in on her. Her lungs were getting tighter. She wrapped her fingers around Dixon’s forearm, squeezing, anchoring herself to him and trying her best to ignore the pinpricks of panic stabbing at her.
Dixon banged on the door. Hard. Repeatedly. “Nash,” he yelled through the thick oak. “I know it was you. Open up.”
There wasn’t an answer.
He turned back to her. “We’re stuck.”
That’s when the floor wobbled beneath her feet and she tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs weren’t having it.
