Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Nineteen
Dixon
Dixononly had to wait a few minutes by the French doors in his bedroom that led out to the garden before Fiona cracked like he knew she would.
There was the sound of the doors opening followed by a quiet string of baby-talk murmurs about the best puppy in the world. Then there was the quiet pitter-patter of dog paws on stone pavers and the soft click of the latch when the door closed behind him.
Fiona hating dogs was bullshit—just like the idea that the door to the reading room got pushed shut by a draft or that Peacock ended up outside of Fiona’s door by chance. He took out his phone and started texting as he paced the length of his room.
DIXON: I owe you one.
GRIFF: For what?
DIXON: The dog.
GRIFF: You drunk?
DIXON: You didn’t leave Peacock outside Fiona’s door?
GRIFF: No.
What the hell? First the door and now this? Somebody was fucking with him and if it wasn’t Griff… He opened up a new text.
DIXON: Asshole.
NASH: What did I do?
DIXON: The door and the dog.
NASH: Are you having a stroke?
DIXON: So you didn’t get Peacock to sit outside Fiona’s room or lock us in the reading room?
NASH: Nope.
Someone was fucking with him. Did he believe Nash or Griff? Not really, but that was pretty much the end of his list of suspects, unless Grandma Betty was haunting the place. She would have relished having the opportunity to shove her grandsons into a relationship and then sat back and let them know exactly how she’d managed it. The will to win was strong on both sides of his family tree.
A muffled yip of excitement sounded through the wall he shared with Fiona. He could ignore it, or he could use it as an opportunity to figure out what game she was playing at. He didn’t even have to think twice about it before he headed out into the chilly night.
His and Fiona’s rooms shared a large patio that in the summer was alive with flowers and ivy. This time of year, though, it was just a dusting of fallen leaves on every flat surface. He knocked on her door. A loud thud sounded, but no Fiona appeared. He knocked again. This time she did open the door—all of about three inches. The move made it so he couldn’t see past her inside the room.
“I heard a noise. Is everything okay?”
“Perfectly fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I just tripped and knocked my bag off the bed.”
She’d barely gotten the lie out before the sound of something else clattering to the ground told on her.
“Did it fall off the bed again?” he asked, playing along.
“Probably.”
“You don’t want to check?” Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the curtain covering the door’s windows moving back and forth for a second before a fuzzy white tail made an appearance. “Do you want me to check?”
“Was there something you needed?” She pulled the curtain tight, eliminating his view of Peacock’s tail.
So that’s how she wanted to play it, huh? Okay, he’d go along a little further.
“Just making sure you didn’t need a blanket or anything,” he said. “I can come in and show you where they are.”
“I’m fine.” She inched the door a little farther shut.
A gust of wind sent her hair swirling, and when it stopped, a single white dog hair floated down and landed on her face. “Wait, don’t move,” he said, plucking it off her cheek and then holding it up to the light. “One of yours?”
“The women in my family go gray early.” She let out a little huff and glared at him. “Nice of you to point that out.”
He stared at the hair that had obviously come from Peacock. “It’s pretty short.”
“I just plucked it from my chin,” she said, not giving even a hairbreadth of space between her and the obvious fib. “It must have floated up into the air and landed on my cheek.”
The woman was a horrible liar even if she looked cute doing it. This was where he went in for the win and called her on her bullshit, but for some reason he couldn’t begin to explain even to himself, he didn’t.
“I guess I’ll head back, then,” he said. “Goodnight.”
He started to turn, but the sound of a quiet woof stopped him. He looked at Fiona, her cheeks starting to turn pink either because of the wind or because she’d gotten caught, and raised an eyebrow in question. Gaze locked on his, she fake coughed, the sound not even coming close to Peacock’s woof.
It was all he could do not to start laughing. “Bless you.”
“It’s allergies,” she said as the curtain started moving back and forth with the waggle of Peacock’s tail.
“To dogs?” he asked.
Fiona crossed her arms and glared at him. “To people who say they’re leaving but don’t.”
This time he did laugh—all the way back to his room.
