Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Twenty-Four

Dixon

“Oh my God.” Fiona gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Not nearly as much as Dixon’s pride at the moment. Jump out from behind the tree. Be Mr. Jokey Joke and give her a silly scare. Could you be any more of a dipshit?

Dixon pressed his hand to his throbbing nose. “Where did you learn to punch like that?”

“Brothels get rough,” she said, not missing a beat.

He laughed, which made his nose hurt more and his eyes water from the pain.

Her smile evaporated, and she squished up her face with worry. “Are you okay?”

Great. Now not only was he a dork who had pretended to be a bear, he was also a wimp who needed to be looked after.

“I’ll live,” he said, his voice coming out all weird and nasally. “Now, really, where did someone who looks like a hot librarian learn to punch?”

“I’m fifth of seven kids. Where do you think?” Fiona marched over to him, not stopping until the tips of her tennis shoes were almost touching his boots. “So let me see it.”

He didn’t move. It wasn’t that he was scared; it was the fact that being this close to her had him on edge. The sun was going down, bathing her in a golden glow as little dust particles from the pine trees danced around her like fairies. And your brain has turned to hokey mush because all the blood is draining south. Get it together, man.

She lifted an eyebrow and waited, hands on her full hips, pink lips pressed together in a hint of a smile.

He gave in, letting his hand fall.

Fiona took his face in her hands, her palms cupping his jaw, as she leaned in close enough that the scent of her swirled around him. She smelled like warm cookies out of the oven, a newly opened box of crayons, and the woods. These were not scents that should have had any effect on him, which someone definitely should have told his dick.

“It’s already done bleeding,” she said. “Looks like I’m not as much of a slugger as you thought.”

Like he was even capable of thinking right now. All he could do was notice that they were so close, practically touching, their mouths inches apart. The air sparked around them with an electric sense of possibility. Every nerve in his body was tuned to Fiona, drinking her in—the way her breath caught, how her whiskey-brown eyes had darkened as she looked up at him from beneath thick eyelashes, and the inescapable certainty that he was going to lose this battle, and for once he didn’t care. She parted her lips, tilted her chin upward, and her eyes began to flutter closed as he dipped his head and—

The squawk of a poorly played trumpet blared across the still lake below them, snapping the moment in two.

“What was that?” Fiona asked as she pulled back and looked around, her words coming out in soft puffs of air as the temperature dropped along with the sun.

“My loser cousins.” Who had the timing of drunk llamas on ice skates. “It’s the signal we used to give our grandma when we’d sleep out on the island in the summers.”

The horn sounded again, three short blasts from the old trumpet they’d found in the attic. They were going to keep it up until he answered. They’d blow and they’d blow until dawn if necessary. Annoyance making his steps jerky, he took Fiona’s hand, and they marched together down the path. Once at the clearing, they strode over to the tent, where he found the conch shell hanging from one of the supports. He didn’t have to think about the all-good signal; some things were just part of a man’s DNA. Three long blasts. A pause for breath. Then a long blast followed by a short, then one last long one.

“Morse code?” Fiona asked.

“Yeah, Nash was obsessed with it.” As with everything, Nash would get obsessed with a subject until he knew everything possible about it and then want to share all the details with everyone else he came into contact with.

Not surprisingly, there weren’t any more trumpet blasts from Gable House, which left him alone with Fiona on an island with a whole box of condoms. Not that he was thinking about what could have happened if his jackass pair of cousins hadn’t found that ridiculous trumpet.

You’re breathing. You’re thinking about that, dumbass.

Wait.

No!

That had been good, a gimme. Kissing Fiona wouldn’t mean losing, but it would make winning that much harder—and he wasn’t a man who regularly took chances when it came to what really mattered.

“You guys were here together every summer?”

Fiona’s question pulled him out of his own head. “Just about. Grandma called it the yearly wild time.” And it was—for a different reason for each of them. For him, it was the only time that failure wasn’t the worst thing possible but a learning experience. That was the magic of Gable House and Grandma Betty; it made it seem like anything was possible here. “Christmas will be hard this year now that she’s passed.”

Fiona gave him a sympathetic smile and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” he said, looking down and just now comprehending that they’d been holding hands for the past five minutes. He remembered taking her hand at the top of the hill. It wasn’t that he’d thought about it; it just seemed the natural thing to do, which made absolutely no sense. Frustrated at his reaction to her, Dixon let go and took a step away. “But she figured out a way to make sure we were all here for one last Christmas together.”

That was the real prize. The reason he couldn’t lose.

She flexed her hand, stretching out the fingers as if she felt an odd emptiness all of a sudden, too. “And you’re still not going to tell me what the bet is for?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Good thing I have all night to get it out of you,” she said, twisting an imaginary mustache like a cartoon villain. “I’ll find your weakness, don’t worry.”

That, of course, wasn’t about to happen. He knew how people tended to see him. The softie CEO and mama’s boy—in other words, a stone-cold wuss. If she knew what was up for grabs, she’d have the same opinion. He may not be twelve anymore, but he still needed to let Gable House and the island be a place where he wasn’t seen as less than because of it, so he’d keep his mouth shut. Instead, he’d concentrate on figuring out who the real Fiona was and why she was pretending to hate dogs, good food, and even the idea of having a relationship.

What he wouldn’t be thinking about was the box of condoms. That ribbed-for-her-pleasure latex wouldn’t be giving him any new thoughts at all—because he hadn’t stopped having them since she’d walked up to him at the museum.