Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Fiona

The sight that greeted Fiona when she opened her eyes the next morning was Dixon’s perfect bare ass as he stood inside the tent, angled so his body was protected from whatever he was staring at outside by the half-zipped-up opening to the tent. It wasn’t a bad view to wake up to at all. Yeah, she was for sure gonna put this down in her mental diary of best wake-up ever.

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea, but the giants over there were insistent,” Nash said from outside the tent.

Fiona sat up as fast as her gut dropped. No. He couldn’t. They wouldn’t. But he’d said “giants.” Plural. There was only one explanation.

“Fiona.” Her brother’s unmistakable growly Waterburg accent came through thicker than usual. No doubt Frankie was having fun scaring the rich guys with his tough working-class act. “If you don’t get out right now, we’re telling Mom.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed like hell that she was still asleep, dreaming this nightmare of a moment.

“You should never entrust Felicia with your secrets,” Finn said.

Frankie made a snort of agreement. “It took all of five seconds to get her to break and fess up the address of this kidnapping in the making.”

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck. The twins were here. The chances that this wasn’t all over the sibling group chat were pretty much nil. God love her family, but she was going to kill every one of her six brothers and sisters.

“That’s a great idea. I’ll have to let Aunt Suzanne know all about this,” Nash said. “He usually tells his mom everything.”

“Nash,” Dixon said, warning heavy in his tone. “Shut up.”

Yeah, her brothers could join right in following that direction—but, of course, they wouldn’t. “Frankie and Finn, why are you here?”

“Because we love you and this is a serial-killer situation right here.”

Dixon half pivoted to look at her, his eyebrows raised, and whispered, “Is your entire family just waiting for someone to come kill them?”

Despite everything, she snort laughed and answered back in the same quiet tone, “You’d understand if you spent five minutes with my brothers.”

“Hey now,” Nash said outside the tent. “That’s going too far. It’s just a date—nothing criminal.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, his voice taking on that low, asshole tone that never boded well for whoever he was talking to. “Well, it’s over now.”

Fury, hot and practically vibrating, shot through her. Sure, she was sitting naked in a tent with a man she’d basically just met and she’d gotten carried away in the moment and had agreed against her better judgment to do a whole friends-with-benefits thing that was very much not in her wheelhouse, but who in the hell were her brothers to go all patriarchal bullshit on her?

“I am an adult, you assholes,” she hollered out.

“Not questioning that,” Finn said.

Frankie followed up with, “One who makes a lot of dumbass decisions when it comes to men.”

All of that pissed-off rage turned inward, morphing into embarrassment and something pretty damn close to shame. Shit. She hated it when her brothers were right. Felicia must have told them about Cheating Chad the Assbag when she gave up Gable House’s address. What she wouldn’t give to be able to tell her brothers they were wrong, but she couldn’t. The truth was that Chad hadn’t been the first guy who’d been a bad decision. That’s why she couldn’t trust herself—at least not until she learned to recognize the difference between a dick and a guy who was one.

Letting out a sigh, she sat up. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Dixon zipped the tent flap up all the way and turned around, his face carefully neutral. “You’re gonna go?”

She nodded and pulled her sweater over her head so she wouldn’t see his reaction—self-care came in all sorts of forms, and for her right now, it was about not giving herself the chance to trust her instincts when it came to the men she wanted to believe meant well but in all likelihood were just another version of Cheating Chad the Assbag or Macho Mike the Jerkface or Know-It-All Noel the Creep. This wasn’t the beginning of anything beyond getting a little mutually beneficial satisfaction. This wasn’t a relationship. She helped him win his bet and they both enjoyed a few orgasms along the way. Plus, she was setting this all up so that he’d finally follow through on the many canceled appointments and Nana would finally get the chance to pitch her senior skincare line. That was it. Why was it so hard to remember that?

Because you’re a lost cause, Fiona Hartigan—and that’s why your big brothers had to come get you. Everyone knows this about you. How about you finally accept it?

Inner Fiona was a bitch, but she wasn’t wrong. The truth was that she couldn’t trust her own gut feelings about people. She had a broken asshole detector.

Dixon stood there, his hands on his lean hips, muscular legs shoulder-width apart, and seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that he was naked and looked like a Greek god. “Look, I know last night wasn’t expected, but—”

“I expected good fun and that’s what it was—that’s all it was.” Forcing her lips into a smile that probably looked somewhere between deranged and an alien’s approximation of human emotion, she zipped up her jeans. “So text me when you’re ready for the next date.”

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze locked on the blanket-covered floor as he reached for his jeans and started tugging them on. “Okay.”

She shoved her feet into her boots, tied them as quickly as humanly possible, and walked out of the tent. After a quick goodbye to Nash, she followed her brothers down to the dock and to the boat. She kept her eyes focused on Gable House for the entire ride back to shore and ignored the little voice in her head telling her to give the island one last look. She couldn’t risk forgetting that the real Dixon Beckett was the guy who canceled three appointments in a row and was so focused on winning that he was willing to date the worst person in the world to come out on top in a bet with his cousins. She didn’t need a working asshole detector to make out where he fell on the spectrum of sorta dickish to complete ass. The guy plied her with hot chocolate meant for the gods? That had to be just a front, because she was so desperately beginning to want it to be the truth.

“So are you gonna talk to us at all?” Frankie asked, all the macho-man bravado gone now that he wasn’t trying to scare the shit out of a pair of billionaires.

Fiona fixed her meanest glare at her brothers. “Only to announce your death sentences.”

Sure, they both looked contrite—at least as much as a pair of six-foot-six himbos could. God love them both, but they were a mess. At least Frankie had found Lucy and that had helped him dial back the protect-family-at-all-costs overbearingness. Finn was still single and in everyone else’s business like he was paid to interfere.

“We’re just looking out for you,” Finn said as he rowed back to shore. “We know you’ve had a hard time of it lately.”

“Are you claiming mitigating circumstances so I’ll go soft on you?” Because of course she was already cracking under the twins’ baleful gazes.

“Absolutely,” Frankie said. “I like having my nuts attached to my body.”

“Fine.” She let out a dramatic sigh and rolled her eyes. “You’re not the worst brothers in the world. I’ll let you live another day.”

“But you might kill us tomorrow?” Finn asked, playing dirty by referencing her favorite book ever.

“Probably, Farm Boy,” she said with a chuckle.

And then—even though she knew she shouldn’t—Fiona looked back at the island and gave herself five whole minutes to imagine the what-ifs.