Undercover Bromance Read online

  Mack flipped him off.

  “Continue,” Thea seethed.

  “Anyway, I guess she has to deliver the damn thing as part of the package, and so I recognized her, and I said, ‘Hey, I know you,’ and she said, ‘No, you don’t,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re Gavin’s sister-in-law,’ and I called her Liv, but Royce calls her Olivia—”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Gavin growled. “Does this story have an end?”

  “She dropped it,” he blurted.

  Thea choked again. “She dropped the cupcake?”

  “In Gretchen’s lap.”

  “Oh my God,” Thea breathed. She even swayed a little.

  “She was working, Mack,” Gavin said. “Couldn’t you have just left her alone?”

  “Was I supposed to ignore her? How fucking rude would that be?”

  “Maybe she’d still be employed if you had!”

  There was a knock at the front door followed immediately by Butter’s rapid bark. Thea held up her hand to silence them. Mack swallowed hard and tried to calm his breathing. Shitshitshit. Liv was here, and she was gonna be so pissed at him. More pissed than even last night. And he was pretty sure the only person scarier than Thea when she was pissed was Liv, and he was even more sure that he’d only gotten a small taste of Liv’s capacity for pissed-offed-ness last night.

  Thea crossed the living room to the hallway that led to their front door. Butter barked and bounced alongside her, oblivious to the fact that a ticking time bomb waited on the porch.

  Gavin looked at him, dragged his finger across his throat, and mouthed, You’re dead.

  It was followed moments later by a now-familiar voice.

  * * *

  * * *

  “You asshole. You couldn’t wait to share the good news?” Liv stomped through the small entryway of her sister’s house and nearly ran into Mack around the corner. She’d been working on her résumé all morning, trying to figure out just how to tell Thea what had happened, when the phone had rung and her sister had screeched, “You got fired?!”

  Mack threw his hands in the air. “Why the hell didn’t you tell them?”

  Liv shoved a finger in his chest. “Because my sister has a tendency to freak out about things, and I was trying to figure out how to break it to them. But thanks to you—”

  Thea was right behind her. “Hey, I do not freak out about things.”

  Gavin and Liv shared a none-too-subtle yeah right look.

  “Well, why wouldn’t I freak out if I have to find out from Mack that you got fired last night?”

  Liv turned around. “I was going to tell you today.”

  Thea crossed her arms. “When?”

  Liv matched her pose. “After I finished my chores.”

  Behind her, Mack whispered to Gavin, “Chores?”

  “She sort of lives on a farm,” Gavin whispered back.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me last night, though,” Thea said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Because I was still in shock last night.”

  “So you just went home?” Thea asked it with the same level of incredulity as if Liv had announced that she’d decided to streak naked down Broadway.

  “Yes. I went home, studied my bank account, and threw darts at a picture of Royce’s face. What else does someone do when they get fired?”

  Mack stepped into her space. “You left out the part where you turned me down when I offered you a job.”

  Liv whipped around. “Oh my God, is there anything else you want to tell them that is totally none of your business?”

  “What?” Thea exclaimed. “What’s he talking about? Can someone please tell me what the hell happened last night?”

  Her sister’s outburst had a silencing effect on the entire house. Even Butter dropped to the floor with a whimper. Liv sucked in a breath, glared one last time at Mack, and lowered her voice.

  “Can I just talk to you alone, please?” she asked Thea.

  “We’ll be outside,” Gavin said. The sound of their feet hurrying toward the back door had a cartoonish effect.

  Liv followed Thea into the kitchen and sat down at one of the tall chairs lining the granite island. She watched silently as her sister stormed to the fridge and withdrew the ingredients for what looked like maybe an omelet.

  “What’re you doing?” Liv asked, following her sister’s trek to the stove as eggs, milk, and cheese threatened to spill out of her arms.

  “Making you something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well I need something to do to keep from screaming.”

  “Could you make me pancakes instead, then?”

  Thea slammed down the ingredients and glared over her shoulder. So that was a no for pancakes.

  Thea dragged a skillet out of a cupboard, plunked it onto the stove, and whipped on the burner beneath it. She aggressively cracked an egg against the edge of the counter and dumped the goo into the skillet.

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me this last night,” she snapped, taking it out on another egg.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “It’s my job to worry about you.”

  Here we go . . .

  Liv held back a bone-weary sigh. At twenty-six, Thea was only a year older than Liv, but it might has well have been twenty. Their parents divorced in a messy split when Liv was nine, and eventually they were forced to live with their grandmother for a while. Thea had taken on the role of big sister and mom, and even now as adults, she had a hard time relinquishing the role. Not that Liv was going to complain. If not for Thea’s support, she’d probably still be a loser with no goals, no future, and no culinary degree. So no, she wasn’t going to complain about Thea’s overprotectiveness right now.

  Thea attacked the eggs with a vicious stir. “So I hope this means you’re going to finally let me give you some money?”

  Liv made a yeah right noise. “Nope.”

  “You are so stubborn.”

  “She said as she unnecessarily beat the shit out of some eggs,” Liv deadpanned. “You know the key to scrambled eggs is low heat and a gentle folding motion, right?”

  Thea glared over her shoulder. “Do not lecture me about cooking right now.”

  “Then don’t lecture me about money.”

  “You don’t have any money.”

  “Not true. I have enough saved up to last for a couple of months.”

  Thea turned off the stove and unceremoniously dumped the eggs onto a waiting plate. Then she turned and plunked the plate in front of Liv. A glass of orange juice followed.

  “Do I get a fork?”

  Thea practically threw one at her.

  Liv ducked. “What’re you mad at me for?”

  “I’m not mad at you. I’m worried. And I get angry and tense when I’m worried.”

  Liv poised her fork over the eggs. “Yeah, I know.”

  Thea sat down next to her. “So what are you going to do?”

  “What else? Find another job.” And make sure that fucker pays.

  Liv’s friend, Alexis, owned her own café. “Maybe Alexis needs some help in the meantime.”

  “Thea, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure everything out, okay?”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Her words were like a knife to an old wound. “I’m not the fuckup I used to be, Thea. Give me some credit.”

  Thea reeled back. “I have never called you a fuckup.” Thea had just enough sincerity in her voice to make Liv feel guilty.

  It was true. Thea had never said those words to Liv. She was just projecting. Liv had called herself a fuckup enough times in her life that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But she thought she was beyond those days. Now here she was—unemployed and carrying a hea
vy secret that she had no idea how to deal with.

  “Please just let me help you,” Thea said, leaning forward again. “Let me pay off your loans, or—”

  “No.”

  “Gavin and I have more money than we know what to do with, and you’re family.”

  “Stop, Thea. I’m not taking money from you.”

  Thea tossed her arms in the air with a frustrated sound. “Why? What is wrong with accepting my help?”

  “Because that’s all I’ve done my entire life!” Liv blurted. She instantly regretted it. Thea got that look on her face—that half mom, half best friend look that had always been the defining balancing act of their relationship.

  “Look, I will find another job,” Liv said quickly before Thea could launch into one of her sisterly lectures. “I don’t know when or where.” Or if Royce will try to ruin me. “But I will find something.”

  Thea bit her lip. “What about working for Mack?”

  Liv snorted. “Uh, no.”

  “Why not?”

  Liv shoveled in another bite and chased it down with orange juice. “I worked in a bar for three years during school. I don’t want to do it again.”

  “But this would just be temporary until you can find another pastry chef job.”

  “No.”

  Thea opened her mouth as if to argue further but then apparently thought better of it. Instead, she turned her ire onto Royce. “I can’t believe that jerk. After everything you’ve put up with, the hours you’ve worked, the holidays you’ve missed, the abuse you’ve had to endure. Just like that, you’re done because of one mistake?”

  Not exactly. Liv didn’t say it or correct Thea’s misunderstanding. Liv didn’t know what she was going to do, but she did know one thing: she was not going to tell her sister the whole story about how and why she got fired. Telling her the truth meant getting her involved, and Liv was not going to drag her sister into this mess. Liv had already been the cause of too much trouble for Thea throughout their lives. The past two years had been the only ones when she hadn’t been a major burden on her sister. There was no way she was going to turn back the clock now.

  The slide of the French doors in the living room brought their conversation to a quick, blessed end. Ava and Amelia ran into the kitchen, pigtails swinging in unison.

  “Aunt Livvie!” Ava yelled, throwing herself against Liv’s legs.

  Liv crouched down and gathered them into a tight hug. They smelled like the outdoors and strawberry shampoo.

  “Can you play with us?” Amelia asked.

  “You know what? I actually have to get going—”

  “What?” Thea said. “Where are you going?”

  “—but I promise I will be back soon to play, okay?”

  The girls nodded and pulled away. Liv stood just as Gavin and Mack shuffled nervously into the kitchen. Their eyes darted between Liv and Thea as if asking permission to enter.

  She needed to get out of there before the interrogation started again.

  “My offer stands, Liv,” Mack said, sober in a way she wouldn’t have expected from him.

  “I appreciate it. Really. But I’ll find something,” she said. She looked at Thea then. “And I can’t take your money. This is something I need to figure out on my own.”

  “No, you don’t,” Thea said.

  “Then can you just accept that I want to?”

  Thea’s face softened with understanding—an expression Liv had only ever seen on one other person in her life. If not for Thea and Gran Gran, Liv would have been lost.

  Liv closed the distance to Thea and wrapped her in a tight hug. “Trust me,” she whispered. “I’ll be okay.”

  Thea gave her a squeeze and lowered her voice. “I do trust you.”

  Liv escaped before Thea could see how much those words meant to her. And how desperately she wanted to live up to them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning, Liv’s landlord, Rosie, tucked a hen named Gladys under one arm and planted her free hand on her other hip. “I was burning my bra forty years ago over shit like this, and it’s still happening.”

  Liv reached into the nesting box and felt around until her fingers found two more eggs. She put them in the basket and shut the lid.

  “You did the right thing,” Rosie said. “You couldn’t let him do that to that poor girl.”

  “Too bad that poor girl won’t stand up for herself.” Liv yanked open the door to the root cellar where Rosie stored eggs, vegetables, and chicken supplies. “How could she not want to report this? Doesn’t she know he’s going to just keep doing it?”

  “Most women don’t report it.”

  “Which I don’t understand.”

  “I suppose until you’ve been in their shoes, you can’t.”

  Rosie set down Gladys to join the twenty other hens scratching around in the freshly overturned flower beds. She kicked her foot out to knock back Randy the Rooster, who was on a mission to impregnate as many hens as possible in his lifetime. Liv didn’t know why Rosie didn’t either get rid of him or put him in a soup pot. Probably because his one redeeming quality was that he hated men as much as Rosie and chased off everything with a penis that tried to enter the farm.

  That’s probably why Liv stayed there too. She’d answered Rosie’s ad two years ago for someone to live in her garage apartment and help out around her organic farm, which hadn’t actually been Liv’s thing, but she couldn’t afford to live downtown, and she didn’t want to intrude on her sister’s family life.

  The day she’d moved in, Liv had found a beaten-up copy of the original Our Bodies, Ourselves sitting on the bedside table like a hotel might set out the Bible. She’d fallen in love with the place and Rosie immediately.

  Liv moved the basket of eggs to her other hand and started back toward the farmhouse. Her breath formed white puffs around her face in the chilly morning air. Even in Tennessee, it could get cold on an April morning. Rosie lived on twenty acres a half hour outside the city in what had once been nothing but farmland but now skirted the edges of strip malls and suburban chain stores.

  Rosie shook her head and started muttering again as she walked out of the cellar. “Still can’t believe we’re fighting this shit. Marched my ass off in the seventies so your generation wouldn’t have to deal with pricks like that.”

  Liv followed Rosie into the main house through the back door. It led to a mudroom with an ancient washer and dryer set, a pile of rubber boots covered in chicken poop and other farm gunk, and a line of hooks where they hung up their coats and hats. Rosie had knit each of them. She was on a knitting streak lately. Said she needed a hobby to keep from losing her mind over the news. Every hen now had a sweater to wear when the weather got really cold. Which wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Rosie subscribed to a backyard chicken magazine, and hen sweaters were a thing among the crazy-chicken-lady set.

  Rosie kept muttering to herself as she made her way into the kitchen to start breakfast. Liv helped cook whenever she was home, though Rosie always told her she didn’t have to. I pay you to tend to the animals and the garden, not cook. Liv didn’t know how to tell her—or maybe was just too embarrassed to tell her—that she liked it. Cooking with Rosie reminded her of the years she and Thea had lived with their grandma. Gran Gran’s kitchen was where she’d discovered her love of cooking. Some of her best memories were of Gran Gran, Thea, and her making dinner together as Gran Gran told stories and imparted sage bits of wisdom. Those years were the only time in her life when she’d felt like she and Thea had a real family.

  The bang of the back door interrupted her, followed by a loud belch. Moments later, Earl Hopkins wandered in.

  Hop, as he went by, was a part-time farmhand who was madly in love with Rosie, and either Rosie had no idea or maybe she just didn’t care, because no two people could be more opposite. He was a Vietnam veteran
who liked to drink beer and rant about the liberal media, and she was an avowed hippy who’d once protested the war and now watched Rachel Maddow at top volume every night.

  “Start a fire, will ya?” Rosie said, pretending not to watch Hop’s butt as he walked into the living room and squatted in front of the fireplace.

  “Quit ordering me around,” he griped.

  “If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to find breakfast somewhere else.”

  “I’m probably better off. You’re going to poison me one of these days.”

  Liv scooped the onions into a neat pile and then dumped the peelings into a bowl that Rosie would take out to the goats later. They wouldn’t be thrilled, but they’d eat it. They’d eat anything. Cabbage day was definitely their favorite. Wait, no, second-favorite. The best day was when Rosie made them fresh biscuits.

  Jesus, this was her life now. She knew the eating habits of chickens and goats. Liv groaned and dropped her forehead to the island and banged it twice.

  “What’d I miss?” Hop asked, wheezing slightly as he came back into the kitchen.

  “Livvie got fired last night.”

  Hop patted her on the shoulder. “Finally told him where he could stick his spatula, huh?”

  Liv laughed. “I wish.”

  Rosie spun away from the sink, knife pointed like a weapon. “I’ll tell you what happened. She caught him sexually harassing a young college girl, and he fired her for it. Just like a typical man.”

  “Spoken like a typical feminist,” Hop snorted.

  Liv sighed heavily and shook her head. This fight was going to be a long one. She removed the knife from Rosie’s hand. “I’ll finish the potatoes.”

  Rosie swatted her hand away. “You go on up to your room and relax. I’ll bring you some food when it’s ready.”

  Liv considered protesting, but Rosie and Hop had settled into a hearty argument. She was too exhausted to play referee. She slipped out the back door and headed toward the garage. A staircase in the back of the building led to her apartment, which was cozy but small. The door opened into an eat-in kitchen that faced a small living room. A single hallway led to her bedroom on one side and the bathroom on the other. It smelled faintly of dust from the garage below, but she could usually mask it with a couple of well-placed candles.