Oh. I forgot about that.
“Excuse me, mother, but I think you have mistaken me for Madison,” Tyler said in a calm tone. “I’m not explaining myself to you.”
I wanted the sink into the passenger seat. That seemed like a private conversation I didn’t want to participate in.
“We will talk about this later.” Apparently Sylvia shared my sentiment. “Cancel your flights. Both of you. You are staying for the engagement party.”
“I’m not doing that,” Tyler argued.
“You said you had two weeks off.” I could see on Tyler’s face he regretted sharing that information with his mother. “It’s your sister’s engagement party. You are staying. It will be at my house since it’s empty and we don’t have time for anything better.”
I noticed how she referred to the house as my house and not our house.
“It’s not empty. I’m there,” Tyler reminded her.
“You wouldn’t care if I brought an entire circus to live with you,” she brushed him off.
Her words insulted me in a way they shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling offended on his behalf. If she treated him like that on the reg, no wonder he never wanted to come home or pick up his phone when she called.
“Hannah, honey, you are staying, right?” She directed her attention to me.
“I will have to talk to my boss,” I said. “But, yes. I think I will stay.” I hadn’t had a vacation since I started working over a year ago, so I didn’t think Amanda would mind. Besides I was the maid of honor and missing the engagement party just wasn’t something I would do.
I felt Tyler’s eyes on me and when I shot him a look, he mouthed the word pushover in my face with a cocky grin that made my heart beat faster. Being close to him obviously affected me the wrong way.
“Great!” Sylvia shouted as if everything was arranged already. And just because the last word always had to be hers even though I had already agreed to stay, she added. “You are the maid of honor after all. You can’t miss these things. I’ll call Clem and arrange for you two to meet with the caterer,” I heard her flipping papers. “Oh, and Hannah?”
“Yes, Mrs. Hartley?”
“Make sure my son attends the party.”
Tyler and I shared a look. Then he turned to watch the road again and a slow smile formed on his lips. He wasn’t going to make it easy for me.
Crap.
Chapter Thirteen
Tyler
“This will solve all our problems, Chloe,” I tried to argue my case.
“I disagree.”
“It’s not up for debate.” I had been listening to her arguments for a while now and I couldn’t listen to them anymore. “I don’t have much of a choice anyway.”
“Please, explain it to me. How teaming up with a mobster will solve our problems? I’m dying to find out.”
“The money will.”
“Our problems have nothing to do with money.”
“Money will help,” I repeated for a millionth time. We had that same talk every now and again. Even before Patrick Hayes came into the picture. We were both tired of it, but neither of us backtracked.
“How is California?” Chloe changed tactics. “I thought you were supposed to go on a camping trip.”
“I hate camping.”
“And?” Chloe dragged.
“And the fuckers woke me up in five in the morning. Then one of them pissed me off, so I dumped their asses.”
That sounded like I was the one leaving them at a random diner, not the other way around, but Chloe didn’t ask for details.
“You are spending time with your sister then?”
The question was loaded. She knew there was something weird between me and Hannah. Maybe she had the right to know what I was doing here. I didn’t think that Hayes and his men would approach her whatever the reason, but I still felt guilty I left her alone. And even though I couldn’t get the damn keychain out of my head, I wasn’t interested in talking about little Spencer. I cleared my throat.
“I try to help with some arrangements for the wedding.”
“With that obnoxious blond?” Chloe pressed.
I thought about it for a moment. I wouldn’t use that word to describe Hannah Spencer.
She was obstinate. Inflexible. Opinionated.
Obnoxious though? No. But I totally got why Chloe would think that, so I agreed.
“Yes. With the obnoxious blond.”
“What’s the story between you two?”
“She’s my sister’s best friend.”
“She mumbled all kinds of insults about you that night she came to see you.”
“She did?” I was genuinely surprised. And intrigued. “What did she say?”
Chloe listed some words I would never imagine leaving Hannah’s smart mouth in a public place, when Liam appeared and asked who she was talking to. She answered him and he started yelling.
“What does he want?”
“What do you think?” Chloe laughed. “He wants to talk to you.”
She passed the phone to him and even though I missed a lot of the words he was saying simply because he was three and was talking so fast, I couldn’t always distinct one word from another, I enjoyed the conversation more that I wanted to admit. At least until I heard voices coming from the front door and realized my sister, her best friend, and one more unidentified female invited themselves in. They didn’t even bother to ring the doorbell. They just walked right into the living room.
My eyes drifted to Hannah. She smiled at me. A friendly smile as always. Her calm expression changed into a disgusted one when I made a show of checking out her legs.
Good. That was what I was aiming for. I knew how to handle disgusted, disappointed, angry women.
New daily task: Keep Hannah Spencer irritated at all times.
Clementine approached and gave me a quick hug. She must have had heard Liam’s voice through the phone, because she made a confused face and sent me a questioning look before she went back to Hannah and the other woman.
“Ace?” I used the nickname I gave the little guy when he was still a baby and cut his speech off. “I have to go now. Tell your mom I will call her later, okay?”
“Okay,” Liam simply said and killed the call. He loved to press the red button and he never held a grudge when I wanted to end our conversations. I wondered if that was a guy thing or a toddler thing.
Probably a guy thing.
I glanced up and saw that my sister was looking at me with interest. I strolled over to the women and introduced myself to the one I didn’t know. She turned out to be from the catering company my mother mentioned the previous day.
“Who was that?” Clem asked and pointed at my phone. “You were talking to a child.”
I shot Hannah a quick look. I didn’t know why. I just wanted to see if she was paying attention to us. She wasn’t.
“The son of a friend of mine.”
Clem looked at me funny. She was probably sensing I tried to hide something, but our relationship was based on giving each other space to stew in our own shit undisturbed, so she didn’t push.
Hannah led the woman from the catering company to the backyard, blabbing about the wedding again.