Liars (Licking Thicket 2)

Marigold made a little sighing noise and shifted in the sling. Parrish scrambled to catch up with me in the parking lot.

“Is she okay? Is she upset? Did I squish her back there?” he asked worriedly.

I slowed down a little, not realizing how long my strides had become in my haste to get away from the awkward Tucker situation. “She’s fine. Still asleep.”

He walked next to me for a few more steps before clenching his fists by his side. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

I knew what he was talking about, but I played stupid anyway. “Done what?”

“Just… just… lurched at you like that. Attacked your face like some kind of… some kind of face attacker… thing.”

I took a chance and slid my arm around his shoulders, hoping like hell he didn’t shrug it off in disgust. “Well, you are my fiancé. So it kind of seems appropriate that I would be the one you’d kiss for Joyous Pickin’ Tidings.”

He groaned and turned into my side, burying his face in my shoulder. “I can’t believe I did that. I’m so embarrassed.”

I laughed and rubbed my hand up and down his arm. “Everyone loved it. Besides, how often does one get to claim the origination story for a new Thicket tradition as epic as that?”

His easy laughter was enough to release the final bands of stress from my shoulders.

“Come home with me? With us, I mean? We, uh…” I tried to come up with an excuse. “We have a lot more stuff to go over, in case the caseworker questions us.”

He pulled his face out of my shirt and smiled up at me shyly. “I’d like that. Maybe I can fix us dinner?”

I thought of the chicken dish he’d brought me. “You know what? This time let me cook for you. I have a little veggie patch behind the chicken coop, and I’ve just harvested a ton of fresh tomatoes and basil. I could make us a homemade marinara for spaghetti.”

“That sounds perfect,” he said. “I didn’t know you had a garden.”

While I tried transferring my sleeping girl to the car seat, I told him about Aunt Dot and Aunt Birdie forcing me to weed their vegetable garden every time I used a curse word when I was a teenager.

“And the funny thing was,” I continued, “those two curse worse than any Navy sailor you’d ever meet. But their point was teaching me control. I was so angry during those years, and I took it out on them with a pissy attitude.”

I finished clipping the straps and dropped a kiss on Marigold’s sweaty head before climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. “Anyway, I kind of ended up loving it. It was peaceful, and it gave me a chance to spend time outside by myself. I did a lot of thinking in that garden over the years, so the first thing I did when Stix left me the salvage yard—well, besides scrubbing the place down with bleach—was put in a garden.”

“Did your aunts keep chickens too?”

I laughed and scratched the back of my neck. It was kind of an embarrassing story. “No, that was an accident, really. I had a guy come to the yard looking for a new taillight casing for his truck. He didn’t have enough cash, so he wrote me a bad check. When I called him up to ask him to stop by with some cash, he brought the cash and a hen. He was obviously embarrassed about the bounced check, so he sort of shoved the bird at me and grumbled something about it being his best layer.”

After slowing down to take the turn onto my street, I continued. “I tried to refuse it, telling him I didn’t keep chickens, but he just kept insisting. Finally he blurted out something about not being able to afford to keep her. He lit out of there too fast for me to offer to help. That’s how I ended up with Talia. And, of course, it would have been cruel not to get her some company.”

Parrish’s smile was adorably toothy. “Of course. How many do you have now?”

“That’s not important,” I said quickly, pulling into my driveway. “What’s important is how much money I save on eggs. Besides, I sell them to people who come for salvage items too. Sometimes I have to give them away since the girls are such good layers, but I drop them off at the soup kitchen too, so that helps.”

Parrish’s eyes twinkled which made my face heat. “Do you think you save more on eggs than you spend on supplies for your girls?”

I threw the truck into park and hopped out, mumbling under my breath about hens having needs. The sound of his laughter was so sweet and unexpected, I blinked across the truck at him. The sunlight hit Parrish’s brown hair, lighting up some strands of honey in it I hadn’t noticed before. He was the opposite of me: clean-cut and put-together, but it only made me want to mess him up that much more.