Crazy Heifer (The Valentine Boys 2)

Luckily changing the code to get in was easy, and I handed it back to her moments later.

When I rounded the car and dropped inside, it was to find her staring at the garage door opener with a look of frustration on her face.

“What?” I asked.

“I had no clue that he’d do this,” she admitted. “When he left, he made it sound like he was really done with me. But he’s done nothing but make my life a living hell since he left.”

“I have a feeling that Margie is mostly responsible for that,” I admitted. “I remember a few times when she went out with Ace. God forbid Ace choose to hang out with his brothers over her. She’d find a way to make him feel like shit. Or to call him. Or to insinuate herself into our plans, making it about her and not about family.”

“I hate her,” she said. “I’ve hated her since the minute I found out that she was the other woman.”

“That’s a good enough reason right there,” I admitted as I accelerated down her driveway. “She just makes it too easy to hate her.”

“She really does.” She sighed when she saw the front door. “Malloy is here. And so is Mal.”

I grunted out a reply and parked the car where she indicated. “This your other car?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s Mal’s.”

I gritted my teeth and didn’t say a thing until we reached the door.

“Just go with what I’m about to say, okay?” I hesitated at the threshold.

She looked at me with wide brown eyes and then nodded once.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

Why did that one statement make me feel like I’d been poleaxed?

“Let’s go,” I croaked, taking her hand.

When I entered the kitchen, I was surprised by the opulence of it.

The place didn’t look like something Desi would like at all… not that I knew her that well or anything, but I felt like I knew her enough to know that her taste wouldn’t be stuffy and opulent.

The place was all crown molding, gaudy gold light fixtures, highly detailed cabinetry, and a hunter green granite countertop.

It screamed money in the worst way.

And there, sitting at the counter, was Mal.

Malloy, his father, saw me before Mal did, otherwise Mal wouldn’t have said what he said next.

“I don’t see why I can’t stay here, Father,” Mal said. “It’s not like the fat ass needs all this space.”

I clenched my teeth and barely resisted the urge to yank him off the barstool by his hundred-dollar haircut.

Instead, I raised my brow at Malloy, waiting for him to correct his son.

Which he did in the next second.

“I will not entertain you talking about my daughter like that,” Malloy growled.

Mal rolled his eyes. “She’s not your daughter. When we divorced, she ceased to be anything to you but a nuisance.”

“Funny,” I drawled. “That’s the vibe I’m getting when I think about what you are to Desi. A nuisance.”

Mal stiffened and turned, his eyes coming to me.

“Callum,” he said. “What a surprise.”

His lie tasted bitter, even to my own tongue.

Little fucker.

“Callum Valentine, as I live and breathe,” Malloy drawled as he rounded the counter and came straight for me.

I offered him my hand when he got close enough, grinning like a fool at the old man.

Malloy Stevens taught me a lot of things when I was a kid. How to throw a baseball. How to swim. How to pop open a beer that didn’t have a twist-off top.

“How’s it going, ol’ man?” I asked him, taking in the exhausted look in his eyes.

Something in Malloy’s face changed.

“I’m good,” he lied through his teeth.

My brows rose as I called him on his lie without verbally voicing the words.

He shook his head at me, asking me without words not to pursue it with who I guessed was his kid around, and I nodded at his request.

I may not address it now, but now that I knew that something was going on, you damn well better bet that I’d be checking up on him the next chance I got.

“Well then, maybe you can tell me why my woman came to the gym today telling me how her ex-husband had walked into her house while she was asleep and refused to leave?” I asked, sounding just as dangerous as I’d hoped.

Mal stiffened.

I turned my gaze solely on him. “I told you to leave her alone when I saw you and your woman at the diner.”

Mal blinked. “I thought you were joking… why on Earth would you be with her?”

The way he sneered at the woman who was silently trying to tug her hand from mine made me want to ram my fist straight into his esophagus.

“I wasn’t,” I said, deadly calm.

Malloy cleared his throat.

“Desi, dear.” He smiled at her. “How are you?”