The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

What I was, was vain.

I blamed my mother because it was all her fault.

She was vain.

She was about being slim and in shape and perfectly put together at all times. She was about the right shoes and purse combo. She was about perfecting the art of the Just Nipping Out Look so you never left the house without your face on, even if it wasn’t the normal effort you put into making up your face. She was about moisturizing your skin from an early age to combat future lines and drinking enough water to do the same thing and shouting at me when I didn’t let her sleep because I had to, say, get to school or something (and sleep helped you combat lines).

I wasn’t certain while growing up if she very much cared if I lived or died.

But she took the time and effort to drill all of that into me.

I might not be as slim as I was when I was younger, but I’d taken pains to keep hold on what I could for as long as I could.

What I was not, was a striking classic beauty, like Celeste.

And although Bohannan was tall, built and attractive, he was not classically handsome or conventionally so either.

Celeste got that from somewhere.

Which meant she got it from Grace.

I was also trouble for a man, even when I didn’t have a psychotic stalker out there holding two women hostage until I agreed to marry him (though, I was sure it didn’t say, “I love you,” to send a bomb in the post to my dear friend and ex costar, Alicia’s house; poison my other dear friend and ex costar, Russ’s dog (don’t despair, Russ noticed Bookworm acting weird and got him to the vet just in time); or send disturbing pictures of men with their members cut off to Michael, who had been my love interest and eventual husband on the show).

But it had to be said, that was a lot.

Though it was more.

I was independently wealthy.

I was highly successful.

It was widely considered that I was very talented in two high-profile fields.

And many men didn’t like it like that.

So I could have the greatest ass in the world (and I kind of did) and perky tits until I died (and I had those too, now, only because of a reconstructive boob job I got a couple of years after I had Camille), these two things being valued very highly by the opposite sex, and I’d still be toxic.

“Okay, fuck, fine,” he said, cutting into my reverie.

“Fine?”

“Don’t cook. We’ll go to the Double D tonight.”

“Am I…getting my way?” I asked tentatively.

“Are we going out tonight?”

Were we?

“I’ll tell the kids to prepare. The Double D is a three-course meal for Jace and a four-course one for Jesse,” he shared. “They’ll be pissed they eat something and fill up before we go.”

So we weren’t, but we were.

And why, when it was far from normal, did I like it so much that his family was so close, to the point he thought of going out to dinner and his grown sons were invited.

“Let me get this straight,” I started. “I gave you the silent treatment for I don’t know, what? Maybe ten seconds? And you caved?”

He said nothing.

“You do know I’ve filed that away in the special vault only females have that’s hermetically sealed and preserves things for eternity, right?”

“We’ll swing around and pick you up at seven thirty,” was his reply. “Don’t kill David in the meantime, and if you need a break, I got a TV. Come down. I’ll get Jace to come home and let you in.”

And then he hung up.

I heard a drill coming from inside my house.

Which meant I texted, I’ll be waiting outside your door in ten minutes.

Bohannan didn’t respond to the text.

But Jason was there to let me in ten minutes later.

Fifteen

Double D

“As you know, I’ll start with a vanilla malt.”

We hadn’t even made it to a table when Jesse called this out toward the horseshoe-shaped, Roseanne’s Lunch Box counter in the middle of the Double D Diner.

“You got it, bub,” a tall, curvy woman with platinum blond hair, a dab hand with a teasing comb and an artist’s touch with eyeliner called back.

I thought this place was great, I wanted a vanilla malt, I was so excited not to be at my house (or theirs), I could spit, so I was surprised when I heard Jace mutter, “Oh shit.”

“Just ignore her,” Bohannan muttered back.

“That never works,” Jace replied.

Jesse was leading us inescapably toward a corner booth covered in red vinyl with baby-blue edging that was almost a circle, and with the easy manner they all migrated to it, it was obviously their regular haunt.

I was taking it further, seeing that my seven thirty pickup time was about the fact it was now almost eight, and this meant not only would we all be hungry, the diner would be mostly cleared out. There were only a couple of patrons there.