Falling for My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Sunday Dinner

Wick hung up without saying a word.

He stood there with the phone in his hand and the smoke drifting between us.

"You don't have to go," I said.

"I know."

"Do you want to?"

He thought about it for a long time.

"I want to see what he's selling," he said. Then he looked at me. "You don't have to come. He asked for you. That doesn't mean you owe him."

"Are you asking me?"

"I'm asking."

"Then yes."

The Kimbrough house was on Ward Parkway, stone and ivy, with a lawn.

Wick parked his pickup at the curb behind Brice's white truck.

"I grew up here," he said. "Till I was thirty."

"I know. Brice showed me your old room once. It's a gym now."

"Of course it is."

He didn't touch me on the walk up.

But he walked half a step closer than he had to.

Hal opened the door himself, in an apron that said KISS THE PITMASTER.

"Little brother," he said, and pulled Wick into a hug.

Wick stood in it.

"And Neva." Hal took my hand in both of his. "No hard feelings about the picture. I like a woman with spine."

"I have plenty of hard feelings," I said, and took my hand back.

He laughed.

The dining room had a table for twelve set for five.

Brice was already sitting, a glass of bourbon in front of him, half gone.

Sherrie sat beside him in a white silk blouse with her ring turned so it caught the chandelier.

No cameras.

I checked.

"Neva," Brice said, without getting up.

"Brice."

"Uncle Wick."

Wick nodded once.

Dinner was commissary brisket on the good china.

I knew it was commissary brisket because I'd written the spec for it, and it was dry, and somebody had sauced it to hide that.

Royal Gold, in a gravy boat.

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