Page 35 of Tempt
Perfect. I’ll see you guys there in 20.
Winnie sent another text.
What’s the emergency?
Felicity sent a row of arrows pointing up at Winnie’s question.
It’s too much to explain over text. But have either of you ever accidentally slept with someone’s dad?
Felicity answered first.
Um… no.
Then Winnie.
I slept with Hallie and Luna’s dad. But that was on purpose. Whose dad did you sleep with????
Another row of arrows from Felicity.
I’ll tell you when you get here. But remember that thing I said about being cursed? IT. IS. TRUE.
* * *
Winnie ended up getting off work a little earlier than expected, picked up Felicity at her house, and they arrived together. Felicity had catering bags filled with food she’d made testing out recipes over the last couple days, and Winnie carried two bottles of wine from Abelard Vineyards, where she worked.
“Talk,” she said, as she grabbed a corkscrew from a kitchen drawer and opened a pinot noir. “What’s this emergency and whose dad did you bang?”
“You have to promise not to judge,” I said, taking three glasses down from a shelf and placing them on the counter by Winnie. “And Winifred, so help me God, you cannot breathe a word of this toanyone.”
“I won’t,” she said, offering me her pinkie. “Pinkie swear.”
I hooked my little finger to hers and looked her right in the eye. “Thank you. This cannot get out.”
Felicity switched my oven on and spun to face me. “I’m dying, Mills! What did you do?”
I backed up to the kitchen table and flattened my palms on its edge, bracing myself. “Okay. The guy I slept with in New York last month? The hot mysterious stranger who spanked me?”
“Yes?” Felicity and Winnie chorused, looking at me intently.
“Turns out, he’s Mason’s biological dad.”
Winnie’s jaw fell open.
Felicity’s eyes blinked behind her glasses. “What?”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” Winnie waved her hands in the air, as if she was erasing the words I’d just spoken. “Hot spanking stranger isMason’s...dad?”
“Yes! Remember how I told you he never knew who his biological father was? Evidently—and I just found this outtoday—his mom wrote down the guy’s name in a letter that Mason discovered last summer while finally going through her things. He reached out.”
“Holy balls!” Winnie shrieked. “Talk about a plot twist!”
“How does he have a son that old?” Felicity asked.
I told them what I knew about the fateful few days Zach had spent in Frankenmuth.
“Frankenmuth,” Winnie tittered. “Who knew it was such a hotbed of sexual scandal?”
I glared at her. “Anyway, the girl—Mason’s mom, Andi—never told Zach she got pregnant. But it’s true.”
