Page 41 of Expecting an Argument
He raised an eyebrow. “Can’t you wait until we get to the appointment?”
“You really want to test that?”
With a quiet sigh, he merged onto an exit ramp and pulled into another gas station—one that luckily didn’t have Herringbone pumps outside of the store.
After visiting the bathroom so I wouldn’t have completely lied, I grabbed a bag of chocolate mini donuts and walked up to the register.
As I paid, the clerk glanced at my belly.
“Six months, right?” he said.
This motherfucker.
“No, I’m only four months along,” I replied dryly. “I’m having twins.”
The clerk’s eyes widened. “No way!”
I bit my tongue to stop myself from pointing to the big white letters that read “Twin Mom” on my sweatshirt. The machine pinged that it had accepted payment from my card, so I snatched my precious donuts before thatmanbreathed any more of my air.
When I got back into the car, Beau tossed a look at my bag of donuts.
“Say anything and I’ll put you in the trunk,” I warned.
He rolled his eyes, but pulled out of the parking lot.
“You remember Anthony Dauphin?” Beau asked as he drove back onto the highway. “He graduated two years before us.”
“Wasn’t he quarterback before you were?” I asked as I pulled out a donut.
“Sure was,” Beau responded. “He was valedictorian too.”
I savored the pillowy bite of my donut instead of asking any follow-up questions. The conversation reeked of “sore loser” and I had already dealt withonejackass before noon.
“The morning of his graduation,” Beau continued, clearly not taking the hint that I wasn’t interested in his high school soliloquy, “he made a post bragging that he plagiarized his valedictorian speech. He wrote, ‘I cheated all through high school, why stop now?’”
I hummed as I chewed my donut. I had never followed Anthony on his socials, but I would have never guessed he would have fully admitted to cheating his way to the top.
“I never had a problem with the guy until then, but the post really pissed me off,” Beau said. “So, I got a bunch of the ranch hands together and we egged his truck during the graduation ceremony.”
I swallowed my bite. “Well, did you get vengeance for your precious morals and values?”
“Not until today,” Beau replied. “From what I heard, Anthony never faced any repercussions for being a deceitful shit. He graduated from college just fine and then got himself abigfancy job…”
I caught the twinkle in Beau’s blue eyes in the rearview mirror. “…securing contracts at Herringbone’s corporate office.”
My donut was halfway into my mouth when I gasped. “That washim?”
Beau held up a finger like he was an old man about to give a lecture. “A dishonorable person is mold in a mansion’s walls. Unless you scour them out of your life, they will destroy everything you have.”
I couldn’t say Herringbone was destroyed…yet, but Anthony Dauphin did cost them $98 million. Now I wanted to egg his truck too.
“Grandpa raised me to believe that honesty and honor weremore important than anything else, but…” Beau took a deep breath. “…I had still wanted to take Katie back after she lied about the pregnancy. Does that make me a hypocrite?”
My stomach dropped. Why was he asking me?
I pretended to intensely search my bag for the perfect donut. “Um, I don’t think so.”
“I almost unblocked her number and called her last year,” Beau said. “But then I just thought of when we went shopping for nursery furniture. She held her lower stomach the whole time, knowingnothingwas in there, and…” He sighed. “Even after all that, I just…couldn’t let go of her.”
