Trouble Maker: A MacKenzie Family Novel (The MacKenzie Family) by Liliana Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

marriage on the mind and I’m not biting. And you’re only embarrassing yourself and your family by doing this. So if you want to play out this farce, go get your test done and come back and see me.”
    If looks could kill he’d already be six feet under. “I’m glad you’ve shown your true colors before I was saddled for a lifetime with you.”
    “There you go. Always look on the bright side.”
    She turned sharply on her heel and marched toward her car. Beckett sighed and ignored the curious stares of onlookers as he made his way toward Riley and Thomas.
    “Shut up,” he said before either of them could open their mouths to speak.
    “Hey, man,” Riley said, holding up his hands. “We’re innocent. Don’t take it out on us. Thomas will buy your lunch and make you feel better.”
    The diner was a throwback to another era. The floor was black-and-white squares of linoleum. The counter was long, and a freshly baked pie sat in a glass dome at the end. Red vinyl barstools sat like soldiers in front of the counter. Booths lined the perimeter of the diner and the seats were covered in the same red vinyl.
    Gladys Dubois and her husband Milt had opened the diner just after their marriage more than fifty years before. Gladys had been seventeen at the time and Milt closer to thirty, and they figured if people were going to gossip about them anyway then they might as well give them a place to do it. Gladys had the disposition of a drill sergeant with hemorrhoids, and she still worked the front counter and waited tables. Her hair was flame red and added at least an extra foot to her height, and her lipstick bled into the wrinkles around her mouth.
    Milt had worked the grill back in the kitchen, but he’d passed on about a decade before, so Gladys had hired Snoopy Gaines to flip hamburger patties and his wife Cori to handle the rest of the menu. Business had gone up a lot since Cori started working her magic in the kitchen. No one could make better fried chicken anywhere in the state.
    “You’ve sure gotten yourself in a pickle, Beckett Hamilton,” Gladys said from behind the counter. She was working a crossword puzzle and dividing her attention between that and the soap opera on the TV in the corner.
    “No, ma’am,” he said back, wishing once again he would’ve listened to his father and just stayed home. “I think I got my point across.”
    She cackled and slapped her bony hand on the counter. “Boy, you don’t know nothin’ about women. You mark my words, she’s not ready to give up yet. I guarantee she had the wedding reception booked and a dress picked out. A woman doesn’t go to that much trouble to quit after being rejected.”
    “She can book whatever she wants as long as she understands she’ll have to knock me unconscious to get me to the church. Besides, in another month we’re going to be right in the thick of calving season. Out of sight, out of mind. She’ll forget all about me and find some other poor single sap.”
    Gladys shook her head. “I never realized you were so dumb. Good thing she’s lying about that pregnancy. Oldest trick in the book. Between the two of you that baby wouldn’t have had a prayer.”
    “Thank you, Gladys. I appreciate that. But there are plenty of single men left in Surrender.”
    “Honey, when you get to be my age everyone is either dead or everything droops so low they’re not worth looking at without their clothes on.” She turned her attention to Riley and Thomas. “You tell that cousin of yours to come see me and I’ll give him some fried chicken on the house. Not a woman in this town would turn that man away from her bed, even without a leg. I could show him a thing or two.”
    “We’ll let him know,” Thomas said, the look on his face somewhere between amusement and horror.
    They made their way to a corner booth and Thomas and Riley stopped along the way to say hi to Danny Patterson and Lane Greyson, two of the deputies that worked for their