From the Moment We Met Read Online Free PDF Page B

themselves. Which was why he figured she’d been avoiding them to begin with.
    “I said I’d make sure she was all right. She is.”
    “At least tell me if she’s crying. She doesn’t do well with this kind of stuff. Never has,” Marc said, but Tanner wasn’t listening. He was too busy watching Abby pull a flashlight out of that ridiculously gigantic bag she always carted around, kick off her shoes, and step up on a raised flowerbed to shine the beam through the widow. “God, I’m going to kill Nate if she’s crying.”
    Tanner wanted to kill all of her brothers. It was an urge he fought on a weekly basis. This week it was stronger.
    When would they figure out Abby didn’t need a keeper—never had?
    Something Tanner knew firsthand.
    “She’s not crying.” She’s tougher than that. “Although Nate will be when she kicks his ass. What was he thinking? Abby could have landed the Pungent Barrel account if you guys hadn’t undersold her as a doghouse designer.”
    He could almost hear Marc flipping him the bird through the phone because he knew Tanner was right. They’d screwed up. Big-time. And Abby had lost out.
    “We’re considering calling Gabe, asking him to come home early and help deal with this whole Richard shitstorm,” Marc said, referring to the eldest DeLuca brother, who was currently vacationing in Italy with his wife and three daughters.
    “We as in you, Nate, and Trey?” Were they serious? “Because I guarantee you, there is no way Abby would agree to that. Bringing Gabe and his family back just in time for little Holly to see a naked statue of her father sounds like a complication Abby would want to avoid.”
    Richard hadn’t just slept with his interns—he’d gotten one pregnant, then abandoned her. By some weird twist of fate, Richard’s mistress, Regan, was now married to Gabe, making Richard’s love child Abby’s niece. And the rest of them one big, happy family.
    “Dick is still in her yard?”
    “Until Sunday.”
    “Sunday! That’s a long time to keep this from my nonna. Because if he’s still here when she gets home from her bachelorette party, all hell will break loose.”
    ChiChi had recently ended a sixty-year feud with their family’s biggest rival, Charles Baudouin, and the two were now planning a wedding, an event that ChiChi and her geriatric brigade were currently celebrating in Vegas—at a strip club, according to the updates on Facebook. And Marc was right to be concerned. ChiChi was so unpredictable Tanner had no idea what she’d do when she learned that the most notorious Dick in the valley was once again stinking up her granddaughter’s life—only that it wouldn’t make the situation any easier for Abby.
    Marc sighed like he was all put out, then went on. “You think you can still get her to the Sweet and Savory by seven?”
    Abby took that moment to see just how secure the locks on the windows were. When the first one didn’t slide up, she stomped her foot, nearly falling off the flowerbed, and huffed her way toward another window on the far side of the building. “Not looking good, bro.”
    “Christ,” Marc mumbled. “Lexi will be crushed if she doesn’t show. She’s been planning this party for months. Got the whole bistro looking like some kind of twisted bachelorette party, only in reverse.”
    Right , because, again, what Abby really needed right then was a surprise divorce party?
    “I’ll try my best to get her there,” he said, smiling when she dug through one of the half dozen pockets and flaps on her purse and pulled out a screwdriver, which she wedged between the window and the sill and—if his eyes didn’t deceive him—started jimmying. Here her brothers were worried she was sobbing her eyes out in some dark alley, and Abby was getting ready to add breaking and entering to her resume. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

    Worst. Day. Ever.
    Okay, not worst, since she’d had quite a few of those in her lifetime. But easily