The Omega Team: Love: Classified (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Online Free PDF Page B

is there anything else I should know about your family, you know, so we don’t seem like this is all a big set up?”
    “Other than the fact that my mama is a former Miss Kentucky, president of her sorority, and a pushy southern lady, and my daddy is sweet, quiet, madly in love with her still and willing to do whatever she wants?”
    “What does he do for a living?”
    “He owned the Ford dealership in town before he sold it to a giant conglomerate of dealers for a shit ton of cash during my freshman year of college. Now he goes into the big office at the shiny new location near the mall and gets to preside over someone else’s balance sheet. He’s damn good at it, I’m told. A real go-getter of a sales manager who turns into someone else entirely when he hits the front door of our house and my mama takes over.”
    “Huh,” Joey said, leaning back to take the pressure off his zipper while Paige pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair, reassembled the wild tangle of it, and then reattached it in a sort of messy bun-like thing at the base of her skull. “And your mother, your mama, does she work?”
    “Oh, if you ask her, she does all the work,” Paige said, rolling her eyes. “And I suppose, at one time, it was true. Back when me and Les were little and into ballet, piano, and sports, and she was dragging us all over the place without any help from him. That dealership was open seven days a week, and there wasn’t a day when my daddy wasn’t at it.” She flopped back in the fake leather seat and stretched her arms up over her head. Joey looked away, lest he embarrass himself by staring at the way the thin fabric stretched across her chest.
    Get a grip, man. Stop acting like a pop-eyed teenager.
    “So, now she works in her garden, keeps the house immaculate, gets her nails and hair done, fusses at my daddy about taking more vacations . . . oh, and she’s taken up golf with a vengeance. Here,” she said, passing the phone back to him. “This was taken last Christmas.”
    Joey took a long look at the photo. Paige sat on the floor in front of a huge, stone hearth alongside a girl who he’d never in a trillion years guess was her actual sister. He glanced over at her, then back down at the image. The girls were all smiles, sitting cross-legged and wearing matching, fugly sweaters. Leslie DiFerrari had long, straight blonde hair but, on closer inspection, shared both Paige’s deep green eyes and her double dimples.
    The woman sitting to their left was an older version of Leslie, dressed in a similarly awful sweater, but it hugged her figure closer than her daughters’ did. Her smile was also wide, but much less genuine-looking. She looked brittle and unhappy. But Joey was not one to judge since most of the Christmases he could recall were chock full of overblown, unfulfilled expectations of warmth and happiness.
    The man, their father, wore his own version of the bad holiday sweater and their smile. His eyes were also green, and his thick head of hair was silver. He had broad shoulders and was probably six foot four or five if his long torso was any indication. He was leaning in toward his wife and daughters while his wife seemed to want to absent herself from the whole experience.
    He allowed himself a quick look at Paige again, then back at the photo. She had her arm around her sister’s shoulders. Her face was flushed and both she and Leslie looked as if they’d been laughing.
    “Nice,” he said, handing the device back across the table. She snorted.
    “I was as high as a kite,” she revealed. “You can get some really prime weed in Kentucky. Leslie always saves some for our ‘family gatherings.’”
    Joey stiffened in spite of himself. She frowned as if sensing his displeasure. “Oh, don’t tell me.” Her eyes flashed. “Wait, hold up a minute. Are you . . . a republican?” She whispered the word as if it were on par with “anal cancer.”
    He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest,