Fight for Her #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romantic Suspense by JJ Knight Page A

nods. His breathing starts to calm. “Hold on to that one.”
    “You keep saying that.”
    He pats my hand. “Because it’s true.”
    “What if things aren’t perfect? What if there’s bad things about being with Parker?”
    He squeezes my fingers. “Has he hurt you? Is he cruel?”
    “No, no. Not that. Just in his business. They aren’t nice people.”
    Dad leans back against his pillow. “There will always be awful people,” he says. “That’s why you surround yourself with the good ones.” He smiles at me. “A buffer against the world.”
    He closes his eyes. The coughing fits are always hard on him.
    There’s a knock at the door. I turn around and stand up in a rush when I see it’s Mom. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
    “I believe this is my husband,” she says flatly. I guess they never officially divorced.
    But I know that voice. The bitter one. It’s the sound of my childhood.
    “Don’t you come in here to be mean to him,” I say. She’s my mother, but I won’t stand for her doing anything else to my dad.
    She lifts a foil-covered plate. “I brought him some lemon cake.”
    Dad sits back up. “Lemon cake? Oh, your famous lemon cake.” He pinches his arm and frowns. “Apparently I’ve died.”
    Mom sets the plate on the side table with a bang. “And now you’re in hell.”
    Dad looks over at her. “Well, that’s where I figured we were both headed. Might as well pull up a chair and eat some cake.”
    I take a few steps back. They’re sniping at each other, which is new. Back when they still lived together, Mom would get nasty and Dad would just bow his head like a browbeaten dog.
    Mom takes it all in stride. She plops down in the side chair. “I’m too fat to be eating cake.”
    Dad shakes his head. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”
    I can’t do anything but stare at them.
    “I hear you’re half-dead,” she says.
    “Just half,” he fires back. “And the other half is perked up now.”
    Mom settles back on the chair. She’s dressed up a little in a long black skirt and a flowery blouse. She’s kept her hair as black as mine with dye and it’s piled up on her head. She looks pretty good.
    “You gonna open that cake or am I going to sit here smelling it until I’m all the way dead?” he asks.
    Mom leans over and pulls the foil off the cake. “I even brought that silly cake fork that your grandmother brought over on the boat,” she says. She hands him a small polished fork.
    I remember it well. It’s one of the few things from Dad’s Italian immigrant family. He never let anybody else use it. It was one of the things Mom sniped at him about.
    Dad holds it up to the light like it’s a jewel. “I’ve missed this fork,” he says.
    Mom shakes her head.
    He passes it over to her. “You take the first bite.”
    At first Mom is too surprised to arrange her expression into something bitter. I lean against the wall. I don’t know what’s brought this on.
    Maybe just knowing someone you used to love might be dying.
    “You’re teasing me,” she says, her voice losing its sharp edge.
    “Nope.” He holds out the fork.
    She takes it, and despite what she said earlier, slices it through the cake and takes a bite.
    “Oh, that’s good cake,” she says.
    “Always was,” Dad adds.
    She passes him the fork.
    I know my mouth is hanging open. They’re acting like they’re passing cake at their wedding.
    “You going to eat it now?” Mom asks.
    “Seems safe enough,” Dad says. He sticks the fork into the creamy yellow frosting.
    “What do you mean by that?” Mom insists.
    “I just had to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.”
    Mom smacks him on the shoulder.
    I feel like I might fall over.
    Dad glances over at me. “You still here, Madelyn?”
    Mom waves me away with her hand. “Go check on your aunt. She’s probably embarrassing herself by walking around those men in nothing but a towel and her shriveling old skin.”
    I walk up to Dad and give him a quick