Even Villains Have Interns (19 page)

“Are all potential mother-in-laws like you?”

Tabitha’s smile split into a cheery grin. “Of
course not! You don’t meet a girl like me every dynasty.” When he
didn’t respond quickly enough she nudged him with her elbow. “You
need to brush up on your Disney references.” The car turned down a
street lined with feathery pine boughs that bent under heavy snow
to form a dreamlike tunnel. “Ah, there we are. Home sweet holiday
rental home. I wanted to stay in Texas, but my second daughter got
to pick the location for Christmas this year and she decided we
needed a rustic retreat. Or so she says. I think it’s because Major
Cobb’s family lives nearby.”

“Who?” Alan asked as the car pulled to a stop
outside a stone mansion that could only be considered rustic by
someone who thought Chicago was a cute little town. Delilah would
have loved it.

“Major Cobb? He was our neighbor years and years
ago. My youngest daughter has been engaged to his oldest son since
kindergarten. She’s usually in Africa, my youngest daughter that
is, so getting her to leave work for a week was like pulling teeth.
We bribed her with having the Cobbs nearby.”

Alan followed her inside to a cozy living room
with a roaring fire and a towering, undecorated, Christmas tree.
“Did you guys just get here?”

“Last night,” Tabitha said. “Here, make yourself
comfy. I bet there’s cookies baking.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to leave the stove on while
no one’s home?”

Tabitha tilted her head in confusion. “Oh. Yes.
It would be. But there’s always someone at home. We don’t have
minions for nothing!” Her eyes widened. “I meant kids. Not minions.
I don’t have real minions. Who would? That’s a super villain-ish
thing, and I’m obviously not a villain. Or a superhuman. Or
anything. And if I were, I would totally be a superhero with a very
cute outfit. But there are kids here. My son and baby-son-in-law
and my extra-son are downstairs playing video games. One’s natural
birth, one we had by marriage, and the other we had by adoption at
gun point.”

The clock ticked loudly as he stared.

Tabitha frowned. “Sorry. Is that
over-sharing?”

“No, no, it’s just, I...” He almost said he knew
a family with minions, but that way led to awkwardness and more
stunned silences. Tabitha would probably think he had a concussion.
Normal people did not take genetically engineered minions for
granted. “Sorry. Why...” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to
frame this question.”

“I look so normal, so why am I not a member of
the two-point-five WPF club?”

He nodded uncomfortably.

She grinned. “Because two-point-five kids is
very hard to arrange for, I always wanted a big family, and white
picket fences don’t go with castles.”

Alan dropped his bag on the kitchen table.
“Castle? Did you say castle?”

“It’s just a
little
one,” Tabitha said as
she checked the oven for cookies. “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have
told my husband to have a house picked out by the time I left the
hospital with our youngest. But I didn’t want to go home to the
house he’d set on fire—”

“Fire?” Alan shook his head again, wondering if
he’d heard correctly. “You’re joking, right?”

Tabitha pulled a tray from the oven and flipped
cookies off with a spatula, shaking her head. “Oh, no. Evan’s a
wonderful man, practically perfect, but he doesn’t cook very well.
He gets too distracted, and it turns out grilled cheese is very
flammable. No one was hurt, but I did let him do the house hunting
while I was in the hospital with complications.”

“Buying a castle seems a little
extravagant.”

“Oh, no, he got it for a steal.” She brought the
cookies over. “Have a seat, you’re not in a rush are you?”

“I should call the rental company and get out of
your hair,” Alan said, reeling a little.

Tabitha waved his suggestion away. “Nonsense.
You look like a young man who’s had too much stress and not enough
food lately. Eat a cookie and tell me about this girl of
yours.”

“She’s not mine,” Alan said reluctantly as he
sat down. “We’re kind of complicated at the moment.”

Tabitha smiled, a warm, genuine expression that
wrapped around him like perfect acceptance. “All relationships are
complicated. What’s she like?”

Alan bit into his cookie and tried to come up
with a good answer. “Amazing? She’s so self-assured. Confident. I’m
used to working with drama queens and people who melt down over
every little thing, and she’s always so calm. She’s intelligent,
beautiful, fun to be with. I can relax with her, joke around...” He
trailed off. She was Delilah. How else could he say it?

“Sounds like love,” Tabitha said before taking a
bite of her own cookie.

“Is it?” Alan asked. “I liked her for ages but
she kept turning me down. Sometimes I think it’s still all a
daydream.”

Tabitha brushed cookie crumbs off the table,
avoiding eye contact. “Why’d she turn you down?”

“Bad first impression. She says I look like a
hitman.”

She met his gaze at that. “Are you?”

Alan raised his eyebrows. “What sort of question
is that?”

“An obvious one,” Tabitha said. “You aren’t from
Wyoming, are you? Because it would be really funny if you
were.”

“Because you know a hitman in Wyoming?” Alan
guessed. “No. I’m from Illinois and I’m in politics. Local, not
national.”

Tabitha sighed. “Well, I suppose a reunion was
too much to hope for.”

“How does that tie in with hitman?”

“I knew one, back in the day. He’s dead now.
Punched his pregnant girlfriend and a passerby broke his head on
the concrete for it. The son’s much nicer from what I hear. Lives
up in Wyoming with his grandparents. I always wondered if he’d
follow in his father’s footsteps.” She shrugged. “Do you want
another cookie?”

“That’s not a normal segue.”

This time her grin was impish as she waggled her
eyebrows at him. “It is in this house.”

Alan leaned back in his chair and watched as
Tabitha plated more cookies and poured milk. “You look very
familiar.”

“I get that a lot,” she said. “If I was wearing
a white sweater you’d get it right away. It’s become something of a
signature color for me.”

He tried picturing her in white and the image
fixed in his mind. “Zephyr Girl.”

Milk sprayed across the table as she coughed.
“Excuse me?”

“Zephyr Girl. You look like Zephyr Girl.” Killed
in a fight with Doctor Charm according to rumors. Although, since
he’d had lunch with Doctor Charm, maybe Zephyr Girl was still
flying around somewhere. Hard to picture a superhero baking cookies
though.

Tabitha’s eyebrows bounced skyward. “Really? I
usually get Pacifica from
Fractured
. The TV show.” She
paused. “You’ve never seen it? My oldest daughter played the
superhero Pacifica on the TV show and she looks just like me.
Younger, of course, and a bit firmer all around. But that’s age for
you.”

He shelved the budding daydream of meeting a
childhood hero. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with the show.” Watching
TV took time that he could never seem to squeeze into the day.
Especially once he’d started chasing after Delilah.

“Really? It’s popular with the
superhero-believer set.”

Alan shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe in
heroes, super powered or otherwise. People are just people. They
make good choices. They make bad choices. At the end of the day all
you can hope is that you did more good than harm.”

An alarming grumble shook the house and Tabitha
sat up, eyes bright. “What’s that?” Alan asked.

“The garage door. The conquerors have returned.
I hope they remembered the onions for the soup.”

He cleaned up his seat at the table. “I’ll go
step outside and call the tow truck. Happy holidays.”

“What?” Tabitha frowned at him. “There’s no need
to rush off. Sit down and try to act suitably rescued. If I start
dragging eligible bachelors home, I’ll be accused of having Mrs.
Bennet Syndrome. This needs to look completely accidental.”

“It was accidental.” He laughed. “You couldn’t
give me a flat tire!”

She didn’t laugh along.

Suddenly the kitchen air was too thick to
breath. The whole conversation had been slightly to the left of
normal, and now Alan wondered if he hadn’t wandered into much more
dangerous territory. Maybe Tabitha was an ax murderer. Maybe the
onions were for fresh politician soup.

“Mom!” a young man’s voice shouted from the
basement. “Mom, Blessing threw me in the snow!”

Tabitha smiled. “Aren’t kids adorable?”

“I...uh...”

“Mom?” A far more familiar voice said as light
footfalls ran up the stairs. Delilah turned the corner into the
kitchen and halted. “Alan.”

“D-Delilah. Hi. I... uh... I just... My car got
a flat tire.” He forced his hands to stop moving.

She tilted her head—just like her mother. He
knew he’d seen that gesture before! “You’re not supposed to be here
for another six hours!”

“I got an early flight ahead of the
snowstorm.”

“I had a red sweater all picked out!” Delilah
cried. “I don’t even have make-up on!”

He swallowed. “You... You look great.” And
hopefully she hadn’t heard the raw desire she’d inspired in his
voice.

“He’s right,” Tabitha added. “You look amazing
without makeup. You’re father’s genes, I think. No one in my family
has eyelashes like that.”

Delilah turned on her mother. “What is he doing
here?”

“Sweetheart?” Doctor Charm turned the corner,
hands full of groceries.

Alan’s shoulder blades hit the wall behind him.
But it was far too late. The whole family was crowding into the
kitchen to see what was going on. A blonde woman who could only be
Tabitha’s oldest daughter was holding hands with someone who
resembled Arktos from L.A. too closely for it to be coincidence.
Travys was in the back with two other young men, one who looked
like Delilah and the other like Arktos, along with two other women
Alan assumed were Delilah’s other sisters.

He panicked and slipped into the shadows.

What had he been thinking? Big family holiday?
Had he lost his mind? Families had to start small! You added one
person at a time! You didn’t just pick up the deluxe edition
wholesale one afternoon.

The chill of the outside brought Alan back to
his senses and he leaned against a pine tree for support.

“Alan?” Delilah’s voice echoed across the yard.
“Alan?” She ran to him, scarf trailing behind her. “What’s
wrong?”

He stared at her.

“Alan?” She stopped a few feet away. “Are you
okay?”

“I wasn’t expecting the whole herd at once.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the house.
“Yeah, I meant to break them to you slowly. I did say I had a big
family.”

“You didn’t tell me that’s what was waiting in
Vermont!”

Delilah shrugged. “You said you wanted a big
family holiday. This is the only family I have.” She caught his
hand. “Come on. Come inside and meet them. Once you get to know
them, they aren’t so scary.”

“Your mother is Zephyr Girl and she told me over
cookies about how a hit man she knew got killed!”

“But she left out the part about how she’s the
one that killed him. That’s progress.”

“That’s scary.”

Delilah leaned in close, pressing herself
against him. “It could be worse?”

“How?”

“They could all be normals.”

He let that sink in. Then he raised an eyebrow.
“They’re
all
superheroes?”

“Mostly villains, but a few of them are heroes.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Come on, isn’t this better? They
all know how you feel. They all know what it’s like to not be like
everyone else. You’ll have someone to sit with and discuss chasing
criminals, or having a secret identity. How many in-laws could you
do that with?”

Alan held her tightly. “And what happens if they
don’t like me?”

“Why wouldn’t they like you?” She squeezed him.
“You aren’t six any more. No one is taking you away from me. If
this is too much, we can go do Christmas by ourselves somewhere
else. We can find a hotel, or fly back to Chicago.”

Visions of Christmas alone flashed through his
mind, followed by images of what he and Delilah could get up to
alone. He swallowed again. But… She’d brought him to meet the
family. That had to count for something, didn’t it? “We can stay,”
he said at last. “I want to meet your family. Really. I just wasn’t
prepared for this. Flat tires don’t usually lead to your future
mother-in-law interrogating you.”

“Mother-in-law?” Delilah laughed. “Aren’t we
skipping a few steps?”

He blushed. “Potential mother-in-law. Mother of
the woman I am dating. You know what I mean.”

She kissed him gently. “Come back inside and I
promise not to tease you about that slip up too much.”

He took her hand, holding it just a little more
tightly that he should have. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

To: Delilah

With Love: Alan

Delilah curled her legs up on the big comfy
chair and watched Alan ease into the deep waters of Smith family
living. He’d lost the deer-in-the-headlights look over dinner and
was playing video games with the younger boys. Now all he had to do
was defrost enough to talk to her sisters.

Maria collapsed in the sofa beside her. “Do you
know how hard it is to lose an election?”

“Apropos of nothing,” Delilah murmured toying
with the necklace Alan had given her for Christmas. “No. Is that
where you’ve been?”

“Yes! And it’s not going well.”

“Does it concern a certain superhero who thinks
he’s a god?”

Maria scowled at the ceiling. “I’m not answering
that.”