A grin sneaked across her mouth. “Well, they say there’s a first time for everything.”
“Hey, there’s the town sign,” Elliston said, his laughter filling the car.
“Did you think I made the name up?” Della asked.
“Well…”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Welcome to Outback, Mr. McElroy. Don’t ever say I didn’t try to save your fine ass from this.”
“Don’t be giving me grief, Dellaphina. It was just a couple of beers.”
Della glared at her father. “Yeah, but how many bourbon shots did you do before you drank those couple of beers?”
Her father turned to Elliston who was holding him up. “My Dellaphina always was the smart one in the family. Took after her daddy in nearly every way a child could.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure she did. And I agree with you about her being smart. Della got her doctorate this week.”
Her father turned to stare at her. “You got another degree? Didn't you have enough education already? Now that’s some funny stuff right there. Why aren’t you laughing, girl?”
Della rolled her eyes and tried not to be hurt. It was bad enough Elliston had to deal with her drunk father. Now he knew exactly what they thought of her. “Dad, you’re starting to sound like Mom. I will leave you here if you start talking bad about my career. She’s going to be mad enough when she smells the beer on your breath.”
“A person has to cut loose now and again. And work ain’t everything, Della girl.”
Elliston looked at Della who seemed oblivious to her father’s drunken ramblings about her sister being the last one to marry. He was starting to think Della was invisible to them.
“I never said my work was everything, Daddy, but I like what I do.”
He nodded and then lifted his chin in Elliston’s direction. “You like him too, I reckon.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Della answered.
“Did you know he has green hair and tattoos?”
“Why do you think I picked him out? I like my men to be colorful.”
“Now you’re just being cheeky,” her father said. “And I see you’re driving your foreign car today. You still too good for a Ford?”
“My ‘foreign car’ was made in Indiana. We’ve had this discussion before and you lost last time too,” Della warned.
Elliston grinned when Della giggled and opened the back door of her Honda. “Get your big old Livingston butt into my foreign car and stop nagging me. And do not fall over into Annie’s desserts. You lean against the door once it’s closed.”
“Looks like me. Bosses like her mother,” he said with a grumble but climbed inside.
When the door closed behind him, Della stared at a grinning Elliston. “How about you drop me off at the rehearsal hall and take my car back to Cincinnati? You can come pick me up on Sunday. The address is in the GPS. I’m great at making excuses. We’ll say you had a work emergency.”
Elliston crossed his tattooed arms and narrowed his eyes. “The only emergency I see happening is that your family doesn’t respect you or your achievements.”
Della snorted. “Oh, that’s the least of it. The disrespect is just getting started.”
Elliston reached out, grabbed her by the front of her dress, and yanked her to him. “It takes a lot to be the person you were meant to be, especially when you don’t have all that many people in your corner. I admire you for what you’ve made of yourself, Dr. Livingston. Your kind of personal confidence is very inspiring to me… and it makes me want you even more.”
Della glanced at her dad’s head against the car window. “He can probably hear you propositioning me.”
“Let him hear,” Elliston said, completely unconcerned. “Your father and I are going to reach an understanding about you as soon as he’s sober. Are you disappointed that he didn’t have a bigger reaction to the way I look?”
Della giggled. “Not at all. It wasn’t for his benefit.”
Elliston turned her loose even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. “Okay then. Let’s go shock your mother and sisters.”
Della rose to her toes and gave him a quick kiss. “My hero.”
“Or villain. That’s what your father thinks about me right now.”
“And I find that amusing which is why I’m able to deal with this farce.”
Della laughed as they climbed back into the car. She pulled out of the VFW gravel lot carefully and waved at the local sheriff who’d watched her and Elliston load her more than tipsy father into the car.
“What’s your name again, son? I don’t think I caught it before,” her father asked quietly from the backseat.
“Elliston McElroy.”
“McElroy. You a Scott?” he asked.
Elliston chuckled. “Somewhere in my ancestry. My father’s family came from Scotland.”
“Most everyone in Kentucky is a Scot or Irish or mix of the two.”
“Yes, sir. My family has lived in Cincinnati for a couple of generations, but my great-grandfather McElroy used to live across the river.”
“Cincy is a big city. What do you do for a living there?”
“I own my own business now. I…” Elliston thought about how to describe what he did. He settled for super simple. “I work with computers. I help other people use them in their businesses.”
“Never owned one. My cousin Frank does what he calls ‘tech support’ for just about the whole town of Outback. Pays well enough I guess. He buys a new car every few years.”
Elliston reached over and put a hand on Della’s thigh to keep her from telling her father to shut up. “I do okay too. Got my own car and house. My work pays the bills, and like Della, I like what I do.”
Della’s leg relaxed under his hand. He rubbed it for a moment, lost in how nice it felt. One day soon he was going to get his hands on her the way he wanted.
“Where did you two meet?” her father asked.
“At the dating service where Della works. I was a client. Della used to help me find women to date. I didn't have much luck on my own.”
Her father laughed. “Did you ever think the green hair and tattoos might have put a few of them off?”
Elliston laughed back. “It didn’t put your daughter off. Della likes the way I look. I figure she’s the one that counts.”
“Yeah, got to keep your woman happy. Guess you match her Cleopatra look. You know her mother pitches a fit every time she sees Della made up that way. Those two have been fighting since Dellaphina was born.”
“Daddy…”
“Hush, girl. You brought him here to meet us and I’m making conversation. The boy needs to be warned of a few things—one of them being your mother.”
“I’ll handle Mom.”
“Until your sisters gang up to help her irritate the living daylights out of you,” her father said.
“Nobody is going to pick on Elliston. I won’t let them.”
“So it’s like that, is it?” her father asked.
Della snuck a glance at a grinning Elliston. She wished he’d put his hand back on her thigh. “Yes. It’s like that.”
“Well, about time you settled down a bit. A couple more years and you’ll be past your prime,” her father said, then promptly fell asleep.
His snoring from the back seat had Elliston covering his mouth with his hand again.
“Past your prime? At thirty?” he whispered.
“Go ahead and laugh, Geek Boy. I told you Bert and Joyce were a piece of cake.”
“Are you sure these people are your family?” Elliston asked.
“You know… I ask myself that question all the time,” Della said, navigating the darkening streets of Outback.
Chapter Ten
“If you want to have a front row seat for my entrance, you better walk your father inside first,” Elliston said, helping her bleary-eyed, still tipsy father from the car.
Della put her hands on her hips and glared at her father. “See the trouble you’re
causing me?”
“Sounds like you’re the one making trouble,” her father replied, grinning as she looped an arm around his waist. He turned and winked at Elliston. “Watch yourself, boy.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Elliston said.
“You look sixteen,” her father retorted.
“I’ll bring in the dessert,” Elliston said, rolling his eyes.
He watched as Della navigated a man not much taller than she was. He found himself wondering how often she’d had to do such a thing.
He waited five minutes, and then retrieved the dessert from the car’s backseat. There were two sealed containers, already stacked and ready to carry. He headed to the big double doors and backed through them using his body to pry them open.
When he walked into the room, no one even looked his way. All eyes were glued to Della trying to put her drunk father into a chair.
“Carlisle Livingston, are you drunk?”
This question came from a fairly tall woman with extremely large breasts.
“Dellaphina, how could you let your father get drunk today of all days?”
Elliston nearly burst out laughing when Della’s head snapped up. Fire was practically shooting out of her eyes as she glared. That could only mean one thing.
Reaching out, he tapped the big-breasted woman’s shoulder. “Mrs. Livingston? Where would you like me to put dessert?” He thought of a few places to suggest to the contrary woman, but Della looked at him in alarm as if she’d read his mind. Maybe she had.
So instead, Elliston smiled. “Hi. I’m Elliston McElroy—Della’s boyfriend.”
“Oh my god,” Della’s mother said, not even bothering to be polite as she looked him over from head to toe.
Now he understood his role. “Dessert?” Elliston reminded her, lifting the containers in the air. “Della promised Annie she’d get it here unscathed.”
“Un-what?” her mother asked.
The room had gotten so quiet, he actually heard Della’s father laughing from across the room.
Before he could repeat his comment, Elliston found himself surrounded by three younger blondes, all with equally large breasts. One scooped the dessert from his hands and giggled. She sounded like Della too.
“Hi, Elliston. I’m Josephina. Let me put that on the table for you.”
“Right. Josephina,” Elliston said, looking for something to associate her with her name. It was the way he remembered people.
Nothing stood out but the obvious and those were traits Josephina shared with the three other blonde women in the room.
One rubbed her face on the sleeve of his shirt. “Hi. I’m Irena. Don’t mind me if I start acting like Daddy. I’m taking medicine for baby sickness. It makes me a little loopy, but at least I won’t barf on your shoes.”
“Irena, you can turn loose of him any time now,” some guy said from behind him.
Elliston turned his head and grinned up at the guy—like three inches up. “Thanks, bro.” The guy snorted and did not grin back.
“Don’t mind our craziness,” another blonde said sweetly, brushing her left boob against his arm as she leaned closer. “I’m Martina. I’m the one Della hung up on in the car earlier.”
Even through the blonde suffocation, Elliston heard Della’s father saying “Leave me be and go help your fella.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd when Della came charging over. She pushed apart two giant men with little or no effort, but then Elliston already knew she was strong. All that rowing at the gym… and it certainly explained the thigh he’d copped a feel of earlier.
“Move,” Della yelled. The men laughed and one pushed on her arm. She turned a glare his direction. “I kicked your butt every day in the fourth grade, Larry Sternum. Don’t make me embarrass you in front of my sister.”
“Go ahead. Embarrass him,” Josephina yelled, laughing afterward.
All Elliston could think was that they all sounded just like Della… but boy, they sure didn’t look the same. Just like she’d been among Bert’s people, Della Livingston was a black swan in a family of white ones—or blonde at least.
His eyes went across the room to her father who was drinking a glass of something and smiling wide.
When Della reached him, she stopped and crossed her arms. “Martina, get your boob off my boyfriend’s arm.”
“Or what, Dellaphina?” Martina asked, laughing.
“Gary, you better come get your wife before she loses all the hair on her stupid, blonde head.”
Elliston stared in fascination as a guy bigger than Brad the trainer walked over and dragged a giggling Martina away. When she squealed in protest, the big guy picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. His only thought while he watched? Della’s family was crazier than even Della had managed to convey.
Della reached out a hand and Elliston took it the way a drowning person grabs onto a life preserver. She swung a glare in the direction of the crowd. He recognized the determination in it from their argument in Tennessee.
“Listen up you Outback yahoos that I’m unfortunately related to. Elliston is my date this weekend and that means he’s off-limits to your shenanigans. If I catch any of you giving him a hard time, the butt-kickings will commence until the Livingstons look like they’ve become extras in a fight club movie. Do you hear me? And I know where you live.”
Elliston looked down the three inches he had on Della in her flats and had to fight not to grin at her yelling. Her next announcement startled him into flinching. Laughter rippled through the men while the women looked on in stunned shock.
“And my threat goes double for all the blonde bimbos in the room. I will not cut Irena any slack for being pregnant either. None of you even called me when I got my degree this week. I see no reason to even be here at this dog and pony show. I shouldn’t have to suffer your craziness just because Irena and Marshall decided to start replicating before they tied the knot.”
“Replicating? Is that like fornicating?”
Elliston didn’t see who questioned Della’s politically correct term, but he saw Josephina smack the guy standing beside her. It was all he could stand. His belly laughter rang out across the room. Della looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had.
“I’m going to have to marry you if you keep defending me.”
“You’re to going to have to do what?” Della yelled up at him.
Not turning loose of her fingers until he had her tight in his arms, Elliston swung Della up and spun her in a circle as the Livingstons broke out in laughter. The guys clapped and the women cheered. A medicated Irena kept yelling for Della to “get her some of that” which under normal conditions would have made him blush. Luckily his system was too overwhelmed to suffer something as mild as embarrassment.
“This is the most fun I think I’ve ever had at a wedding in my life,” Elliston said, whispering the words in her ear. Della was stiff as a board in his arms.
“I hate these people,” she said. “I really, really hate these people. This is why I try never to come here.”
Elliston set her back down and swept a hand through her dark hair that he bet was the color of her father’s when she wasn’t changing it. He ended his soothing by cupping her cheek. “They might be crazy, but they seem to love you in their own strange kind of way. I think I like them—well, some of them—okay, maybe one or two.”
It took a full thirty seconds, but Della finally relaxed in his arms and laughed. “You’re just being nice to me because they’re being so awful.”
“Maybe.” When she went to pull away, Elliston didn’t let her. “Don’t run away yet. There’s one more thing,” he said, bringing his mouth to hers.
Her shock at his kiss kept her from responding at first, and then suddenly Della was wrapped around him like a snake. His smile when he lifted his head was for her alone.
“That wasn’t just for your family’s sake. I’ve been wanting to do that for the last four and a half interminably long hours.”
Della’s genuine giggle was music to his ears.
“Turn her loose, son, and come eat,” he heard Della’s father yell.
“Yes, sir,” Elliston yelled back, letting his fingers slide back down to link with Della’s.
How she’d turned out like she had was a modern miracle. Not that Della’s family was as bad as she thought. His own cousins were just about as nuts. His Uncle John’s son was just now settling down.
Mostly he avoided his extended family for years at a time, but he could see that wasn’t going to be possible for Della. She was always going to be the oldest sister. She was going to be summoned regularly for weddings, funerals, and childbirth—at the very least. Any man taking Della on would have to deal with her kin. Was he crazy for wanting to try?
He looked at Della. “Can we try that kiss later maybe without your clapping family? The only approval I really care about is yours. We’ve given them enough of a show.”
Her mute nod had his smile spreading. He raised his head to see her father toasting him with his glass. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Eleven
His duffle was slung over his shoulder as he looked around the enormous house in shock. It was their accent and their speech. He’d fallen for the stereotype.
“Della, your parents live in a mansion.”
Della shrugged and pulled him forward. “There were six of us and two sets of grandparents in residence most of the time I was growing up. In Outback, we just call this a big house.”
Elliston laughed. “It’s more than a big house. I saw four garages.”
“Those aren’t garages. Those are Daddy’s work areas. He builds race cars.”
“Your father builds race cars?”
“He’s got an Engineering degree from college. My mother was a Home Economics major. That was the major a woman used to pick when her family made her go to college even when she didn’t want to.” Della opened a door. “This is where they wanted you to sleep.”
Elliston peered in at a sea of pink. “Whose room is this?”
“Martina’s. She was a cheerleader. Her husband was on the football team. Now he coaches. If you slept in here, you’d be staring at her and her pink pom-poms all night.”
Never Be Her Hero Page 9
