Page 28 of Tito

Tito

Iset the 300-dollar bottle of scotch down beside my chair and took a seat. “Where’s Braxton?”

Hap rocked his chair onto the rear legs and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Hasn’t made it yet.”

“I can see that.” I chuckled. “I was wondering where he was. He’s normally here by now.”

“He keeps his whereabouts a secret.” He glanced at the bottle of scotch and then whistled through his teeth. “That’s a 300-dollar bottle of scotch.”

“I’m well aware.”

“He’s never wrong,” he said dismissively. “You should remember that when betting against him.”

“No one is right 100 percent of the time,” I argued.

“He is. At least when he offers to make a bet.” He dropped his chair onto all four legs. Following a moment of what appeared to be deep thought, he looked at me. “Can’t recall that he’s ever lost one, really.”

“Now’s a fine time to tell me.”

He laughed. “Couldn’t get a word in edgewise the other day. You two were bickering like an old married couple.”

“We weren’t bickering.”

He lowered his chin slightly. “You’ve been in a piss-poor mood since you lost that hat. You were bickering.”

“We were having a discussion.”

His look went stolid. “It’s high time you and I had a discussion.”

I raised my brows in wonder. “About?”

“About the fact that my lips are parched.” He nodded toward the cooler and grinned. “Pass me a beer, Kid.”

I handed him a bottle of beer. “Drink too many of those things, and you might end up losing your physique. A guy’s got to watch it at your age.”

He glared. “It’s fucking noon.” After a lengthy stare, he twisted off the cap and threw it at me. “I’m not a lush. I’ve got a one-day a week relationship with beer. When you get to be my age, you’ve got to watch several things. One is carb intake, and that’s why I drink Ultra. The other is having snot-nosed neighbor kids coming over and raising my blood pressure.”

I reached in the cooler and retrieved a cold beverage. “At my age, I can drink as many of these things as I—”

“Save it, smart ass,” he said with a wave of his hand. “What I want to hear is how you came about buying that high-dollar bottle of scotch. That gal wanted your wiener and that’s it, huh? She was using you, just like Brax said.”

“I don’t have a wiener.”

“Prick, willie, pecker, schlong, dong. Call it whatever you want to call it.”

I took a drink. “Cock.”

His brows pinched together. “That’s kind of brash, isn’t it? Cock? Sounds like a term out of a porno movie. ‘Hey lady. Why don’t you grab a fistful of my big cock?’ Hell, that sounds rude. You don’t really call it your cock in front of women, do you?”

I thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged. “I really don’t call it anything in front of women.”

The unmistakable sound of Braxton’s SUV accelerating from a stop warned of his arrival. Hap nodded toward the street. “There’s Brax now. We’ll ask him what he thinks about this.”

“We don’t need to ask him—”

“We’re a family, goddamn it,” he snapped. “If we can’t talk about matters openly, they’ll end up eating us up inside.”

“Nothing’s eating me up inside,” I insisted. “And, we don’t have a matter to discuss.”