CHAPTER IX - Worried Parents

Author's Note: full credits to Quillbot for Brandon’s nickname in the chapter.

Brandon Cole was basically a shitstorm of nerves as he and Alice Phillips watched Horace Castle talk to the newly-arrived Robert Ravers. After spotting his parents on the premises, the young man simply couldn’t relax, and was constantly looking over his shoulders to see if they weren’t in a position they could see him. Or worse, his father seeing Madison and making a scene. He had Alice tell Zack through the comms to warn his sister, but the way she was still parading herself next to the guy, he wasn’t sure if the message had been passed along.

“Dammit!” Alice cursed. “Mr. Ravers is here and I can’t even warn Zack. I think he turned off his comms now that the game has started.”

“This is the least of our problems,” Brandon replied. “Mr. Ravers is pretty cool, him being here will probably help us, even.”

The brunette took notice of how nervous he looked and her expression softened. “Relax, Brandon,” she patiently said. “You won’t bump into your parents if we’re careful.”

“Yeah, but Maddie’s up there on that table with Zack, and that’s what I’m worried about,” the school quarterback whined, his mind racing as he tried to find a solution to the problem. Taking a deep breath, just as he would before a football game, he got his nerves a little bit under control. “So, what do we do now? Keep tailing Mr. Castle?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Alice responded, even if she seemed kind of unsure. “He seems to be with Mr. Ravers, so I guess he’s not that suspicious?”

“Hey, suspecting him was a valid point,” he tried to cheer her up this time. “He does look kinda dodgy.”

That earned him a brief laugh from the reporter, a sound Brandon decided he thoroughly enjoyed, just like the sight of her amused smile.

“We could always just try and enjoy the party,” he risked, entranced by the green in her eyes. “Keep an ear out for things.”

“While avoiding your folks like hell?” She snickered.

“While avoiding my folks like hell,” he let out a chuckle. It had been a while since he felt free to laugh with a girl like that. After what happened in his freshman year, Brandon had been taking it easy when it came to trusting girls. Alice wasn’t like the others, though, he knew that.

The smile on the petite brunette’s face began widening, but then her eyes almost bulged out of her skull. “Crap, your mother!” She whispered frantically.

Brandon’s heart leaped to his throat, his head darting in every direction until Alice pulled him into a corner to take him out of Vanessa Austen’s path. They weren’t out of danger’s way yet, though.

“Is she gone?” He whispered, feeling the warmth of her firm body all pressed up to him, her medium-sized breasts lightly squashing on his chest.

Alice stifled a moan at the sensation of his bulge rubbing against her belly. “No, she’s gonna see us!” She replied, urgently.

“Fuck! What do we do?!” Brandon began hyperventilating. “She can’t see me here, Alice!”

Alice’s heart beat faster and then she did the only thing she could do, a fantasy that fleetingly visited her mind a few times after she interviewed Brandon Cole for the school paper. She reached up to the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers, their lips meeting in a lustful kiss. If his mother didn’t see his face, maybe she wouldn’t notice a random couple making out by a corner.

Instinct took over and Brandon kissed her back just as intensely, backing the shorter girl against the wall as her fingers tangled in his hair. His own hands squeezed her waist through the dress, the left one snaking toward the small of her back and pulling her lower body against his bulge, this time making Alice moan into the kiss. An interruption almost made Brandon turn into a ghost, though.

“Brandon? Is that you?” His mother’s familiar voice inquired, and he could hear the disbelief in it. “What are you doing here?”

Brandon reluctantly broke the kiss and slowly turned around, missing how flushed Alice’s cheeks were as she tried to regain her breath. “Uhn…, hi, Mom,” a **** smile made its way to his face.

Vanessa Austen was a very beautiful woman of forty-one, with wavy, very dark-brown hair falling down her shoulders, freckles doting her milky skin, and curious green eyes. A lot of people said Madison took after her in looks. Right now, the restaurant-owner was wearing a dark green dress around her shapely body that left just the very top of her medium-sized cleavage on display.

“Brandon, not that you don’t look really nice,” the worried mother took in her son’s attire. “But…, what did you come here for? I wasn’t even…,” she shifted her gaze to Alice and a smile reached her lips, making her even more gorgeous. “Aware you were dating.”

“Uhn… she’s no…”

“We’re dating, Mrs. Austen,” Alice interrupted with a chuckle, thinking fast as usual. “Brandon wanted to take me somewhere nice, and you know how your son exaggerates when he wants to.”

Vanessa turned back to her son, who looked like a lamp had just lit up above his head. “Oh, yeah! We’re dating, Mom. You know her, Maddie’s friend and all,” his arm wrapped around Alice’s waist once more. “It’s just too new, that’s why I didn’t say anything to you.”

“Oookaay,” Vanessa slowly nodded with a curious frown, but then she smiled again. “Brandon, you should tell me about those things. This tux and coming here must’ve cost a small fortune. How long have you been saving up your allowances?”

“Oh, a lot,” he dumbly nodded, just going along with the motions.

“That’s why I adore your son, Mrs. Austen, he always goes far and beyond for what he wants,” Alice said, standing on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek that actually made Brandon blush.

“Just… don’t tell Dad, okay, Mom?” Brandon tentatively asked. “You know how weird he is with those things. I wanna tell him myself.”

Vanessa laughed. “Oh, okay, my lips are sealed,” she observed them with a proud smile. “I must say you two make a very cute couple, Branmuffin.”

“Mom! Please, not in front of A… my girlfriend,” Brandon complained about the use of his old childhood nickname that he found very embarrassing nowadays.

“I think it’s time for us to go, Bran,” Alice nudged him. “Let your mom go back to your father and enjoy their night.”

“That’s gonna be a little hard, honey,” Vanessa sighed, turning to her son. “Your dad’s here to make some connections, you know he was talking about buying a dealership in Sunrise Hills. I hoped the night would be relaxing and pleasant, but Waldon’s just driving me insane,” she recounted. “That’s why I was wandering here, getting some… air.”

“Oh, that sucks to hear, Mom,” Brandon lamented. “Dad just has his head stuck in work sometimes.”

“But don’t worry about that tonight,” the older woman grinned. “You and Alice just go enjoy yourselves.”

Brandon nodded and his mother leaned in to give a quick kiss on his cheek before she waved at them and walked away. Releasing a deep breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding, the young man turned to Alice with a small grin. “Sooo…, we’re dating, huh?”

Alice giggled and then reached up to wipe some invisible dirt from his chest. “Oh, hold your horses, Mr. Quarterback, you gotta ask me on a date first.”

The black-haired boy’s grin turned into a full-blown smile, it looked like at least something good would come out of that cursed night.

Taylor Ravers was cautiously wandering the ballroom as she noticed that her little brother and her best friend were about to start playing in the poker tournament. The black bunny suit didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would, but it definitely was something she would never wear on another occasion that wasn’t helping her family avoid a potential scandal. She mentally chastised her parents for it, even though she knew that college was a tempting time in someone’s life. Hannah made it her mission to remind her of that almost every day.

What the tall brunette certainly wasn’t enjoying were the looks she was getting from men since the moment she set foot in the ballroom. The older men almost drooling at the sight of her were starting to annoy the heiress greatly. She could only imagine how poor Chloe was feeling, and she made it a point of asking the younger girl.

“Are you okay, Chloe?” She softly inquired. Taylor didn’t know her that well like Zack or Heather’s friends, as she was her cousin Paris’ best friend, but she still cared about the redhead. “If you think this is too much, you can go join Logan in the van. No one’s gonna think less of you for it.”

“I think I’m… fine,” Chloe responded, blushing at the way her quite large, freckled breasts got squished and pushed inside of her white bunny costume. If the redhead was a bit younger and still terribly afraid of her own body, she would never have worn it, but she kind of got over it during high school with some help from her friends in the soccer team. Still, these clothes were something she had only seen in the porn videos Chloe enjoyed in the secrecy of her room at night. “It’s just a little too tight, is all.”

Taylor smiled. “I bet. Heather’s probably struggling a little with it too,” she commented, but then remembered she was talking about her oversexed sister. “But then again, she might enjoy it a little too much.”

Chloe let out a little laugh. Yes, Paris was always complaining about her cousin.

“Just try and hang in there,” Taylor kindly said, her hand squeezing the younger girl’s shoulders. “Hopefully, it’ll all be over soon.” Truth be told, she would have liked to play a more active role in this operation. Leaving everything to her younger siblings and their friends didn’t sit too well with Taylor.

Speaking about family, her heart skipped a beat when she caught sight of her father roaming the ballroom, getting dangerously close to her position. She had been warned about his presence through the comms, but was hoping to avoid a meeting. Making a quick decision, she turned to Chloe and asked her to wait near the poker table before making her way over to Robert.

Robert had decided to look for his daughters before doing anything else, but he wasn’t expecting one to come to him. More specifically, he wasn’t expecting to see his eldest, usually so reserved and ‘normal’, walking up to him in a ravishingly sexy black bunny suit, as if she was a Playboy Bunny of old. His massive cock involuntarily throbbed painfully in his pants.

“Hi, Dad,” the 21-year-old shyly greeted, one hand idly scratching an arm.

“T-taylor? But… what?” In a rare case of being left speechless by something. Robert instantly understood what Horace meant earlier.

“It’s just a cover,” she told him when they got into whispering range, her raspy tone dealing another helping of fuel to Robert’s rampaging sex drive. “I assume you already know why we are all here.”

“The tape,” Robert sighed, quickly finding a chair and sinking on it. Unconsciously, he pulled his daughter to sit on his lap, sideways over his right leg. He masked a more visible reaction when her firm butt landed on his leg. A common gesture at home, it now could be seen as a completely different thing for anyone who happened to be looking. “Do you know what’s in it, Tay?”

The young woman nodded, wrapping an arm around her father’s broad shoulders to balance herself. “I won’t judge you and Mom, you were young, in college and all that crap,” she softly said. “We gotta stop those guys, though, that’s why we’re here.”

“Thank you, you and your mother have always been the most centered ones in the family,” Robert grinned, his arm tightening around her slim waist. His heart, brain, and cock were in **** turmoil, he always found his daughters sexy, but Taylor had forever been Daddy’s Girl, and he always respected that line, almost unconsciously. Seeing her in this scandalous outfit, though, Robert’s resolve was eroding quickly. If he and Monica had a strictly monogamous relationship, his mind wouldn’t even have gone there, but considering some of the things they got up to at times, yeah, it was hard. In more ways than one. “Taylor, listen to me. It’d be hypocritical of me to tell you all to go home, but promise me you’ll be careful,” he looked deeply into her eyes, icy-blue like her mother’s. The faint dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks drove him crazy. “Those guys are dangerous criminals, they won’t hesitate hurting you if they suspect something. I’m gonna buy this tape in the auction and everything’s gonna be alright.”

Taylor lightly bit her bottom lip, a motion that made Robert stifle a groan. She decided not to tell him that her sister was leading a side operation to try and find the mobsters’ office and steal the tape before the auction. He would only get more worried and could put the entire thing they were doing at risk. She smiled at him, fighting the urge to give him a hug. His over-the-top proclivities aside, her father had always been the standard of what a man should be in her eyes. Both in personality and his outrageously good looks. Yes, Taylor had never been afraid to admit she found her father to be the most handsome man she had ever seen.

“Okay, but you take care too, Dad,” she recommended. “You’re kind of famous, and I think those guys might very well already know you’re here.”

“Well, that’s inevitable, I guess,” Robert sighed, his gaze shifting to the poker table. “What’s your brother’s angle? That’s a lot of girls with him,” he caught sight of his son’s girlfriend, plus Damon’s and Vanessa’s daughters.

Taylor giggled in amusement. “This was their idea, make Zack act as… well, you, and see what he could learn by listening to other players.”

Robert laughed good-naturedly at the comparison. Monica would have loved to see their boy so at ease in the company of so many girls. It definitely made him proud. He idly wondered how Zack was faring in the game, his son had a look of deep concentration in his face.