I tried to spread the material back out. “Gramma,” I chided.
She hiked a shoulder. “What? If you’ve got it, flaunt it, and girl, you’ve got it. You come from a long line of beautiful women. Don’t you know that?”
There was a gleam in her eyes.
Light laughter filtered free. “I know, I’ve seen pictures of you. You were a knockout.”
“Pssh.” She waved her hand. “What are you talking about, was? I am a knockout. You should see all the men fighting for me down at the bingo hall.”
“Do I need to come down there and whip them into shape? Tell them to back off?”
As if the spitfire needed the backup.
“God no. Best night of the week.”
I shook my head at her, then winced when she dabbed the cloth on my knee, the cut there a little deeper than the rest.
“You definitely need to get some medicine and bandages on this one. You’re lucky you don’t need stitches.”
She glanced up at me from where she was bent down to inspect my injured leg. “So, if it wasn’t that two-bit, no-good jackass who likes to pretend he’s a man when he’s nothin’ but a snake slithering up behind you, who was it that sent my girl running?”
My insides shivered, rushed with the remnants of that strange energy. I still didn’t know what to make of it. I released a heavy sigh. “It was no one.”
She cocked a questioning brow. As if she’d climbed right into my head and sifted through every single one of my thoughts.
No doubt, she already knew there was something I wasn’t telling her. That was the problem when you spent your entire life living with a woman like her. She knew you inside out and right back out again.
Hell, she usually knew what I was going to say before I ever had the chance to say it.
I huffed and tried not to roll my eyes. She’d been doing this to me since I was thirteen. “Fine. It was a boy.”
A menacing, terrifying, beautiful boy.
And there was nothing boy about him. He was all tall, firm, delicious man.
“Running from a boy?” She tsked with a grin, dabbing a little more at the cut. “He’d better have been a cute boy to make a cut like this worth it.”
There she was, reading my thoughts again. The sneak.
“No, Gramma, he was most definitely not worth it. He’s just like the rest.”
Selfish.
Arrogant.
Cocky and brash and after one thing.
It didn’t matter how gorgeous or sexy he was. How my body had lit up with just the brush of our skin.
He was dangerous.
I knew it somewhere deep.
“Besides, you know I can’t go doing something so foolish as that,” I continued. “There’s too much on the line.”
“We all deserve to be loved,” she told me.
“I think I have more important things to worry about right now than getting wound up in the arms of another man.”
One day, I’d find it. Someone to love me the way she was talking about. Someone who would put me before themselves just the same way as I’d do for them.
“Besides, it was just one of those chance encounters. I won’t ever see him again. It was nothing.”
She stepped back, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she studied me. Then she reached out and nudged me under the chin, lifting it. “All in good time, sweet thing. It’ll fall into place. You’ll see.”
I gave her a nod.
“You’d better get some rest. Lord knows, I’m worn out.”
The hint of a smile worked its way to my mouth. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. It’s my honor. Nothing could make an old lady happier. Believe me.”
She touched my cheek again before she left me there, shuffling off to her bed.
Sighing, I pushed to my feet and moved toward the opposite side of the house, walking down the short hall that led to the small room that had been mine growing up.
I grabbed a fresh pair of pajamas and underwear and went across the hall to the bathroom where I turned on the shower. Steam filled the room, and I stripped myself of the dress. I balled it up, the satiny material nothing but a shredded rag, stained with oil and dirt and blood.
I tossed it into the trash.
I stepped into the close to scalding water and prayed it’d have the power to wash away the strain. To soothe away the sting that didn’t have a whole lot to do with the scrapes on my hands and knees. That tomorrow I’d wake and be restored with energy to do this all over again.
I washed my hair and then squirted a bunch of my favorite body wash onto the loofa, and washed away the disappointing night.
I wasn’t giving up.
Not even close.
I dried, dressed, put a bandage on my knee before I stepped back into the hall, slowing as I got to the last door on the left. I pushed open the door a crack, letting the hall light flood into the room.
My heart swelled.
So intense I felt affection crashing over me. Washing me away. Taking me under. Surrounded by the overpowering swell of it, breath stolen, chest full.
Tiptoeing inside, I moved to the right to the portable crib where Sophie slept on her belly, her little butt in the air, her thumb in her mouth and her cheeks all rosy sweetness. She was almost too big for the small crib, her second birthday coming up faster than I could comprehend.
Reaching inside, I splayed my fingers through the short locks of her blonde, curly hair, so pale it was almost white, that hope burning inside turning into a brilliant burst of love.
Quietly, I straightened and headed for the toddler bed that rested on the same wall. Without making a sound, I dropped to my knees at the side of it, leaning down to nuzzle my nose into Mallory’s soft cheek.
Breathing her in.
My sweet, smart girl. She stirred, and I cringed, hating that I’d woken her. But I just needed the reassurance, to kiss my babies good night before I could fall asleep myself.
Her blue eyes blinked open, and she grinned when she saw me kneeling at her side. She hustled to sit up, pushing the mass of bed-head out of her face with both hands, way too much excitement for after midnight. “Are you still the prettiest princess ever?”
The child pulled the softest laugh out of me, her awed sweetness my own inspiration. I brushed my fingers down the side of her face, that spot inside blazing so bright I didn’t know how it wasn’t lighting up the entire room.
She’d insisted her momma was an actual princess when I’d been getting ready, the child’s mind so full of fanciful things that I wondered if I didn’t feed too many of them into her ears.
But I loved that she looked on the world as if each second held a new wonder. A new promise and a new hope and a new adventure to hold. That was what I told her when she’d wanted to know where I was going . . . on an adventure to a ballroom dance.
She’d asked if I was going to meet Prince Charming.
Not even close.
“No, Mal Pal, I’m just regular old Momma.”
The tattered dress I’d tossed into the garbage and my throbbing knee were proof of that.
“Did you dance like a ballerina? I bet you were the prettiest princess there. I know it. Grams said you were gettin’ ready to knock some boys off their feet. Did you do some knockin’?”
A spurt of laughter almost made its way out. I bit it back.
“I think Grams was telling you stories.”
Her eyes lit up. “Storytime is my favorite,” she said in her sweet way, a little drawl and a lot overemphasized and sprinkled with a dash of sass. As if every word was of the upmost importance.
“Grams read two whole stories, and I read one, but it was really hard, and Thomas said I didn’t know half the words. I think he was way wrong. I think I got more like . . . two-thirds. Two-thirds is good, right?”
I swore, the little thing slayed me. So danged adorable, the child larger than life, always so excited to take on the world and make it hers.
“Two-thirds is great,” I promised.
“Next time, I’ll get a hundred.”
From the side, I felt movement. I should have known when I’d sneaked in that I’d end up waking the whole room. But there was my Thomas, looking rumpled and tired as he slowly sat up at the edge of his bed.