Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Because it was so damned sweet.
This, obviously, was my thought when we stopped at a door where the security latch was flipped so the door wouldn’t fully close.
But Dair still knocked and waited for his mother’s, “Come in,” before he pushed it and guided us in.
And there Kenna was.
When I got older, and menopause put an extra twenty pounds on me, I wanted to look like her.
Bright, summery shirtdress with a same-material tie belt and three-quarter sleeves, accompanied by lovely Chloé ballet flats in blush.
Her gorgeous hair was in a side pony. Her makeup was understated.
She’d given up contacts years ago, and now she wore cute, thin-framed, cat’s-eye glasses.
Okay, so her eyes were a bit puffy, as they would be.
But she was standing, back straight, totally put together, staring out the window, sipping tea when we arrived.
She turned to us.
And I wondered what the hell was wrong with Bally.
This woman was everything.
“Och, Blake,” she greeted me with a small smile, setting aside her teacup in its saucer and holding both hands out to me.
I went to her, set my own cup aside and took her hands.
“Ye did beautifully yesterday, me bonny lass,” she said.
Proof.
She’d always been so kind to me.
“Thanks, Kenna,” I replied.
Okay.
Now what?
God, this was hard.
“How are you hanging in there?” I decided to ask on a squeeze of hands.
“Och, ye ken,” she said, letting me go and turning to her son.
Boy, did I ken.
I watched as Dair bent to kiss his mother’s cheek and I got pissed at how warm watching it made my belly feel.
So when his eyes came to me after he straightened, his lips twitched, like they always did when he caught me glaring at him. Like he thought it was funny that I thought he was insufferable, even when he wasn’t being that at all.
“Help yourselves to food,” Kenna invited with a vague wave toward a veritable breakfast smorgasbord laid out on her coffee table. “Who kens when Davina will rouse herself.”
“We already had croissants so Blake could soak up the bottle and a half of vodka she consumed last night,” Dair said, even as he was refilling both of our coffee cups.
“It wasn’t a bottle and a half of vodka,” I rejoined. “It was a martini. An espresso martini, so it was mostly espresso.”
He brought my coffee to me, stopped close, and replied, “I know my way around a cocktail shaker, lass. It’s mostly vodka and Kahlua. And you didnae have one, you had four.”
“The first one didn’t count. Rix spilled half of it.”
His gray-blue eyes twinkled as he took a sip of coffee.
Lord, he was intolerable.
Though him saving my bouquet wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to think about that when he was vexing me.
I decided to cease conversing and drink more coffee.
“Then relax as we wait for Davina,” Kenna bid. “But dinnae let the food go cold.”
I’d scarfed down two migraine tablets and two Tylenol, cupping water from the bathroom faucet to do so, but one could say my stomach was still queasy, even with the croissant. So I sat on the couch, set my coffee aside and took a plate to fill it.
Dair sat down close to me and did the same, which meant he got in the way of what I was doing.
However, this didn’t last long because he started to pile my plate with stuff that he was closer to, like bacon, some fried potatoes and fruit.
Since this seemed like a good system, I piled his with scrambled eggs and a biscuit.
“Jam?” I asked with the spoon hovering over the little pot.
“No marmalade?” he asked back.
“Your choice appears to be strawberry jam or strawberry jam,” I informed him.
He shot me another of his unendurable grins. “Then I’ll have strawberry jam.”
I dolloped a healthy portion on his plate then scraped an even healthier portion of butter there.
“Lassie after my beating heart,” he muttered when I shoved the butter knife back in the butter.
I stilled.
He sat back and started slathering butter on his biscuit.
I felt something funny, looked up and saw Kenna watching us.
She had an odd expression on her face, considering the circumstances.
She looked…
Happy.
“Has Dad been in touch?” Dair inquired around a mouthful of biscuit.
The happy vanished.
Oh my God!
What was he thinking?
He should ease into it.
I elbowed him.
He turned to me. “What?”
I lowered my voice and my chin and looked at him under my lashes. “Ease into it, why don’t you?”
Kenna sank gracefully into one of the two armchairs across from us. “We’re honest with each other in the Wallace family.”
I inwardly cringed while she outwardly grimaced.
“Or, the three of us are,” she amended.
“I’m so sorry, Kenna,” I said, feeling stupid, because that was lame, but it was all I had.
“Dear, ye have nothing to be sorry for,” she replied.
The door opened on her words, and Davina strutted in, long, dark hair wild, last night’s makeup smeared (she needed a good setting spray), wearing men’s boxer shorts and an oversized T-shirt.