Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brock and his booming voice caused this. He’d stomped around, demanding attention, and he got it. Now I had to deal with the fallout.
Gram and Celia possessed a unique ability to ferret out egomaniacs then avoid them. Their rabid dislike for men who yelled or used their size to intimidate often ended with a side comment from Gram like, It wouldn’t be a loss if someone ran over that man with a car.
That sort of thing used to sound like a joke. Now? Not so sure.
Four minutes into this awkward assembly and the ladies hadn’t moved. They formed a perfumed wall of stubbornness in the middle of the entrance hall. Their angry little faces made one thing clear: my dodging and weaving days were over. These two would not take a step until they had answers. If that meant we stayed there, rooted in the spot, as summer came and went, so be it.
“I can explain.”
I could and should have days ago. Now I didn’t have a choice.
“That would be a nice change,”
Gram grumbled.
She wore the same stony expression she used whenever anyone at a group meal in a restaurant took out a calculator instead of just evenly splitting the check. She found that sort of thing “unseemly”—her word, not mine.
Celia, always the peacemaker, put a loving hand on Gram’s arm. “Let’s give Kasey a minute to sort out whatever she needs to sort out in her head.”
Gram snorted. “We’ve given her days and now this.”
I’d never wanted to crawl under the couch and hide as much as I did right now. Unfortunately, adults weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. “I was planning to tell you.”
Gram’s eyebrow lifted. “When?”
“Why are you involving Jackson?”
Celia asked at the same time.
Gram barely let Celia finish. “That wasn’t a way to make this man jealous, was it? I can’t imagine you doing something deliberately hurtful.”
I needed roller skates to keep up with these two and this conversation. We’d only ventured a few sentences in, and I’d already lost control of the topic. What were they talking about and why did it include Jackson?
Brock’s unwanted visit ran through most of my reserves, but I couldn’t show weakness here. The ladies would be all over that. “I think we need to back up.”
“Kissing one man in the gazebo one day. Hiding under the tree with another the next.”
Celia shook her head. “This behavior isn’t like you.”
Panicked sentences rolled through my head. She did not just say “kissing.”
Please have her not have mentioned kissing. No kissing. “Did you—”
“Balancing two men is dangerous, not to mention exhausting and unnecessary.”
This time Gram sighed. Not a quiet, subtle sigh. An everyone-listen-to-me sigh. “I know you think you can handle anything, but—”
“I wonder where she gets that from,”
Celia mumbled under her breath.
“I don’t blame her for being skeptical or feeling confused. Men are a nuisance.”
Gram never skipped an opportunity to recite her general view on men and slipped it in here. “I can only think of a few likable ones other than Jackson.”
Round and round they went. Jackson’s name kept popping up and not in a way that made sense. Most of the bickering happened between the ladies. They left me out of it, which was a relief but only a temporary one. The temptation to sneak out of the room pulled pretty hard but I stayed put. Mostly because these two would hunt me down if I took one step in any direction.
Just as they entered a new back-and-forth, I clapped. The move was strategic and a little dangerous. I’d clapped in the car exactly one time as a kid. Gram immediately pulled over and delivered a lecture in her serious Gram voice about why that was never going to happen again.
They viewed clapping as disrespectful. They also insisted the noise gave them a headache. The unforgivable sin? Clapping in church. Gram exploded every time it happened. Do you remember ten years ago when Cynthia clapped after the children’s choir sang “Silent Night”? More than one of our weekly FaceTime calls included a church clapping rant.
I had their attention. Good, because they sure had mine. “How do you know about the kiss in the gazebo?”
Celia shrugged. “We saw you from the house.”
We’d entered nightmare territory. “You did . . . what?”
“We had to go upstairs and move some furniture around to get a better look.”
Gram acted out the movements while she talked. “The trees blocked the view but when we sat on the bed and ducked down, we could see you two.”
They . . . but we were . . . oh my God.
Celia shook her head. “Poor Jackson.”
Wait a second. “Hey, I’m not that bad at kissing.”
He hadn’t complained. Not to me. If he’d given them a critique he’d better be damn good at running because I would go after him.
“The other man is the issue.”
Gram treated us to another dismissive snort.
There’s no way I’d heard them correctly. “Back up. You two were sneaking around, watching me with Jackson?”
Gram gasped. Actually gasped. As if this conversation wasn’t dramatic enough. “I do not sneak around in my own house.”
“Well . . .”
Celia winced. “We did hide behind the curtain when she looked up at the window.”
I could almost see them shushing each other as they moved through the house, jockeying for a better view. Running here and there, slinking around, peeking out windows like a nosy crime-fighting duo.
“Jackson and I have shared one kiss.”
Well, two, but precise details would not help here. They’d only make the explanation cloudier. “You don’t approve? Is that the problem?”
There was an offensive answer here and they better not say it.
“It looked like a big kiss.”
Celia sounded excited about that.
Gram nodded. “I’m impressed Jackson has it in him.”
Celia and Gram were off again. Celia took the lead. “He’s had practice with those girlfriends, though the last one was incredibly serious.”
Gram nodded. “I couldn’t imagine her kissing anyone or anything.”
Okay, that was enough of that topic. “Ladies. Can we pick a subject and stay on it?”
Gram’s stiff stance eased a bit. She leaned into Celia but didn’t relinquish the barricade and let me pass. “Fine. Tell us about your boyfriend.”
“My what?”
So, they hadn’t overheard Brock talking about business crap. Instead, they’d created a horrifying scenario about my nonexistent dating life and gave me a fictional boyfriend. Brock.
I’d rather scramble to find their hidden poison . . . then drink it.
“The man in the yard.”
Gram gestured in the general direction of outside. “The squirrelly looking one.”
“Don’t say that. What if she really likes him? Although I can’t imagine.”
Celia went back to wincing. “Do you?”
“We recognized him from before,”
Gram explained without an ounce of guilt. “Charlotte snapped a photo of him during that visit to Graylyn.”
That unwanted business meeting kept biting me in the ass. “She did what?”
Celia wasn’t done wincing. “Charlotte texted Mags about seeing you with a man. Mags asked for a photo.”
Of course she did. “It’s interesting how you forgot to mention Charlotte’s private investigator skills earlier.”
Their spy network had been working overtime. They’d sent out their minions to collect information and report back. The realization was enough to make me stay inside forever.
“We’re even because you forgot to tell us about the boyfriend.”
Gram’s fluffy pink-and-blue plaid slippers made it tough to take her ire seriously.
“Did you and your man have a fight? Is that why you’re here? He did something to upset you and you ran?”
Celia reached for my hand. She cradled it in her palms in a soothing touch. “I’m not judging. You should run if you’re not safe.”
“Some people might think a man following you across state lines is romantic. It’s not. It’s a warning sign.”
Gram nodded as if to punctuate her comment. “It’s a hint of controlling behavior to come.”
Wow. I loved them and appreciated their concern, or whatever this was, but . . . wow. “He’s not . . . okay. We’ll circle back to Brock.”
Gram graced us with her third snort of the conversation. “That sounds like one of those California names. Brooks. Now there’s a good Southern name.”
Celia shot Gram a look. “Mags, be supportive.”
“California.”
Gram acted like the state name was a swear word. “He’s not the right man for her. He had those beady little rat eyes. I know a bad man when I see one.”
I’d never again be able to look at Brock without thinking of a giant rodent. “I feel like we’re having eight different conversations and I’m miles behind in all of them.”
“We’re talking about the rat-eyed man at the door just now.”
As usual, Celia went with a calmer approach. “And the kiss with Jackson. There was some flirting, too, but mostly the kiss.”
“About that. Why are you lumping Jackson and Brock together?”
They didn’t belong in the same universe, let alone the same conversation.
Celia pressed a hand against her chest. “We’re not the ones trying to balance both men.”
“Dealing with one is bad enough.”
Gram sounded pretty sure about that. “With apologies to Jackson, of course.”
The haze cleared. This bizarre showdown was about my nonexistent love life. They believed I was dating Brock. I couldn’t think of anything more vomit-inducing. “I’ve told you about Brock. He’s my boss.”
Now Celia looked as confused as I felt. “But you call your boss Big Ego Man.”
“I do but that’s not the name his parents gave him. It’s Brock. Same guy.”
“You’re dating your boss?”
Gram whispered the words like some people did when they talked about cancer or something equally horrible.
“Oh, Kasey.”
Celia sounded disappointed. “What have we always told you about men in power?”
Time to kill and bury this conversation. I could not endure another round of this. “We aren’t dating. I promise. I will never be that desperate.”
“Your conversation with him looked a bit heated. We were about to come out and hit him with a plate,”
Gram said.
Celia nodded as she dropped my hand. “Mags originally suggested using the vacuum cleaner, but we agreed a smaller weapon would be less awkward.”
It was nice to know they had a boundary. “He’s in town because of golf. He was with friends and decided to swing by.”
“Good gracious, no.”
Gram shook her head. Wagged her finger. Even stomped a foot. Her full absolutely not repertoire. “I do not appreciate anyone just swinging by. Honestly, what is wrong with this younger generation?”
Gram opposed any and all visits without an invitation. Courtesy demanded you get permission before you showed up at a person’s house. I’d always believed this was more of a Gram rule than a general society rule, but she really got pissed when people violated it.
She continued to vent. “When did schools stop teaching manners?”
I didn’t have the energy for an etiquette discussion. “Probably in the eighteen hundreds.”
“And that strut of his.”
Gram’s finger kept wagging. “It was off-putting.”
“The point is she isn’t cheating on Jackson.”
Celia smiled at Gram. “I knew she wouldn’t.”
This might be the most confusing family conversation in the history of family conversations.
“I’m not sure what you think you saw, but Jackson and I aren’t together.”
A sharp pain stabbed my chest. I pretended it was from heartburn and unrelated to how hard it was to say that sentence out loud.
Celia’s smile fell. “But for years—”
“Celia, no.”
After all the back-and-forth they stopped talking. “Now you two clam up?”
“If you’re not . . .”
Celia visibly swallowed. “Why kiss?”
“It just happened. We didn’t plan it.”
I couldn’t give a better answer because I still didn’t know what the kiss meant or how it fit into the rest of my life. If I could get ten minutes of peace I might be able to figure it out.
Celia’s questioning stare hadn’t eased. “And the dinners?”
“I like to eat.”
“I thought Jackson would . . .”
Celia stopped talking when Gram touched her arm. “Never mind.”
They thought they could just throw those words out there and not follow up. Nope. We babbled about Brock for fifteen minutes, which was fourteen more than necessary. This topic—Jackson—needed more attention.
“It’s your life, dear. You’ll figure it out.”
If Celia thought she’d sold that as an offhand remark she was dead wrong.
“Let me get you a cupcake.”
Gram said something to Celia without using words and they scampered off toward the kitchen.
Weirdly enough, I didn’t want a cupcake.