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I wasn’t sure whether to be offended by his comment or laugh.
I chose to laugh.
“He’s right,” I admitted. “I’m not very athletic. I actually trip over my own feet more often than not. And I hate to say it, but my push-up game is weak.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” she said. “You can still be soft and do push-ups.”
I liked her.
I liked her a whole lot.
“Grammy is a World War II veteran. She’s the badass of all ninety-year-old badasses,” Hayes said, looping his arm around his ‘Grammy’s’ shoulders. “Grammy, I would like you to meet Ares, my girlfriend and the future mother to your great-grandbabies.”
My heart went wild at that.
Also, my brows climbed to my hairline.
“When did y’all get engaged?” Lock asked with a couple of boxes of donuts in his hand. “And you’re not pregnant, are you?”
I shook my head. “Um, no. I’m not.”
“Well, you should get that way soon, dear,” Grammy said. “Hayes has always talked about how much he wants his wife to be a stay-at-home mother and have him dinner cooked when he walked in the door. I think if you pretended to do that every once in a while, and pasted a smile on your face and met him at the door barefoot and pregnant, he just might die of happiness.”
My brows lifted all over again as I glanced at Hayes, who was busy staring at his feet with a guilty expression on his face.
“Wow,” I said. “I mean, why would he know to be so specific?”
A tinge of red heated Hayes’ nose and ears. But that was the only outward sign of his embarrassment.
“The only stable relationship that Hayes had to view when growing up was mine and his grandfather’s. When he stayed with us any length of time, he saw how I treated his grandfather, and decided that was what he needed in his life to be happy. Now, I’m not saying that you have to do it all the time, just that you might very well make him happy if you do it every once in a while,” she explained. “Now, what’s so important that your father dragged me out of the house so early in the morning?”
It was now nearly seven in the morning, and Hayes’ grandmother had waltzed into the police station as if she owned the place.
She’d demanded to see Hayes and me and had been led back by a very amused Lock.
“I don’t know why you were called at all,” Hayes said. “But…”
“She was called because I told her that we were heading out of town and wouldn’t be stopping by,” an older version of Hayes said as he walked in the door. “And she said that she wanted to meet her future granddaughter, and I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t even give her the address.”
His Grammy smiled as if only she had the answers to her secrets.
“What kind of donuts you got there, boyo?” Grammy asked Lock.
He put all of his boxes down except one and turned it around and opened the lid.
Grammy chose one of the sprinkled ones that looked like a unicorn.
“All right,” Easton said as he sat up at the table. “Now that everyone is here, let’s discuss how we’re going to execute the warrant.” He looked to Luke. “I’m assuming your SWAT team can handle this?”
Luke nodded, no hesitation at all in his answer.
“Good,” he said. “I’m just waiting on the signed warrant to come back from the judge and we’ll head out.”
I looked at my watch and reached for my donut. “I need to get home and changed, Hayes. I have to be at school in a little less than an hour.”
Hayes stiffened and let go of his grandmother’s shoulders.
“You’re not going to that school,” he said.
I took a bite of the donut and gave him a ‘really’ look.
“I’m going,” I said. “My entire student body just lost one of their classmates. A senior. They’re going to be lost and confused. I need to be there.”
“What you need to do is stay safe,” Lock said.
I rolled my eyes and took another bite of donut. “I don’t care what y’all think. I’m going to be there. The school is just as safe as any. Once the doors lock, I’ll be safe as can be. We’ll lock down the campus.”
“We can cancel school,” Luke suggested.
“The busses have already started.” I shook my head. “They’re halfway full by now. And parents need a little more warning than ‘oh, I need to drop your kids back off’ before we can take them back home.”
I could tell that all of them knew that I had a point.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll stick with Officer Toomey,” I said, even though I’d rather eat dirt.
Officer Toomey, who was leaning against a wall listening to every word, raised his brows in surprise.
