“What is it?”
“Is that praying?”
“Yep.As easy as talking with you.Except we’re talking to God.”
“How do you know if God exists?”
He chuckled.“Because I’ve seen Him do amazing things that no amount of coincidences can explain away.Even meeting your mom at the hospital, then finding out about you, makes me really feel like that was God who had been leading my paths.”
Her head tilted, as if she was thinking about this, then she nodded.“What’s Amen mean?”
“It means ‘let it be done so’.I think it’s a contraction for something like ‘all men agree’.”
“Not all women?”
“All men and women,” he agreed.“A contraction would work for either, as it means a shortened form of a word.”
“I know what a contraction is.”She rolled her eyes.
“Of course you do.Okay.”He stood.“Want to point me to where your laundry stuff is?I want to get fresh sheets on your mom’s bed, but I’m going to need some help.Then we’re going to have to race the clock and see what we can clean up before your grandma returns.You up for it?”
“Yeah!”
He held out his fist for her to bump, then realized she didn’t know what to do.“Hit my fist with yours,” he explained.
“Oh.Okay.”She belted his fist and he had to bite back a word.
“Whoa.You’ve got some strength there, kiddo.”
“I know.Mom reckons I’m pretty strong.Maybe I get that from you.”
He flexed his arm.“Probably.”
She did the same, and he laughed.Oh, he loved this girl.“Okay.Let’s see what we can do before your mom gets out of the shower.”
And he really wouldn’t think about that at all.
CHAPTER23
Hot water beat down on her, soothing tired muscles that hadn’t moved in too long, while her outrage ramped up to boiling proportions.How dare Kyle treat her in such a way?Who did he think he was?He wasn’t her boss.He wasn’t her mom.He had no rights over her.And yet he obviously thought his contribution to Bella’s DNA allowed him to speak for her.
How dare he come in and act like an autocrat, and tell her what to do?Even if she had been, okay, abitof a slug and hadn’t got around to cleaning up like she should have.Like Mom had demanded.After the death blow to her career two days ago, she hadn’t had the energy, let alone the will to do much more than breathe.So the fact he’d seen her like that, even made a comment about her smell—how humiliating.
She lifted an arm to rub shampoo in her hair and nearly gagged at the smell.Okay, so maybe he had a point.She was gross.Pathetic.Smelly.Giving up like that, even for just two days, made for a nasty Gen.In all senses of the word.
But she still couldn’t believe he had the nerve to threaten to drag her out of bed.Threaten to put her in the shower.How rude!
And yet as she remembered more of his words, her ire slowly subsided.He’d done this for Bella’s sake.Bella, who had been worried about her, who had crept in numerous times in the last couple of days, asking if Gen was sick, if she needed anything, wanted food, a cup of tea.
Mom had barely been home, too busy with work to notice much beyond complaining loudly that not everybody got days off and the chance to have a break, and somebody still needed to bring in an income.Mom had been as outraged as Gen was regarding the interview with the hospital committee, and the fact Gen was being forced to take leave while they waited for the outcome of the board’s internal investigation.
“It’s not fair!”Mom had whisper-screamed, when Gen had finally told her, after Bella had gone to bed.
“Of course it’s not, but since when do the little people in this world ever get treated fairly?”And in the eyes of some of those private school, Ivy League-educated board members, she would always be a little person.A mere tiny cog in the giant wheel of hospital administration.
“Is there nobody you can speak to?”Mom had persisted.
“If I do, I run the risk of jeopardizing things, so I’m just going to wait it out.”
