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“Mothers are spooky that way.”
“Yes, they are, and when you’re a mother of seven, you have ESP.”
“I suppose you’d have to have something extra to survive seven kids. You and John were cute sitting with your heads together plotting whatever you were up to.”
“He was texting the others with the news after he talked to my mom. I encouraged him to do it and get it over with. Now he just has to tell our grandparents, and then, as he said, everyone who matters will know.”
“How will they take it?”
“They won’t care. They’re very hip, and they love us more than anything. My mom is an only child, so she and the seven of us are their family. And besides, after what we endured with our father, all they care about is that we’re healthy and happy.”
“I guess that brought some perspective.”
“It did. When the whole story finally came out, they were sick over what’d been happening right under their noses, as they put it. But he went to great lengths, especially by threatening us, to keep our family’s business private. We never breathed a word of it to them. Owen, who’s the oldest, has said how badly he wanted to, but he feared making things worse rather than better.”
“Would it have? Made things worse, I mean?”
“Very possibly. Because of my dad’s rank, people were deferential to him. They looked the other way. Once, when Owen was about fifteen or sixteen, my dad broke his arm during an altercation.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. The young doctor who saw him at the clinic, a junior officer, got Owen alone and asked a bunch of questions that led Owen to believe he suspected my dad had done it. Owen lied to him because he knew my dad would ruin the other guy’s career for trying to help.”
“He protected the doctor at his own expense. That’s wild.”
“That’s how it was for us. People were afraid to call out my dad for fear of reprisals. So, we were abused in plain sight, and no one ever did anything about it because they were afraid of him, too. Until the trial, when the wife of one of my dad’s former subordinates came forward, willing to testify that she knew, that everyone knew, who and what Mark Lawry really was. She was just what we needed—someone from outside the family to confirm our account. The minute my dad saw her in the courtroom, he took a plea deal because he knew she could bury him.”
Jace had stopped what he was doing to listen to her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on about it.”
“Don’t be sorry. I want to hear whatever you want to tell me, but I hate that you and your family went through that with him.”
Cindy shrugged. “It happened. We survived it, and we’re all doing well now. That’s what matters.”
Jace shut off the lights over the bar and came around to where she was still seated on one of the stools, with only the light from outside illuminating them. He turned her stool toward him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s not all that matters.”
Cindy’s mouth had gone dry. “What else matters?”
“You do. You matter. What you endured growing up… It’s made you strong and resilient, but you still hurt on the inside, don’t you?”
His insight startled her almost as much as his nearness did. “Most of the time, I’m okay, but yeah, it’s always there.”
“Yeah, it is. I think of my final minutes with Jess every day. It’ll never stop hurting.”
“I hurt a little less when you’re around,” she confessed, looking up at him as she said the words without taking even a second to consider whether she should.
“Likewise,” he whispered in the second before his lips met hers in a soft, sweet, undemanding kiss that would go down as one of the most perfect moments of her entire life. He cupped her face and stroked her cheek as he kissed her.
Still seated on the chair, Cindy strained to get closer.
Jace put his arms around her and lifted her right off her seat and into his embrace.
This, she thought in a second of complete clarity, is why I was born. He is why I was born. If a friend had told her that was what they thought the first time a guy kissed them, Cindy would have laughed at them for being dramatic.
But it didn’t feel dramatic to her. It simply felt true.
She looped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to his tongue, which brushed against hers in a suggestive rhythm that immediately had her trying to get even closer.
His arms were like a vise around her, keeping her trapped against him as he kissed her until she was breathless from wanting more of him.
Best. First. Kiss. Ever.
