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“Make no mistake, Lukey, there’s still nothing moral about me.”
* * *
“Jesus, Birdie, stop showin’out,” she said, leaning her head on the tiled shower wall, giving herself a good talking to. Not only was her character devolving, so was her acquired Bostonian accent.
She leaned her head against the subway tiles of the shower, allowing the hot water to wash away her poor judgment and irresponsible behavior.
“You’re a sophisticated businesswoman who, yes, lost her business, but still, you’re no longer that young emotionally unstable girl. The girl who used sexual innuendos as a coping mechanism. What is the matter with you?”
Lightly pounding her head on the tile, she promised herself this behavior would end. This was no way to act when you were a mother. Someone who had to conduct themselves with a modicum of decorum. She was a freaking role model for God’s sake.
She needed Angus.
That was exactly who she needed, like right now.
The burly Scot gave her perspective, yanked her chain and grounded her when she lost focus.
As soon as she got out of the shower and dressed, she’d call him. He always had a way of centering her with his harsh assessments and even more harsh Scottish burr.
Toweling off and twisting the fluffy terry cloth around her head, she sifted through the bag and pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and matching sweatshirt.
Simple, non-alluring attire that would help to stifle her sassy mouth and rein in her base instincts.
How ironic she had to cool her jets around the estranged father of her child, a man she hadn’t laid eyes on in almost sixteen years.
Finding a hair dryer in one of the drawers, she blew her wavy blond hair until barely damp and then twisted it up in a messy bun to get it out of the way.
She had a teenager to reprimand.
Twisting her lips, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. She wasn’t the young, nubile girl of the past, that was for damned sure. But she wasn’t unattractive either. Lines sprang from the sides of her eyes, evidence of a preemptively shortened lifetime of laughter with Marshall. Her breasts weren’t as perky, but that was okay, they were passable, you know, as boobs went.
All in all, she was a different version of herself. No longer a vamp-ish version but one she approved of nonetheless.
Maybe even preferred.
When Lucas looked at her, did he see Birdie 2.0? Or, the PAC-MAN version? Past her prime and overplayed?
Rolling her eyes, she wondered if she even cared.
She dropped her face in her hands.
She did. She really, really did.
Throwing her toiletries back in the bag and stuffing her fifteen-hundred-dollar dress in the trash can, she refused to be that stupid, idealistic airhead she’d been in her youth.
Lucas Santos was never going to see her. See her for who she really was, or at least the woman she could be. He was always going to see the slutty, risk-taking, beer-swilling, roofie-popping, baby-hiding waste of space he’d always seen.
Marshall used to say, “The problem is not how to find the answer, but how to face the answer.” And the problem, as it pertained to Lucas Santos, if she had the courage to face the solution, was that she would always be the Birdie of his past unless she took the time to prove otherwise. And therein lied the problem. She didn’t have the time to accomplish that enormous feat.
Of course, Marshall had been using this piece of wisdom under the context of doing business with others, not relationship advice with a dark-haired mayor of a small coastal town in South Georgia, who made her feel things she thought she was immune to. Things she thought she’d stopped pining for.
What was it about this man that made her so desperately stupid? Nothing had changed, despite her advanced years and so-called maturity. If today proved nothing else, it proved the two of them together was like two firecrackers that kept reigniting each other.
Frankly, she was tired of getting burned.
All because, years ago, she’d recklessly taken a blowtorch and not only burned the bridge standing between her and Lucas Santos, but had rained hellfire on the entire town of Wayward.
There was just no surviving that level of destruction.
