AllFreeNovel
Share Us
14
Bernadette called Birdie into the kitchen, and she reluctantly relinquished her vantage spot on the comfortable armchair and stole one more glance outside.
Entering the kitchen, the older woman wrapped one of her aprons around her waist and handed her a tray of iced tea, instructing her to offer it up to the painting crew outside while she finished making lunch.
Glancing down at the ruffled apron, she felt like a 1950s housewife taking refreshments to the more important working men. Those big burly testosterone bastions of productivity, who were in dire need of hydration and maybe a back rub.
Not such a bad gig, considering the playdate she could have after seeing the mesmerizing muscles along Lucas’s spine that rippled like a sinuous dance when he moved.
Juggling the tray covered with four breakable glasses, each with a decorative wedge of lemon hanging off the side, Birdie turned the doorknob while doing a balancing act as Bernadette threw a handful of small white packets onto the tray. “I fixed sweet tea, but here’s extra just in case.”
Birdie grinned. Mia was going to lose her mind when she drank the “glucose-infused” tea she had accurately predicted as the refreshment of choice for people in the South.
Lumbering through the door watching the tea slosh precariously in each glass, she asked over her shoulder, “Wouldn’t it be quicker to inject the sugar intravenously into their veins? Maybe cut it into lines and let them snort it?”
“Don’t be fresh,” Bernadette admonished, opening the door the rest of the way. “Lil’ bit a sugar never hurt anyone.”
“Tell that to people with type 1 diabetes,” she murmured, continuing her way to the front of the house, feeling as if she were doing a grave disservice to women everywhere while wearing an apron with a skirt and heels.
So much for dressing to impress while in the town that snubbed their noses at you. Instead of coming off mature and sophisticated, she appeared absurdly overdressed. Trying too hard to sway their opinions of her.
“Anyone for sweet tea?” she asked, making it to the round rattan table on the front porch. “If memory serves, it’s loaded with enough sugar to turn a preschooler into Speedy Gonzalez.”
Mia picked up a glass and began to take a large drink due to the heat. As the two men guzzled theirs, Birdie caught Mia making a face and setting the glass back on the tray.
“Good?” Birdie asked, suppressing a smile.
“Um, yeah,” she said, avoiding her.
“Want some more?”
“Not right now,” she said, wiping the sweat from the side of the glass onto her pants. “Who’s Speedy Gonzalez?”
“Just a cartoon relative of you and your dad’s,” Grant said, ruffling her hair.
Mia looked up quizzically. “Why? Is he Portuguese?”
Grant looked over at Lucas. “Isn’t Speedy hispanic?”
Lucas shrugged his shoulders, too busy with his tea. Birdie tried not to stare at his undulating Adam’s apple.
“We’re not hispanic,” Mia corrected. “Me and Dad, I mean, me and Luke are Portuguese.”
That was a surprise. “How do you know that?” Birdie asked.
She reached in her back pocket and pulled out a couple sheets of folded paper. “We both sent our DNA to this company. See? It shows our ancestral origins. That’s how I found him.”
Birdie sat next to Mia on the porch and read the logo, “GeneticallyNclined” at the top of the page.
Mia flipped a couple of the pages and pointed at a specific paragraph.
“See? Here it shows we’re from Northwest Portugal and Galicia.”
Birdie squinted at the page. “Where’s Galicia?”
“A region in the northwest of Spain,” Mia explained.
She flipped the paper stapled together at the top. “This page shows all of our DNA relatives.” She pointed at the top line of the list. “Here’s Dad. I mean, Luke. And look at all of my paternal first cousins.” She jumped up and stepped toward Lucas, who set his empty glass on the tray.”
