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Shoving the thought aside, I focused as Ashlyn began to chatter about our plans for that night. Dinner with my mom and hers. The Grove girls were going to hit the town. I stared hard at her, trying to focus and forget that even now, Brady Martinez was already right there, just outside my train of thought, waiting to remind me how good he’d felt against me.
***
Chapter 6
Brady
“Hello, Brady! Did you hear anything I just said?”
“What?”
My mother gave a long, exasperated sigh on the other end of the phone. “Brady, I’ve been asking you the same question for ten minutes.”
Guilt gnawed at me, and I glared down at my second cup of coffee. Not even my favorite vehicle for caffeine was helping me focus right now. “And that was?”
“Well, now it’s changed. What are you thinking about so hard?” My mother’s voice was gentle, teasing. “And don’t you dare tell me it’s work.”
“Okay, it’s not work.”
Silence. She hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh. What is it, then?”
“A woman,” I said carefully.
Clearly not carefully enough, because immediately there was a screech in my ears. “A woman! Brady, did you meet someone?”
I smiled against the phone. “Maybe.”
My mother’s tutting was loud in my ear. “You can’t do things like this to me, Brady. I’m an old woman. You are toying with my heart. Tell me about her. I want to hear all about her.”
I rolled my eyes at her theatrics. My mother was a relatively young grandmother to my niece, and there was no reason to think that she was feeling anything more than a plague of drama. But still, I grinned into the damn cell phone. “Well, she’s beautiful.”
A snort. “All of yours are. More, please.”
“Ma, you interrupted me. She’s beautiful, but that’s not the best part. She’s sharp and spicy and fights me at every turn.” I mulled over the scalding-hot memories of our night together.
Our one night. Which I was rapidly coming to resent as our time together faded away.
Because try as I might, I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that Cecelia Grove was more than scratching an itch. She felt…like she belonged. Which should stress me out. But I was strangely Zen about the whole thing. And apparently I felt confident enough about whatever this was between Cici and me tell my mother. Which I never did.
“Oh, I like her already,” she said eagerly down the line.
I flinched. This was exactly why I didn’t usually mention the women I dated. Because it wouldn’t go any further, and I didn’t want my mother getting attached. She’d already dealt with enough heartbreak. She didn’t need me adding to that again.
I cleared my throat. “You would, of course. She has these eyes that are…full of fire. I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Is it serious? Did you invite her to Lyla’s birthday?”
I chuckled. My niece would turn four in a few weeks. And while I had plans to convince Cici to see me again, I wasn’t sure a family birthday party was the best thing to begin with.
Even as I mentally chickened out from asking her, I also recognized that my heart ached a little at the thought. Because Lyla would love Cici. They were both sassy, bright spots in my life.
But I needed to keep things real. Cici had been a one-night-only thing. That’s what she’d said. That’s what I’d said. I didn’t even know why I was going down this road. I lowered my voice. “Ma, it’s not like that. Not yet.”
“Pssh. You can’t blame me for wanting to meet her. It’s been years since you’ve talked about anybody to me.”
“You're my mother,” I reminded her.
“That is bad reasoning. I just want to know if you are happy there.”
