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Alana didn’t need to wrap her mind around anything this time. The answer seemed obvious. “Sadie Jo couldn’t keep you for whatever reason, but she obviously wanted to stay connected to you so she allowed you to be adopted by people she knew and trusted. She must have loved you.”
Gray certainly didn’t jump to agree with that. In fact, he didn’t jump to say or do anything. He just stayed quiet for a really long time before he finally groaned. “Yeah,” was all he said.
She expected that response to be the calm before the storm. And in a way it sort of was. But instead of diving into the murky waters of his birth mother, Gray turned to her, his gaze combing over her face.
“I couldn’t stay connected to you after I hurt you,” he threw out there. “Because being around you or hearing about you latched on to my throat and wouldn’t let go.”
All right. So, she definitely hadn’t expected a confession like that.
Alana nodded. “I understand.”
Gray kept his gaze on her but cursed. “I don’t want you to understand. I want you to yell at me and tell me I was wrong to hurt you.”
Because this was obviously still latching on to his throat, Alana took hold of his chin and ran her thumb over his bottom lip. “No yelling required. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you’ve come back, and I understand why you left.”
“You should yell at me,” he repeated, his stare flat now.
She brushed a kiss on his mouth instead. “I understand why you left,” she said, doing some repeating of her own. “And hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I think you were right. I wasn’t ready to stand up to my parents. Over the years, though, I’ve had a lot of practice with that, but in those days, they would have tried to plow right over both of us.”
“I should have stood up to them,” Gray insisted.
Alana shook her head. “You were too young and like me, didn’t have the right skill set to deal with them.”
The question was—did they have that skill set now? Alana was certain she did, and that’s why she was willing to take the Texas-sized risk of kissing him.
Really kissing him.
No games, no hesitation. Alana slid her arm around the back of his neck and drew him closer. And closer. Sinking right into the kiss.
Gray made the sound that was so familiar. Part groan, part grunt. All pleasure. He acted on that pleasure, too. Gray shoved aside the photo albums and pulled her to him. Not just closer. Nope. He put them body to body, and it was exactly where her body wanted to be.
Alana heard herself make her own sound of pleasure. Easy to do since she was feeling a lot of that particular sensation at the moment. With one scalding kiss, Gray had caused the heat to skyrocket, and she instantly wanted more, more, more.
Gray gave her more. Without breaking the kiss, he hauled her onto his lap. Something he’d done quite often when they’d been teenagers, and he hadn’t lost any of his smooth moves. He kissed her, touched her and aligned their centers in such a way that the more, more, more became an urgent need. A need she certainly would have given into had she not heard the ringing sound.
“Doorbell,” Gray grumbled, adding some ripe profanity to that announcement.
Alana groaned and groaned even more when she heard the doorknob rattle and a woman call out.
“Yoo-hoo,” she said, obviously already coming inside. “It’s me, Callie Murdock.”
Good grief. Talk about lousy timing for Sadie Jo’s friend to arrive to pick up the costumes.
Gray and she untangled themselves, not easily and not without knocking into each other. They somehow managed, though, to get to their feet when the tall busty blonde came waltzing in.
Alana had never met the woman, but she recalled seeing her around town. Recalled, too, that folks had mentioned that Callie had been with Sadie Jo when she died.
“Oh, sorry,” Callie said when she spotted them. Apparently, she realized what she interrupted. And what she interrupted was two people who’d been very close to having sex.
“I probably should have waited for you, but I’m just used to letting myself in,” Callie explained. “After Sadie Jo got so sick, she gave me a key so I could come in and check on her without her having to get up and answer the door.”
Callie crossed the room to shake hands first with Gray and then with Alana. Even though this was a textbook example of awkward, Alana introduced herself.
“Oh, I know who you are, sugar,” Callie said. “I saw the photos of Gray and you way back when you were kids.” The woman beamed a big smile with lips coated with neon pink gloss. “It’s mighty good to finally meet both of you.”
“So, you knew Sadie Jo had given birth to me?” Gray came out and asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Callie readily admitted after a very long pause. “I was bunking with Sadie Jo when she was pregnant.” Her forehead bunched up. “I’m not sure if you’re ready to hear this, but, sugar, she loved you. She doted like a proud mama on all the pictures of you.”
