AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Of course, Melvin would have mentioned that, too. Not that it was a secret or anything. The support group run by her distant cousin and counselor, Evangeline Parkman, was held in one of the meeting rooms at the library so plenty of people would have seen her come and go from the weekly gathering of Positive Measures, Positive Lives.
Alana nodded. “Like I said, I have a track record of lousy relationships. Sorry,” she added in a mutter when she realized that Gray was an early part of that track record. “After my last breakup, I went to counseling, and now I guess you could say I get weekly tune-ups from the support group.”
Tune-ups that Alana thought would help her in doing more looking and less leaping. Dreaming of forever-afters would have to wait.
“You really took a vow of celibacy?” he asked.
Obviously, Melvin was a huge blabbermouth, but again, she shouldn’t be surprised that the little tidbit was gossip fodder.
“Yes,” Alana verified. “It was voluntary.” She frowned when she heard what she’d said because the odds of it being involuntary were slim to none unless she’d joined a convent. “A way of clearing my head so I can think straighter about relationships.”
Of course, a vow of celibacy hadn’t actually been that hard since she hadn’t wanted to get into a relationship and wasn’t into one-offs. Never had been. For her, it had always been about the falling in love and the dreaming about the future. Sex had been more or less the icing on the cake.
She looked up at Gray when he made another of those could-mean-anything sounds, and Alana got another punch of lust. All right, so maybe sex would be more than just icing with Gray, a lot more, but she wasn’t ready to dive back into heart-breaking waters with him.
“Anyway,” she said to get herself moving so she wasn’t just standing there lusting after him. “I should get that photo of the tombstone.” She glanced around, though, and realized she didn’t have a clue where it was.
“It’s there.” Gray pointed to a white marble tombstone toward the center of the cemetery.
She turned in that direction and noticed that the headstone wasn’t as large as some of the others, but it did look new. Understandable, considering that Sadie Jo had only died about six months ago.
Alana took a couple of steps toward the grave and then turned back around to face him. “Did you come here to visit Sadie Jo’s grave?” she came out and asked.
He paused, then nodded. That was his only response for a long time, and her mind began to whirl with some possibilities. Sadie Jo had been a big name when Gray had been in high school so maybe he was a fan.
Except it seemed like more than that.
“You weren’t like involved with her, were you?” Alana asked, but then she immediately waved off the question. “Sorry, that’s none of my business.” Though she quickly did the math and tallied up the twenty-one-year age difference between Gray and Sadie Jo. Still, relationships like that happened, what with the woman being a celebrity.
“No,” Gray answered. Then, he shook his head and cursed under his breath. “Not involved,” he added a moment later, which didn’t clarify much.
The moments crawled by. And just kept crawling.
On a huff, Gray turned to Alana, and his gaze locked with hers. “I found out today that the woman I thought was my mother, isn’t.” Gray tipped his head to the tombstone. “And that Sadie Jo Walker gave birth to me.”
CHAPTER TWO
GRAYHADN’TPLANNEDon telling Alana what he’d just told her. Hell, he hadn’t planned on saying it aloud.
Sadie Jo Walker gave birth to me.
But there it was. All out in the open. Open to Alana, anyway, and judging from the way her jaw dropped, it had stunned her almost as much as it had him. Almost.
“Well, crap,” Alana muttered.
Gray made a sound of agreement since that pretty much summed it up. Three hours ago, he’d learned his life had been a big-assed lie, and that his parents—yes, the very parents he’d loved and idolized—had been the ones to feed him that lie.
A lie that changed everything.
Because if he wasn’t David and Mary Russell’s son, then who the hell was he?
Gray had been trying to wrap his mind around that when Alana had arrived. In those first moments when he’d seen her step from her car and make her way to the cemetery, he’d groaned at the intrusion. Groaned, too, because even with the crap he was feeling right now, he still got that old punch of lust just by looking at her. But he wasn’t groaning now. Well, he was about the lust part, but he was sort of glad she was here. If he was going to pour out his heart to anybody in Last Ride, then Alana would have been his first choice.
Before he’d learned about the big-assed lie, his father would have been choice number one. But no way could he go to his dad now. Or rather go to the man he’d been told was his dad. Eventually, he would have to face him, to demand some answers, but Gray had to steady himself first.
“Well, crap,” Alana repeated. She opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again as if trying to figure out what to say.
Welcome to the club. Gray was still working on that himself. It was the reason he’d asked her out for a drink or dinner. That had seemed a more likely setting for breaking the news about Sadie Jo.
