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Apparently, Sadie Jo had been satisfied with Teddy’s work since she’d not only had the cottage built for him, she had included a provision in her will to pay his salary and the salaries of the seasonal helpers that Teddy hired for the next five years.
“What will you do with the place?” Alana asked.
His gut reaction was to say he wanted no part of it, but there was another irony going on here. Some might even say it was cosmic intervention.
“I’ve been working with a Realtor to find a place to expand my business,” Gray explained. “This is one of the properties he recommended, and said since the owner had recently died, it would likely be coming on the market soon.”
Nightfall Ranch was perfect for his cattle-broker needs and imperfect in every other way. He didn’t mean the guitar decor, either. Nope. It was imperfect because it was a gift offered to him by a woman who hadn’t wanted him and had given him away. Of course, she hadn’t just left him on the streets. He’d been adopted by whom anyone would consider a stable, loving couple. Still, offering him Nightfall felt like some kind of bribe from the grave.
“Going with the rumor mill,” Alana said, “the house hasn’t been cleared out.”
“It hasn’t,” he verified. “Asher said Sadie Jo had wanted me to be able to go through the things and keep anything I wanted.” He paused. Had to. “There’s nothing I want.”
Except he rethought that. Hell, maybe there was something. A diary or written tell-all confession about why she’d given him up for adoption.
“There are apparently some outfits that Sadie Jo wore on stage,” Gray added, looking at Alana again. “A couple of them she wanted to go to a friend of hers, but she told Asher that the rest of them should be offered to you in case you want to use them in the theater department.”
Her blue eyes always seemed bright, like the sparkle of some rare jewel, but they brightened even more. “Yes,” she said. Then, stopped what might have been some gushing over what she obviously considered happy news. “Sorry. I won’t take them if you’d rather burn them or something.”
Again, she’d made him smile. “No burning.” Well, not outfits that Alana might use at school, but there were other possible pitfalls inside that massive house.
Alana must have seen the doom and gloom go over him because she reached out, took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We could play the ‘name a place you’ve never been kissed’ game, but that might not be wise and all, considering where the game always led us in the past.”
This time, he laughed. Couldn’t help himself. Because, yeah, it’d been a fun game all right and it had, indeed, led to making out and eventually sex.
“My left earlobe,” he provided.
She gave an exaggerated huff and rolled her eyes. “Since I recall that being an especially sensitive hot spot for you, I’m sure that part of you has been kissed many, many times.”
He frowned at themany, many. It was absolutely a hot spot for him, but he couldn’t recall nudging his lovers in that direction. Alana had done her own nudging. When they’d been fifteen or so, she’d first located it with her mouth. Then, her tongue. After hearing and feeling his response, which had been an instant hard-on, she had often tortured him with it.
“You’re making it difficult for me to honor your vow of celibacy,” he muttered. “But then the kiss game wouldn’t necessarily lead to sex.”
She exaggerated a flat look to let him know that was total BS. A kiss, possibly just one, could land them in the most available spot for sex.
Gray’s phone rang, the sound cutting off his foreplay chatter, and he cursed when he saw the name pop up on the dash screen. David Russell. Normally, he wouldn’t have gotten “a punch to the gut” feeling by getting a call from his dad, but there wasn’t anything normal about today.
Since the conversation wouldn’t be private, Gray considered hitting decline, but he couldn’t do that. His dad would no doubt be worried. In fact, Asher’s call would have been a gut punch for him, too, and while Gray was pissed off to the bone about what his folks had done, there was no reason to shut off all communication, especially since this call might give him answers to a few of those questions he very much needed answered.
“Are you all right?” his father immediately asked.
Gray went with the truth. “Not especially. But Alana’s with me,” he added so that his dad would know he wasn’t alone.
“Alana.” His dad sounded relieved about that. Maybe because he thought Gray was wallowing in a pit of despair right now and might do something reckless or stupid?
Doing something reckless or stupid could, indeed, happen, but Gray had no intentions of harming himself. The reckless or stupid, however, might involve Alana. With her this close, it would be so easy to take any comfort she could possibly offer. Easy to have fun by playing the old games with her that would lead to kissing and such.
Easy but wrong.
After all, there was a reason she was in that support group. A reason she’d had all those failed relationships. He definitely didn’t need to be adding to what she was going through.
“Where are you?” his father asked several moments later. “We should talk.”
Yeah, they should talk, but Gray couldn’t manage that face-to-face right now. “Why didn’t you tell me about Sadie Jo being my bio mother?”
He heard his father’s long weary sigh. “Because your mother didn’t want you to know. She made me promise and made me promise her again when she was on her deathbed.”
That felt like another gut punch. He had a lot of rough memories of his mother dying. Memories of her pain and the fight for her life that she ultimately lost. He’d had no idea that even during that pain and fight she’d wanted his father to keep a secret that shouldn’t have been a secret in the first place.
