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Alana waved, returned the greeting and went to the door. However, before she could knock, Gray opened it.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, tipping his head to the box he had tucked under his arm.
She was about to ask him what was in that box, especially since it had likely been the reason he’d asked her to come over, but Gray stopped her by brushing a kiss on her mouth. Even though it was quick and barely qualified as a kiss, it still sent her pulse galloping.
“No, I didn’t call you here for that,” Gray told her. He must have seen the heat flare in her eyes. Of course, her quick breath and glassy look probably clued him in, too. “But I’ve been dreaming about you, and I wanted to see, well, I just wanted to see.”
Alana smiled. “And what did you see?” she came out and asked.
“That I’m a jerk for jerking your feelings around like that.”
That rid her of her smile, and she caught onto the front of his shirt, yanking him to her. She put her mouth on his.
And this one was definitely a kiss.
The flood of heat came. Mercy, did it. It raced through her all the way to her fingertips and toes. She thought that maybe it singed her eyelashes.
He tasted like everything her body had been craving. Like Gray. Like something sweet and forbidden.
Which he was.
Still, Alana lingered several moments longer so she could make her point. Because the heat made her mind all fuzzy, which she had to keep reminding herself of when she was around him. She eased back.
“All right,” she managed. “We’re equal because I just jerked you around, too.”
Gray stared at her. “I didn’t vow to stay out of a relationship. Since you did, I shouldn’t have kissed you.” He kept his gaze on her a moment longer and then shook his head as if trying to clear it. Then, he shifted the box so she could look at what was inside.
“Photo albums,” she muttered. She shifted her attention back to him to try to figure out if this had caused his mood to sink, but she couldn’t tell. “Pictures of Sadie Jo with your birth father?” Alana came out and asked.
“No. Pictures of me.” He took hold of her hand, leading her toward the living room.
Alana practically stumbled over her own feet, though, when she noticed the decor. It was hard to put a label on the style, but over-the-top seemed to apply. There were guitar rugs on white hardwood floors, massive flower vases and a red sofa in that particular shape.
There were boxes sitting around the foyer and living room, and she spotted the clear plastic garment bags containing costumes that could also be considered over-the-top. Lots of red, beads and even some feathers.
“Wow,” Alana muttered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I had the same reaction.” He motioned toward the costumes. “Those are the ones for you. There’s another batch in one of the boxes in the foyer. Those are going to Sadie Jo’s friend and backup singer, Callie Murdock. She’s coming over later to pick them up.” He paused. “Sadie Jo and Callie have been friends since they were teenagers, so I’m hoping she can, well, tell me who my birth father is.”
Alana considered that a moment. “Your dad still won’t say?”
He shook his head. “Things aren’t good between him and me right now.”
That gave her a surge of emotions of a different sort, and her heart ached for him. Gray had always been so close to his parents, and his dad and he had gotten even closer after his mother died. This had to be eating away at Gray. At his father, too.
Gray sat her next to him on the sofa and pulled out the first album. “It’s pictures of me the first year of my life.”
Again, she checked to see how he was handling this discovery, but Gray didn’t seem depressed, just confused. Alana thumbed through the album and soon saw why. There were no photos of Sadie Jo but rather of a newborn Gray with his parents, David and Mary. Alana knew it was Gray because his name had been monogrammed on his blue swaddling blanket.
Alana continued to look through the pictures and saw that these were key moments of Gray’s first year of life. All the milestones were there. Sitting up, crawling, first solid foods and walking.
Gray patted the box. “There are albums that go through until age ten. Then, there are more boxes for the rest of my years. Graduation, rodeo events, pictures from parties and such where I was promoting my business.” He paused. “There’s one partially filled from late last year.”
It wasn’t easy to wrap her mind around that. Some of the photos had been staged shots. Family pictures with his parents beaming at the camera. So, clearly they hadn’t been taken by someone sneaking around.
“You think your parents gave these to Sadie Jo?” Alana asked.
Gray shrugged, then nodded. “My mother had nearly identical albums of me, and after she died, my dad kept them up.” He stopped and cursed. “Since Sadie Jo gave me up, why the hell did she want all of this?”
