Though as soon as she stepped past the threshold of the front room, she figured she could have followed the smell to the kitchen. It was wonderful. It reminded her of bittersweet memories of holidays with her dad and her grandparents.
She followed Andi into the roomy kitchen and noticed a slim woman pulling a pan of cookies out of the oven with a hand covered in a flowery oven mitt.
As the woman turned, Andi said "Hey Mom. Where's Dad and Riley?"
"They went to the hardware store with Keith. Lorelei finally convinced Keith that he needs to take care of that leaky faucet in the guest bathroom."
Looking at the woman, there was no mistaking where Andi had gotten her looks from. Andi's mother was tall and slim, and looked like an older version of her beautiful daughter aside from the fashionable wire rimmed glasses perched on her face.
"Michelle, this is Tory, Anthony's girlfriend. Tory this is Michelle, Andrea’s mother."
Michelle paused long enough to wipe her hand on the apron around her waist, and then stuck out her hand. "Nice to meet you Tory."
"You too."
"Sit down, Tory, Andi. There are cookies on the table. Carl, come here and help me with the hot chocolate. You know I can never get your secret recipe quite right," Lorelei said with a wink at her son.
Carl gave Andi a sheepish smile and followed his mother to the cupboard. Michelle sat down next to Andi at the table and Andi said "Mom, Tory goes to Crestview. Isn't that so cool?"
Michelle smiled. "Of course dear."
"She said that they have scholarships. Maybe if I keep my grades up I could pick up one for next year."
"That would be wonderful Andrea. It's a very good school I hear."
"Let me give you my cell number Tory so that you can give me that information when you get back to school okay?"
"Sure." Tory dug her phone out of her purse, putting in the digits as Andi rattled them off to her.
She was on her third chocolate chip cookie and her second cup of cocoa when Tony and Rich finally made it in, red faced from the cold. Tony dropped a hand onto her shoulder and she shivered. "You're freezing."
Lorelei quickly bustled in, pushing a cup of cocoa into his hands.
"Thanks Aunt Lori," he said, giving her a quick smile.
"I'll be right back with yours Rich.”
"Don't bother Lor. I should get going. Barb wants to drag me with her for some last minute Christmas shopping. As if those kids don't have enough crap strung out all over the house already."
"You can stay for one cup Rich, to warm up. I'm sure Barb won't mind."
"If you insist," he said with an easy grin, dropping into the last remaining chair at the table.
Tony reached over and squeezed her hand. True to his word, Rich left after one cup of cocoa. He'd eaten four cookies. Lorelei had sent him home with a plate heaped full for his kids. Though he’d grumbled about them being hyped up on sugar, she'd insisted.
Tony stood and stretched. "I guess we'd better get going. We still have a lot to do before we head out of town."
"Can't you stay for dinner? Your uncle should be home soon."
"Not tonight, Aunt Lori. My house is still torn up from when I didn't have this one around to remind me to keep it in order." He smiled at Tory.
"But everything is all right, isn't it Anthony?"
Tory wondered what went on in the head of a woman who was concerned about a child. Not that Tony was a kid, and not that he was Lorelei’s child technically. But it was easy to see that the relationship was as close as it could be without being there in the technical sense.
"Yes Mother." Tony chuckled. "You know how much I love it when you break out my full name Aunt Lorelei."
"You'll call before you leave and as soon as you get there so we know that you two made it safely right?"
"Yes ma'am." Tony gave his aunt a quick hug.
It surprised the hell out of Tory when Lorelei stepped forward to give her a hug as they were leaving.
"It was so nice to meet you dear. You are so good for Tony. He's like a son to us. He's always been around ever since we had Carl. The two were practically inseparable growing up, even with Tony being older. You take care of him for me, and make sure he takes care of you too honey."
Tory smiled, suddenly feeling shy. Tony took her hand. They walked away, calling out goodbyes to Carl, Andi and Michelle who were still in the kitchen, now getting ready for dinner.
As he pressed the button on the remote to unlock the car Tory said "Wow you're really moving up in the world. It's got an alarm and everything."
"Yep, she's not too bad is she? And not a single bumper sticker professing an old lady's passion for bingo or Jesus."
Tory laughed, sliding into the car and shutting the door behind her.
"Now I can be proud to show off both of my women," he quipped as he stuck the key into the ignition.
The car started with the sound of a well-tuned quiet engine. She noticed that he'd already adjusted the seat and the mirrors.
"Why do men name their cars?"
"I dunno. I don't guess that they all do. Habit I picked up from my dad and my uncle I guess."
"I see. Can I have a cigarette? I think I'm out."
He gestured to the pack in the console. She reached for a cigarette as he cranked both windows down a couple inches, letting in the chilly evening air.
“I've been dying for one for a couple hours now but I didn't want to do it in front of your aunt. That would have felt weird."
"She smokes every once in a while. I mean she smokes a lot of pot, but only cigarettes every now and then. You should see my Aunt Lori when she's stoned. Now that's funny."
Trying to imagine the woman who the epitome of the all American apple pie mother as stoned, Tory shook her head. "I can't quite picture it."
"You'll see it at New Year's. There's always plenty of weed and booze at Uncle Keith's New Year’s Eve bash. Usually a little coke too, but maybe not this year. Uncle Keith almost blew his top when he found out my dumb ass let Carl try a snort."
"Oops.” She sighed as the heater kicked in and blew out warm air.
"I think that Aunt Lori was all that kept me and Carl from getting skinned alive. Then she said that maybe their son wouldn't be curious if his father didn't do the stuff. That was like a week and a half ago. I think Uncle Keith's pretty much kept clean since then."
“That's good."
"Yeah, but it's not easy, especially cold turkey. I'm surprised I'm doing so well right now with all the shit I've been putting into my body the last couple of weeks."
"You don't have any cravings?"
"Of course I want the shit. Hell, anybody who's ever done the hard shit for any amount of time still gets a craving now and then. But we've been so busy today that it wasn't hard to work through it. I can't guarantee that it's not going to come when we slow down. And it's going to be hell when it really hits. I've been smoking or shooting something every day for three weeks now from morning until night, sometimes going without sleep. It's gonna get to a point where I'm sure it's not going to be pretty. Especially when we get back here and I have to go and restock my supply."
“But it's gonna be okay, right?"
He pulled the car into his driveway. "I've survived a lot of shit Tor. I'm sure that I'll get through this, too. But," he said as they left the car and he pressed the button on the remote to lock it. "It's gonna be like an alcoholic working in a bar and having to watch everyone else drink and fighting not to do it."
"Have you ever thought about doing anything else?" She followed him into the house.
"Of course I have. Who in the hell really has plans to deal until they're a senior citizen? It's not like you're going to get a pension when you 'retire' from dealing drugs.”
"So why don't you just do it then?"
"And do what Tor? You think anybody's going to hire me in this town? I don't know what I want to do with my life any more than you know what you want to do with yours baby. It just ain'
t this shit. No way. Tony's getting too old for this damn shit.” He slumped onto the couch.
She laughed. "Old? You're only twenty-one. It's not like you're thirty."
He looked up at her. There was pain in his hazel eyes. "Baby, I felt old as soon as my old man died and Mom lost it. I tried to take care of her myself for a while. Trying to keep my mother from going to pieces while in the last couple months of high school was not pretty. Uncle Keith stepped in and said enough. And Mom was gone. They locked her up and threw away the key."
"Oh Tony.” She put her arms around him.
And she thought HER parents were bad. Today she'd been wondering how different her life would have been if she'd grown up with a mother like Lorelei. At least her father was still alive. Lindsey certainly wasn't the mother of the year, but she still had her senses about her.
"At least you had your aunt and uncle." She pulled back and gave him a soft kiss on the mouth.
"Uncle Keith and Aunt Lori are awesome. I don't want to think of where I would have been without them."
“There's a lot of stuff in life that it's better not to think about." She reached for a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table.
"You want to order a pizza? Or go out? I'll let you drive my new car. I think there should still be some place open where I can pay my phone bill. I gotta get my insurance changed. There’s so much crap to do. I'm still kinda tired but then again I don't want to sit still."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "And I thought you brought me back here to seduce me. Now I feel kind of insulted."
"Wouldn't want my favorite girl to feel offended now would I?"
He swept her off of her feet and into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
Forty-five minutes later they were showered and ready to go. He threw the car keys at her as they headed for the door.
"I wanna see how you handle her around town before I let you drive her on the open road. You be nice to her okay? No running into parked cars or crashing her into the garage when we pull into the driveway."
"I've never been in an accident. Unlike you." She brushed past him as they went outside.
"You still got a mouth on you don't you?" He trapped her against the car for a long kiss.
"You know you missed it." She deftly moved past him to open the drivers' side door.
"Of course I did." He got into the passenger side and put his seat belt on.
"Where is this place where you're going to pay your phone bill?"
"In that strip mall with the pizza place."
"All right. Then where we goin’?"
"You wanna eat or go to the grocery store? I gotta buy cigarettes and I think you ran me out of laundry detergent washing all of my laundry at once."
"You shouldn't have let it all get dirty at once."
"I know. I know." He rolled the window down and lit a cigarette. "But clean clothes are one of the last things on your mind when you're busy getting high all day. Pretty much everything escapes your mind when you're getting high all day." He sighed.
"So are you excited to meet Lindsey and Langston?"
"I bet I can screw you in your bed right under their noses." He gave her a cocky grin.
“Just listen for them boning and then you can sneak in no problem. That's so gross."
"Sex is not gross." She pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall. "Sex is a beautiful wonderful act between two people that love each other."
She snorted. "You really have been doing too many drugs haven't you? Weren't you the one that swore to me that a blow job from a tweaker meant absolutely nothing when we first got together?"
They got out of the car. He put his arms around her waist. "I lied to you. Tony received not one blow job from a tweaker or anyone else after we got together."
"Right." She rolled her eyes at him as they crossed the parking lot. "Not even from good old Belmont?"
"Just one and it didn't count because we weren't together. I miss blow jobs. If only I could teach you not to use your teeth.”
"Now that really is gross."
He opened the door to the cell phone store. He made a face at her and then went to wait in line to pay his bill. She busied herself looking at cell phones while he dealt with the clerk. Taking her hand as he returned, he said "That's highway robbery. You won't believe the late fee they charged me. I don't remember my phone being off for that long."
"You need to remember to pay your bills on time. I'm surprised you remembered to pay your rent."
"I wouldn't have if I didn't pay it six months at a time."
"You shell out that much cash at once?"
They got into the car.
"My landlord gives me a discount. The electricity and everything else besides my cell phone bill are all on auto pay."
"So why do you have a lockbox full of cash if you have a bank account?"
"Who can really trust the banks these days?" They pulled out onto the road. "I put enough in there to cover my bills and the rest I stash."
"It's a good thing that guy didn't find your money." She turned the corner towards the grocery store.
He scowled. "Yeah. I can't believe you wouldn't let me kick his ass."
“Babe kicking his ass isn’t going to solve anything.”
Tony scowled as he held open the door of the store for her. “It sure would feel good though.”
She pushed the cart down the aisles of the grocery store. "Even if it did feel good it still wouldn’t be worth it.”
He sighed. "Yeah. I don't have any better ideas other than kicking the shit out of him. And since I've been forbidden to do that. . ."
"Forbidden? What am I? Your mother?"
"Nah baby. You're more like the angel that sits on my shoulder keeping me from doing all the stupid shit that I want to do when I'm high out of my mind. If I didn't have your voice stuck in the back of my head telling me to keep my shit together I'd have been in jail for assault and battery for beating the living hell out of Jude long ago."
"So now I'm an angel."
"Every good angel's gotta have a wild side. And you've got one of the sweetest wild sides I've ever seen."
"Pervert." She moved away as he tried to grab her butt.
"Hey, do you think we should get something to bring to dinner with your parents?"
"Parents ha. Lindsey is the poorest excuse for a mother ever. If you want to meet my real parent we might as well head to Montana and try to track my dad down by his P.O. Box address. Nah, we don't need to bring anything to good old Lindsey and Langston. Anything we'd come up with wouldn't live up to their standards. I'd be perfectly happy to spend Christmas at your house. I hate the holidays."
"Me too.” He pulled her into his arms, ignoring the dirty look that an elderly woman who was passing by on the other side of the aisle gave them. "My dad was still into all the holiday shit. He made me go look at Christmas lights with him when I was seventeen. I probably wouldn't have been such an ass about the whole thing if I'd have known it was going to be his last Christmas."
She stepped out of his arms, giving him a quick kiss. "I'm sorry Tony. Your dad sounds like he was a wonderful man."
"It's okay. I still can't believe that he's gone sometimes. It's really hard to think about what things would have been like if he wouldn't have died. I gotta find something to take to my mom that they deem as harmless. Ah hell, I gotta pick up something for Carl and Uncle Keith and Aunt Lori too. We better hurry up and get groceries, drop the shit off at the house and then get to the mall. It's gonna be packed. Then we can finish cleaning up the house tomorrow and get a good night's sleep before we head out to your house."
She sighed. "Don't remind me. I'm really not looking forward to this."
"Hey baby." He draped an arm around her shoulders. "It'll be okay. I promise that I'll play nice with your mom and stepdad. I clean up well."
"Do you own anything besides jeans and t-shirts?"
He gave her a mock dirty look. "'Course I do love. What respe
ctable drug dealer doesn't?"
She snorted. "I told my mom you were a song writer."
He raised an eyebrow. "You did, did you?"
"You said you wrote songs in high school right?"
He laughed. "Your mama wouldn't want to hear the songs I wrote in high school. My mom found one and had a shit fit. It was rather graphic. It was about my 10th grade English teacher. What I wanted to do to her. Except my mom never knew that I did do most of that stuff to her."
"Whoa.” She put an economy bottle of laundry soap into that cart. "I thought you said you weren't a stud in high school."
He laughed. "I wasn't. You should have seen my English teacher. She was a hell of woman but she won't ever win a beauty contest. There were some other less reputable contests she might win, though. Damn could that woman. . ."
Tory gave him a dirty look as she tossed a pack of dryer sheets into the cart. "Thought we weren't going to talk about sex with other people."
"I know. Sure don't want to hear about you and Jude."
Tony decided that it was time to change the subject. "So do you think we got enough supplies to get us through tonight and tomorrow?"
She looked at the cart which was piled high with cleaning supplies and snack food, and snorted. "I think you've got enough crap to satisfy a couple stoners for a couple days yeah."
"Weed isn't a real drug. If I smoke enough weed maybe I'll be able to convince myself I don't really need the hard shit."
"If you say so."
She followed him toward the check stand. They dropped off the groceries at the house and then headed out to the mall, where Tony agonized over what to buy for his aunt and uncle. He'd already picked out a large box of condoms for Carl and a gift certificate to a video game store.
She'd been trying to sneak away from him to get him a gift but he'd insisted on waiting outside the bathroom for her, telling her that she didn't need to worry about buying him anything; her being with him was enough. She was feeling so sappy by that point that she'd almost started crying. But then he'd dragged her into a lingerie store and bought her a barely there negligee which reminded her that no matter how sweet he could be, he always had sex on the brain.
Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set Page 111
