In fact, she’s why I pulled away in the end, seeing as how she’d grabbed onto my ear and was tugging on it as hard as she could. It was hard, but I managed to do it even though I didn’t move too far away from Katy.
“It’s not what you think,” I whispered, watching as her eyes opened slowly and she looked at me in confusion. “Tomorrow, I want to take you out, just you and me so I can explain. Can someone babysit for you?”
“I…” she whispered back, breaking off and looking behind her where her brothers were standing next to her dad. “I’ll have to ask.”
Lips twitching at how obvious her ability to do that at this exact moment was, I waited for her to realize it herself. When it did, she blushed and bit down on her lip, almost making me groan.
“Oops, I forgot they were there,” she breathed, and then turned to look at them. “Can someone babysit Elodie for me tomorrow night?”
A face peeked around the corner of the stairs with a big grin on it – Katy’s mom, Katherine. “Your dad and I will do it.”
Katy’s dad, Paul, glared over his shoulder at his wife, and then turned back to glare at me. “Have her back by nine.”
“Paul, she’s an adult,” Katherine snapped, then smiled at the two of us. “We’ll keep Elodie at ours for the night, so long as we bring her teddy she’ll be fine.”
That was something that was true. The only thing Elodie’s mom had ever given her was an ugly purple teddy bear, but she took it everywhere with her and fell asleep cuddling it. I wanted to get her a Steiff or something special, but apparently she had to have this one.
“Nine,” Paul growled, glaring at his wife until she mouthed something to him that I couldn’t read and he turned around with a deep blush on his face. “Fine.”
Katy had the day off tomorrow seeing as how Ren was worried she hadn’t had enough sleep, so I leaned back in and gave her a quick lip touch. It wasn’t even a kiss or anything close to it, just a skim. “I’ll pick you up at six, ok?”
“Ok,” she breathed, and then looked over my shoulder and blushed. “Hey, guys.”
Glancing back at my brothers, I saw them all standing in the exact same positions as hers were still standing behind her, and wearing identical expressions. Christ!
“Later, baby.”
As I turned to walk back to my front door, ideas of where to take her rolling around in my head, I heard her mutter, “What just happened?”
Eight
Katy
I’d finally slept. In fact, I’d gone to bed at the same time as Elodie – nine o’clock – and I’d slept all through the night until nine o’clock this morning. She’d always been a good sleeper, so I wasn’t worried that I’d missed her, she just liked to sleep in – something I was supremely grateful for this morning.
Rolling out of bed, I frowned when I noticed that the three jewelry boxes I had on my dresser were at weird angles. My family knew not to come into my room given that they’d grown up with my OCD issues, and I was certain that no one else would have come into it, so why weren’t they in the right place?
Looking around the room, I checked to see if anything else was out of place, and saw the frames that I’d carefully hung on the wall were at angles instead of perfectly flat as well. Fixing them, I walked toward Elodie’s room and noticed that all the frames in the hallway were at strange angles, too. In fact, one of the photos was upside down. I must have been so tired last night that I hadn’t noticed it because it was unlikely I’d have slept through someone doing it. I’d been tired, but I was still a light sleeper, especially when I had my niece with me.
Leaning over the bars that surrounded her bed and kept her safe, I smiled when I saw her sucking her thumb, waiting patiently to be picked up.
“Morning, beautiful ‘Lodie,” I cooed, lifting her off the mattress and up to my chest. “You’re such a good girl for me. Auntie Katy was exhaaausted,” I said dramatically, making her giggle. “We’re gonna put a fresh diaper on your booty, make you smell like a precious baby again, and then have some breakfast, girl, ok?”
“Da!” she nodded and pointed where the diapers were.
“Clever girl, that’s exactly where they are.”
Once she was clean and smelling fresh, we went downstairs and I looked around to see if anything else was out of place. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something was seriously off in my house. Was it like this last night?
Popping her in her highchair, I sliced a raspberry bagel in half and put it in the toaster while I waited for the coffee to finish its magic.
“Aunty Katy’s just going to call Aunty Katherine, baby. I’m right here making breakfast, though,” I reassured her, and reached for the phone that was sitting in its charger.
Hitting the button for the last number dialed, it rang twice and Mom answered.
“Hey, Katykins. How are you and the precious baby this morning?”
“Slept twelve hours, and she was a gem. I’m just making her breakfast,” I told her as I got the creamer out of the fridge along with the juice that she liked. “Hey, Mom, did you notice if anything was out of place in my house last night?”
I was so focused on what I was talking about that I started pouring creamer in Elodie’s sippy cup instead of my coffee. Sofa. King. Great.
Dumping it in my cup, I tossed hers in the sink to wash up afterward and got a fresh one out. This time I got it right, and she ended up with her juice and not creamer.
“No, honey, I don’t think so. Like what?”
“Were the pictures on the wall at weird angles or anything?”
There was a pause while she thought about it. “No, I remember checking a couple in case they’d shifted. It happens to ours sometimes, they just start to drop slightly, and it’s a pain in the ass when you realize. In some countries, they actually tilt the frames slightly to stop bad spirits resting on them, you know.”
I’d definitely had some bad spirits on mine then. “Did the boys come upstairs to mess with me?”
“By moving your frames? Oh, hell no. None of us has forgotten the night Major got pissed at you and rearranged your CDs. I don’t even think the ER doctor has forgotten that night seeing as how you kept attacking him even when they were stitching his eyebrow up.” On a technicality, that injury wasn’t my fault. I’d thrown one of the CDs in question at his head, he’d deflected it in the wrong direction i.e. towards his head, and it had cut his eyebrow up. It’s not like it was even an issue seeing as how he said the chicks totally dug the split eyebrow look. “They don’t go upstairs, Katykins, so I don’t think they did.”
That was true. After that mishap, my new house rules were that none of my siblings could go near my room – which in this house was extended to the whole upstairs level – without express permission from me. It didn’t matter if the house was on fire or I was being attacked by a Yeti – none of them was allowed upstairs unless I said so, and that included screaming it.
“That’s weird,” I muttered, placing the bagel down in front of Elodie. “Maybe we had a tremor or something?”
“Oh, shoot, your dad needs a hand with something so I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later when we come to pick up the baby,” she blurted and then hung up.
Picking my cup up and moving to sit next to Elodie at the table, I checked online to see if there was any record of even a small tremor in the area and found nothing. Tapping my phone on the table, I watched Elodie tear the bagel apart and throw chunks of it to Duke who was in doggy heaven having her around. Every time she ate, she threw him food. At this rate, he’d be as wide as he was tall. In fact, now that I thought of it, where was Duke last night? Normally he slept in the hallway or in my room, and I didn’t remember seeing him when I got up.
This was turning into a strange morning for me, so I relied on the power of coffee to help me figure it out and focused on drinking what I had. Just as I finished my first cup and was getting up to get the next one – because seriously, who just has one cup of coffee – my phone beeped
with a text.
Ebru: Girl, you’ve totally annihilated the GYMP. There was a plan, and you’ve left it in the dust. Total pro ho! What you wearing tonight?
Me: What do you mean?
Ebru: Your Jarrod date. If he talks dirty to you in that deep voice, can you record it for me? I swear I’ll love you for life.
It took a hot second to filter through all the other shit I had whirling around my brain, but when it finally made sense, I almost dropped my phone in the sink.
Oh jumping through shit on a pogo stick – I had a date with Jarrod tonight.
Jarrod
“You,” Maya snapped as she stormed across the lot in front of the garage. “You fucked up the GYMP.”
A quick glance behind me told me that Ren was the one who’d fucked up with a gimp, so I asked, “What gimp did he fuck?”
“The G, Y, M, P. The Get Yo’ Man Plan that we came up with so Katy could get you,” she said, stopping with her hands on her hips.
I will not deny the fact that I grinned wider than I’ve ever grinned in my life. Swear to shit, the Cheshire Cat had nothing on what I did hearing this. “She had a plan to get me?”
“Well d’uh. And now you’ve gone totally off script, and she’s not following it at all. How am I gonna get y’all together if you can’t follow simple directions?”
“I’ve got a date with her tonight, Maya. It’s all good,” I told her, cleaning my hands off on the rag that was hanging out my back pocket and enjoying the way her mouth open and closed a couple times while this sank in.
“You have a date?” she asked quietly, looking around us. “Like a just you and her date?”
“Yup, just me and her going out together.”
Throwing her arms up in the air, she let out a piercing scream, “Yass!” As quickly as she did it, she dropped her hands and grabbed my arm to pull me closer. “Ok, what’s your plan?”
Leaning in like I was about to tell her, I whispered, “It’s a secret,” and backed away, also enjoying the fact that she now looked like she was going to throttle me.
Before she could do that, my phone beeped in my pocket and I pulled it out to see that I had a message from Reid.
Reid: Did you know that Mom can sniff out information on us a mile away? She’s like a shark. So I need to tell you that she knows about Katy, she knows about all of it, and she’s at Katy’s right now. Sorry!
The little shit stain had told Mom?
And she was at Katy’s?
“Yo, Ren,” I yelled, running toward my truck. “Need you to cover for me, I’ll be an hour.”
Not looking pissed or upset, he raised a hand and walked over to see his wife, only just realizing that she was there. For once I didn’t smile when I saw the soft looks they gave each other when he leaned down to give her a kiss. Instead, I was trying to figure out how I was going to drive without having an accident to get to Katy’s before Mom could do her thing.
And again, I’ll point out – this was why I’d wanted some space.
I was going to fucking kill Reid.
Katy
Jarrod Kline’s mom was in my house. She was sitting on my couch with my niece on her lap, drinking coffee from one of my cups. What in the hell was happening?
When I’d heard the knocks on the door, I’d expected a delivery guy or the mailman, not his mom. Smooth as anything, she’d held her hand out, introduced herself as Gloria Kline, and had then melted and held her hands out for Elodie - who’d of course gone to her. Know the most stupid part? It wasn’t until she was sat down with a cup of coffee and had said the words, “I hear you’re dating my son,” that I’d actually realized she was his mom.
There were so many issues with this. The first was that I’d let a stranger into my home and had let her hold my niece. I was such a shitty aunt. The second was that she had the name Kline – the same name as Jarrod – and I hadn’t figured it out. The third was that I’d put on a Hooters tank thinking that it was just us girls today, so that’s what I was currently wearing while I was talking to her. And trust me, there was no disguising the fact that it said Hooters, San Diego, on it. The fourth was that I hadn’t dried my hair, so I probably looked like Mufasa while she looked like a team of beauticians had worked on her. The fifth… I don’t even know what the fifth issue was, but the list was fucking long.
“My boys have all told me such great things about you, Katy,” she murmured, letting Elodie jump around like a maniac on her knees. “And I see they’re all true.”
What did you say to that? I’d never even met a guy’s parents before. Well, unless you counted the parent-teacher evenings at school where I’d bumped into my boyfriend’s parents. Did that count?
Totally lost for a response, I whispered weakly, “That’s very kind of you.”
We were both watching Elodie doing her thing on her new friend when she said, “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
It wasn’t a question or even a statement, it was just a thing that was now dangling between us. Did I nod and say yes, or did I say she was always welcome to come over? I had no freaking clue what to do.
Thankfully, she didn’t wait for me to figure it out.
“My Jarrod is special,” she told me, reading Elodie’s new movements perfectly and putting her on the floor. “He’s always been the quietest one out of my boys, the one who thinks more than talks. He’s also the one who is more grounded, reliable and sturdy.” Thinking about all four of the Klines, I had to disagree. They were all built like flipping buildings, so they were all sturdy if you asked me. “All of them have something in their own unique way – just like you with your siblings – but Jarrod… he truly is something rare,” she told me, and then picked up her cup and took a sip of her coffee.
“He was born on a Sunday, and from the second he entered the world he started screaming his head off,” she chuckled. “My mother had been listening to something on the radio while I was pushing, a Sunday church service that was being broadcast live, and when they passed him to her, she turned it up louder to hear what was being said, but a gospel group were singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot for one of their members who’d passed away. The second he heard it, he stopped trying to burst his little lungs and went silent. After that, whenever he was sick, upset, angry, feeling low, he’d either hum it or he’d listen to something else.”
I was trying to picture a little Jarrod doing that, but it just didn’t compute for me. I mean, I knew he used music to destress, but I didn’t know it was as deeply ingrained in him as this.
“At the age of eight, he came home from school, bursting with news about a guy who was teaching kids the guitar. He picked that instrument up and boom, he could play like that,” she clicked her fingers.
“Jarrod plays the guitar?” I asked, strangely not feeling uncomfortable anymore.
“Like he was Mozart with a piano,” she sighed, and then leaned into me. “But he’s rubbish at reading music,” she whispered. “You put sheet music in front of him and he can’t do a thing.”
“So how does he play the guitar?”
“He listens and figures it out on the guitar himself and then memorizes it so he can play the full song.”
Holy shit, that was freaking cool.
“And his voice,” she sighed, looking at the window. “His voice when he sings is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
She had that right. I got to hear it every day while he was working, even if he tried to keep it as quiet as he could, and I never got tired of it – which is what I told her, too.
After I’d done that, she sat and took me in more carefully. “My son is a special gift, Katy. He’s quiet, and he has no confidence, but he has so much that makes him the special gift that he is. The man everyone sees out there,” she waved at the window, “isn’t the one that’s inside him. If he gives you even a hint of the true depths of who he is, you’ll see that the world has a truly amazing man helping to make it the magic it is.”
Looking
back over at the window she’d gestured to, I whispered, “I’m starting to see that.”
“He’s shown you parts of it then, I take it,” she said over the rim of her cup, her eyes smiling at me.
“I think so.”
Lowering the cup so that it was on her knee, she used her free hand to take the one of mine that was closest to her. “Then hold on, because you’re going to experience true happiness with him. It goes without saying that all of my sons have something to them, and God willing, when the time comes I’ll be able to share that with the women they choose to make permanent in their lives, too. But Jarrod holds everything deep, even music, and has always used it to establish his own rhythm and beauty.”
What could you say to that? Oh, Mrs. Kline, I get that. He’s the hottest guy I’ve ever met and I can’t wait to feel his rhythm? That was all kinds of wrong… but true. I wondered what kind of rhythm he had in…
“I see I’ve got you thinking now,” she chuckled, putting the cup back down on the table. “Well, let me just say, when my boys called me and told me Jarrod had someone special, I was shocked. He’s had girlfriends before, but not once have they involved me in it. Heck, one of them he had for two years and I never met her,” she muttered, her tone making it clear she still wasn’t happy about that. “Then they told me he was making a mess of it with you…” I’m thinking they’d used different words for mess, ones that included ‘fucking it up’, but ok, “and that I needed to fix it.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, “I didn’t come here to fix it, I came to figure out if you were worth as much as they were making out.”
I stopped breathing, not even realizing I’d done it until my brain started screaming at me to sort my shit out.
When I did, I whispered, “What?”
I mean, she was really nice, and she’d been that way since she’d come in. At no point did I think the visit was that deep. Then again, what did I know? I wasn’t a parent, and I’d never done the boyfriend/girlfriend parent thing, even with my ex in college. So this news made me panic that she was just being nice and that the second she left she’d tell her son to move the hell on and find someone better. That would not only mean losing Jarrod – even though I was still ticked at him about what I’d heard and didn’t understand it at all – but it would mean losing her other sons who I liked a lot also.
Talk Flirty To Me: Cheap Thrills Series Book 4 Page 9
