by Sandra Owens
“Ain’t got nothin’ but time these days. Ya finally decide to look for yer mama?”
“Yeah. Is she here?”
Harmon scrunched bushy gray eyebrows together. “Why would ya think that?”
Apparently, he wasn’t going to be invited inside. “Because I saw her leave with you that day.”
“So ya assumed? Ya know what they say ’bout assumin’, boy?”
Nate fought a grin that the old man was calling him a boy. “I do. If she’s not here, then do you know where she is?”
“Nope. I been waitin’ years to tell one of you boys what I know. Ya shoulda cared about her long before now.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, but I’m here now. What do you know?” He wished Taylor were with him. He had a bad feeling about what he was going to hear.
Harmon shuffled over to the porch rail—which, if the man had weighed any more than he did, would have given way when he leaned against it. “Ya sure ya wanna hear this, boy?”
Nate nodded. “I saw her get in your truck. I always thought she ran away with you, leaving us in his hands.”
The old man grunted. “Then ya were a fool, boy,” he said. “I took yer mama to the bus station. That’s all I did. Yer daddy woulda beat my ass if’n he ever knowed that, so I left town. I din’t want to git involved, but when she told me why she had to leave, couldn’t say no to her.”
When Harmon stared into the distance, seemingly lost in time, Nate said, “Why did she have to leave?” He already had a sinking feeling that it was because of what Court had overheard. Their mother had been pregnant.
“Why?” the old man said, focusing rheumy eyes back on Nate. “It was ’cause of the baby. Yer daddy tried to beat it out of her belly. I was there that day. Heard her screams as he whupped up on her. I couldn’t cotton to that, so I helped her leave. Everything happened real fast. Your daddy took off in his truck, and soon as he was gone, she begged me to help git her away. So I did. Took her to the bus station. Last time I saw her.”
The air left Nate’s lungs, and he struggled to breathe. All these years he’d believed their mother had left them for the man staring back at him with disappointment. Eff him to hell. How had he let himself think that about a woman who, until she’d walked down that dusty dirt road, had never given him or his brothers a reason to doubt her?
“Do you know where she went?” he asked.
“Nope. Din’t want to know in case yer papa came callin’. She sent me a picture after the baby came. Still have it. Saved it fer when you came callin’. I’ll go git it.”
As Nate waited on the porch, he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that he had a brother or sister. What he did know was that he’d find his mother and somehow try to make things right with her.
Harmon Baker returned, holding out an envelope. Nate took it, and the first thing he noticed was the stamp and that it had been mailed from Gainesville. A starting point in his search. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a return address.
“You kept in touch with her?”
“Nope, but I kept my post-office box even after I moved so she could let me know if she needed help. Ya know, like money for the baby. But she never asked.”
That didn’t surprise him. Their mother had been too proud to ask for help, that much he remembered about her. He slipped his fingers inside, hesitated when he touched the contents, then pulled out a Polaroid photo. How long he stared at the picture, he couldn’t say. He guessed the baby to be about six months old when it was taken. She had the same black hair and black eyes as he and his brothers. He smiled at seeing the little pink bow in her hair. Standing on that rickety porch with an old man who was disappointed in him, he fell in love with the little girl in the decades-old photo.
Where was she now? Who was she? They’d searched for Wanda Gentry, but their mother’s trail had grown cold the minute she’d walked away. What name had she taken? What was his sister’s name? With all his questions, there was one thing he did know. His brothers would want to find their mother and sister as much as he did.
“Can I keep this?” he asked. If the answer was no, he was keeping it anyway.
“That’s why I saved it. To give to one of you boys when ya decided to come callin’,” Harmon said.
“Thank you.” He pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to the bills in it. It was obvious the man had nothing to his name, and Nate meant to thank him as best he knew how.
“Don’t want yer money,” Harmon said, scowling at Nate. “Just go find yer mama and sister.” He walked into his house, closing the door behind him.
Harmon Baker had helped their mother escape the cruelest man Nate knew, and had apparently done it out of the kindness of his heart. That he didn’t have a pot to piss in was obvious. Nate jogged down the wobbly stairs, picked up a decent-sized rock, and then returned to the porch. He emptied his wallet of the four hundred dollars he had in it, put the bills on the floor in front of the door, then set the rock on top of them.
He returned to his car, and after sitting for a few minutes, considering his next move, he called Court.
“I’ll be at your place for a late lunch. Get subs or something. Tell Alex I want him there when I get back. In the meantime, see what you can find on a Wanda Gentry in Gainesville.” He hung up before his brother could ask any questions.
“We have a sister,” Alex said for the third time, staring at the yellowed photo of the baby girl. He set it on the table between him and Court. “We have to find her and our mother.”
Court looked up from his monitor. “Nothing’s coming up on her from the day she left us.”
“Then she either stayed off the grid, or she somehow got a new identity.” Nate pushed his half-finished sub aside. “Our mother wasn’t an educated woman, nor did she have any friends to turn to. She likely changed her name but didn’t know how to go about getting a fake I.D.”
“You think she found jobs where they paid her under the table?” Alex said.
“Yeah. Motel maid, maybe a waitress at the kind of place that didn’t ask questions, housekeeper for a private individual, something like that.”
Court frowned. “If she didn’t have I.D., then she couldn’t apply for any kind of welfare, and with a baby, it would be hard to hold down a job.”
For so long, thinking that she’d abandoned them for a man, Nate hadn’t cared about what might have happened to his mother. Now the idea of her starving and trying to care for a child sat heavy in his chest.
“Keep looking,” he said, standing. “You two need to head over to Aces and Eights soon.”
“You’re not coming?” Alex said.
“Nope. I’ve . . .” He paused, not used to baring his soul, but it was time to let his brothers into his life. “I’ve got a woman to win, if it’s not too late.”
Alex sprang up, wrapped his arms around him, and hugged him hard. “Finally.”
“I’m going to shoot you if you don’t let go of me, bro.” Nate rolled his eyes over Alex’s shoulder at Court’s smirk. “I mean it, Alex. Let go.” Opening up to his brothers was one thing, but this touchy-feely crap wasn’t going to cut it.
“Love you, man,” Alex said.
He patted his baby brother’s back. “Ditto. Now get the hell off me.”
Court laughed. “Ah, you’re gonna hurt his feelings.”
“I’m going to hurt a lot more than that the next time he goes all girly on me.”
Alex stepped back. And eff him. He knew that look in Alex’s eyes.
“Girly, huh?” Alex said, staring down at Nate after putting him on his back. “Want to call me that again?”
“Probably not.” And because his baby brother was his favorite idiot, Nate found himself laughing. He held out his hand. “Help me up.” As soon as Alex’s hand was in reach, Nate grabbed him by the wrist and scissored his legs around Alex’s with the intention of bringing Alex down to the floor with him.
“Knew you were going to do that,” Alex said, somehow twistin
g his body away.
“I’m getting too old for this.” Nate laughed again as he struggled up. Someday soon, he was going to have to accept that he’d never best Alex. The boy was that good. “Go on. Get out of here. Both of you.”
After they left, he showered, shaved, and then spent a stupid twenty minutes trying to decide what to wear to romance a woman.
Taylor dropped flakes of food into Henry Too’s tank. She’d spent a wonderful day with her girls, but the fun had been dulled because a certain frustrating man stayed on her mind. All day, she’d gone back and forth, one minute deciding she’d agree to see him when he called, and the next changing her mind.
“Life is so easy for you, Henry Too. All you have to do is swim around and wait for food to fall out of the sky.” He darted from flake to flake, gulping them up.
All afternoon, she’d expected her phone to buzz, but it had remained silent. At the very least, he owed it to her to let her know if he’d learned anything about his mother. Maybe he wasn’t going to call after all. She should be relieved. Wasn’t that what she wanted?
No, it wasn’t.
Accepting that her phone wasn’t going to ring, she jumped in the shower. After toweling dry, she put on her comfiest yoga pants and an oversized FBI T-shirt. She poured a glass of wine and took it and her Kindle to the sofa. It was a sad state of affairs that the only romance in her life was found in a book.
She’d made it to chapter two when her doorbell rang. “You expecting company, Henry Too?” It was probably her neighbor, locked out again. It had happened so many times that she’d given Taylor a key to keep for when she needed it. On the way to the door, she scooped Mrs. Preston’s key out of the bowl. But when she looked through the peephole, it was not her elderly neighbor on the other side of the door.
“Crap,” she muttered. Of course, Nate would show up after she’d put on her ugliest nightclothes. Well, it was his fault for not calling first. She cracked open her door.
“Hey. Thought you were going to call before you came over.” It would make her happy if her heart didn’t decide that bouncing in her chest was the appropriate response at seeing him. And even worse was how her mouth watered at the sight of him wearing a button-down white shirt rolled up at the sleeves and black dress pants.
Don’t you dare drool, Taylor!
“I was afraid you’d tell me not to come over.”
There was a vulnerability there that she’d never seen before in the man standing in front of her with his hands behind his back. Her stupid heart continued acting up by going soft at the uncertainty in his eyes. Nate Gentry was never unsure of himself, but he was now.
“Can I come in?”
“Um . . .” She stepped back. “Yeah, okay. Give me a few minutes to change.” And to get my heart to stop pounding. As he walked past her, still keeping his hands hidden behind his back, she caught his spicy scent and had to fight the urge to sniff him.
“You look fine. Kind of cute, really.”
She scoffed as she glanced down at herself. “Kind of cute?” Gah, she’d dripped wine down her T-shirt. “Pretty sure I have a homeless fashion thingy going on here.”
“I’d take you home with me.” He took his hands from behind his back. In one was a bouquet of wildflowers in a mason jar, and in the other an iced mocha coffee piled high with whipped cream.
“For me?” Okay, that was a stupid question.
He grinned. “No, they’re for Henry Too.”
“What’s going on, Nate?” His smile faded, and she wished she could take the question back. But not really, since she was totally confused. A man bringing a woman flowers and her favorite beverage seemed a lot like he was courting her. Courting and friends with benefits were two completely different things. Weren’t they?
“I guess I’ll drink this myself,” he said instead of answering her question.
“No way.” She grabbed the coffee from him, and while she was at it, she might as well take the flowers. It wasn’t like a man brought her a bouquet every day. Actually, it was only the third time, four if she counted Wayne Tompkins, and she definitely wasn’t. Twice from Nate, and one of her two boyfriends had given her flowers once on her birthday.
“I’ll just go put some water in this.” The mason jar was really cute. “Then I’ll go put some decent clothes on.”
“No, don’t. I should have called.”
She hated how unsure of himself he seemed tonight. That was so not Nate, and she didn’t like it. “Okay. How did it go this morning?” After filling the jar with water, she took it and her iced coffee to the living room, setting the flowers on the coffee table where she could see them. Curling up on the sofa, her legs tucked under her, she waved her hand for Nate to take a seat.
He shook a Tic Tac into his palm, then popped it into his mouth as he sat at the opposite end, angling his body to face her. “It was what Court said. She was pregnant. But all Harmon Baker did was take her to the bus station.”
As he told her what he’d learned, tears filled her eyes. All these years, he’d believed the worst of his mother, and she saw the guilt of that on his face.
“You couldn’t have known,” she said when he finished. “Considering you saw her get in that truck with him, along with the fact that until recently, you guys didn’t share with each other what you knew.”
He shook his head. “It’s like Alex said. We should have known she wouldn’t abandon us without a good reason.”
“How do all of you feel about having a sister?” That had to have come as a shock.
“I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet for any of us. We’re trying to find them.”
Of course they were.
“We don’t even know what names they might be using.” His gaze shifted to the fish tank, then returned to her. His throat flexed as he swallowed hard. “But that’s not what I want to talk about tonight.”
“Oh?” She sipped her iced coffee as she tried to ignore the hope that had been building in her chest ever since she’d opened the door. There was no reason for it. All he was going to do was try to convince her to take up where they’d left off.
“I’ll say this straight out, Taylor. I’m in love with you.”
Aaaand she choked, dribbling coffee all over herself. “Crap.” She set the cup on the table, then brushed at her T-shirt, doing nothing but smearing the stain. Real cool, Taylor. The man tells you he loves you, and you spit coffee at him.
He blew out a breath. “Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.”
She had no response to that. Had she even heard him right? She had thought that if he were ever to say those words to her—and sometimes late at night, she’d let herself dream of that happening—she’d always imagined the moment would be straight out of a romance novel.
The setting would be somewhere romantic, she’d be wearing a sexy dress, and they’d stare into each other’s eyes as he said the three little words she longed to hear. It had never occurred to her to imagine a scene from a romantic comedy if this day ever came. Well, he had brought her flowers, so that was pretty romantic.
“Seriously, can I go change my clothes?” His eyes blanked, so she hastened to add, “I refuse to tell you that I love you with wine and coffee stains on my shirt.”
A slow smile lifted his lips. “How about I help you change?”
“That’ll work.” Weirdest avowals of love in the world. It suddenly struck her funny, and she burst into laughter. Or maybe it was the way her heart was doing a jig in her chest that had sent her straight into silly.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him into her bedroom with her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nate could breathe again. He’d never thought he would tell a woman he loved her, and when he finally had, her first word had been crap as coffee had dripped down her chin. About the time he’d decided to leave—to retreat and regroup—she’d started laughing and had insanely said that she couldn’t say the words back in a stained T-shirt.
So inst
ead of temporarily walking out—temporarily, because there was no way he was going to give up on her now that she owned his heart—he found himself laughing with her as she led him to her bedroom.
“Oh, my flowers. I need them.”
When she tried to return to the living room, he tugged on her hand. “Go on. I’ll get them.” He liked that she wanted them with her. At the florist shop, he’d considered roses again, but he’d done those already. And then he’d spied the wildflowers in a mason jar, and they’d seemed to be something she’d like. Halfway to her house, he’d had second thoughts, questioning his decision not to go with something fancier.
The jar of flowers in hand, he headed for Taylor’s bedroom. Seriously? Wildflowers? He’d really screwed this night up. What he should have done was plan a special night. Except he had no experience in planning romantic evenings. He should have asked his sisters-in-law for advice, but he’d been too anxious to see Taylor to even think of doing that.
He snorted. Who was this man wishing he’d asked for romance advice? But when he walked into the bedroom and saw Taylor, wearing nothing but tiny blue panties, standing at the end of her bed, a shy smile on her face, whatever he’d been thinking was lost.
“Tur . . .” He cleared his throat. “Turn around.” She slowly pivoted. Yep, it was a thong. His eyes landed on her creamy-white ass cheeks. God help him. He might never be able to think again.
She peeked at him over her shoulder. “I was going to put a shirt or something on, but I figured you’d just take it right back off.”
“You figured right. Don’t move.” He set her flowers on the nightstand, then prowled toward her, his gaze focused on her back. When he reached her, he lifted her hair and put his mouth to her neck. She was warm, with that hint of lemons he’d come to love.
“You smell good. You taste good,” he said, moving his lips against her skin. She shivered, and he nipped at her neck and was rewarded with another shiver. He loved that he could make her do that. Truthfully, there was nothing he didn’t love about her. Except maybe that she still hadn’t said she loved him. He would torture it out of her if he had to, but it would be a torture she’d enjoy.