by L. D. Davis
I was surprised to learn that lunch would be at Grant’s. I had been hoping for a public place, but at least I could find out where he lived so I could avoid him. He had been right; he didn’t live that far from me. We could have easily run into each other at any given time and any given place; however, there were enough streets, alleys, businesses and people between us that we could have just as easily not ever seen each other.
After less than ten minutes of driving, we arrived at a long rectangular industrial-looking building. I glanced at Grant with a raised eyebrow. He caught my look and smiled.
“It used to be a warehouse,” he explained as two green garage doors opened toward us. “I was going to buy a house in the burbs, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t want grass to mow, trees to trim, and driveways to shovel in the winter. I also didn’t want to deal with the commute to work.”
I considered him skeptically. “So, you bought a warehouse?”
“It’s a warehouse conversion,” he corrected, still smiling.
I peered up at the building once more before we drove inside. “How many units are in here?”
“Just mine.”
My eyebrow rose higher.
“Just yours is finished you mean.”
“I mean that the whole building is mine. The entire building has been converted.”
I looked around at the garage as I got out of the car. There was another SUV, a motorcycle, and a few bicycles. Tools and other crap you find in a garage were on shelves and hanging on the walls, and there was a door at the back.
“The gym,” he murmured, following my gaze.
I nodded as I wished for x-ray vision so I’d be able to see beyond the walls surrounding us. The building had to be at least four thousand square feet. I lacked the creativity to even imagine what that would look like.
“Why does one man need so much space?” I questioned as I followed him up a flight of stairs.
He glanced back at me with his eyebrows pulled together and mouth slightly ajar. The stunned and confused reaction made me a little uneasy.
At the top of the stairs, he turned around to face me. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what? Do you have a time machine in there or something?” I gestured toward the wide door a few feet away. “Dinosaurs? Warheads? A speakeasy?”
He tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work out. “Mayson, I’m a single dad. I have two kids.”
“Ohhhhhhhh,” I whispered, staring at him.
It shouldn’t have made a difference to me either way. I had no plans to see him again after our lunch, so it wasn’t like I had to deal with the brats in any way, or with the baby mama drama that would be sure to follow. In fact, he would probably let me go very quickly if he knew that I never wanted children—mine or anyone else’s. I didn’t even like most children. I wanted him to let me go, so it really shouldn’t have mattered.
Except that it did.
I felt…betrayed. Grant had skipped out of my life without a second look back. He said that he checked up on me over the years, but did I know that for sure? Maybe he didn’t even leave me because of the drugs—or not entirely because of the drugs. Maybe, just maybe he had met someone else. Maybe he’d moved away with her and started a family with her, and maybe they recently broke up and that was the only reason he came looking for me again.
His fingers stroking my cheek startled me from my thoughts.
“I can tell that your brain is trying to process what I’ve just told you,” he murmured. “And I’ll bet any amount of money that you are jumping to the wrong conclusions. Come in, and I’ll tell you everything. That’s why we’re here, right? To talk.”
He gently patted my shoulder and turned away to unlock the door.
Grant gave me a brief tour of the ware-home, as I had dubbed it. It was a big space and it was beautiful. Before Kyle moved his family into a house in the suburbs in New Jersey, he had a penthouse in Philly on the riverfront. His place had been obnoxious and cold, and filled with a lot of expensive, useless crap. Grant’s place—only slightly smaller than the penthouse—felt comfortable and well lived in. It felt like a family home. There was evidence of his kids everywhere—from the toys left on the couch to the finger paintings hanging on the fridge.
There were also photographs of them everywhere. I picked up a framed picture of Grant and his kids on a beach somewhere, squinting and smiling at the camera. I wondered if their mother had taken the picture.
The little boy had a strong resemblance to Grant. He was a shade lighter than his father, but they shared the same mouth and smile. The little girl, to my astonishment, looked like a four or five-year-old version of Sharice. She was the same shade of brown Sharice had been, she had the same big eyes and narrow nose.
Gazing at the photograph of the happy family, my throat seemed to swell.
“She looks just like her,” I managed to croak out.
“She does,” Grant agreed quietly from my side.
I carefully put the picture back on the shelf it was displayed on and took a cleansing breath to loosen the knot in my throat.
“Aren’t you supposed to be feeding me lunch?”
I started toward the kitchen, but he caught my hand after a few steps. I turned to face him and tried to pull my hand out of his grasp, but he held onto it easily. I gave up for the time being, knowing that it would be like one of those Chinese finger puzzles. The harder I’d pull, the more stuck I’d be.
His voice was soft as he gazed down at me. “I promise I’ll feed you soon, but I want to tell you about Natalie and Alex first.”
My brows pulled together. “You named your kid Alex Alexander?”
He gave me a small, amused smile. “He’s actually Grant Alexander IV, but we started calling him Alex when he was just a baby so there was no confusion.”
“Look, you don’t have to tell me about your kids or their mother. I don’t need know.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you don’t need to know?”
I shrugged. “Why do I need to know? I mean, if you want to tell me funny stories about them or whatever, that’s fine, but I don’t need to know how they came to be. That’s way too personal, don’t you think?” I snorted. “Maybe you’re not the right person to ask about getting too personal, seeing as though you clandestinely pursued me for weeks. Anyway, what I’m saying is that I don’t need to know. This is only lunch after all.”
I again tried to unfetter myself from him, but his grip tightened and he pulled me closer. Small pinpricks of anxiety pierced into me. I jerked slightly, as I resisted the urge to lash out at him.
“If you want me to stand here, I will.” I avoided his eyes by focusing on his shoulder. “But please don’t physically hold me against my will.”
I didn’t see his expression, but I could feel the sudden tension in his hand before he reluctantly released me. I didn’t move away, but I folded my trembling hands tightly in front of me before I finally raised my head and met his eyes.
His brow was furrowed and his mouth hung slightly open. He looked at me the way he used to a long time ago, like he wanted to save me, but he didn’t know how or from whom.
“What happened to you?” he whispered.
A small part of me wanted to answer, to tell him the shocking and sad truth, but I swallowed the words. I forced a smile that thankfully didn’t tremble, and took one step back.
Fortunately, my voice was as steady as my smile. “Did you bring me into this ware-home to starve me to death?”
He watched me intently for a moment. When he realized that I wasn’t going to answer his question, he sighed and seemed to let it go.
“Look, I just think it’s important you know that I didn’t date Shyanne until I had been gone for well over a year.”
“Why should it matter to me when you started to date her?” I asked as I tried to hide the sudden burst of irritation I felt.
“It matters,” he quietly responded.
> I threw my hands up. “Fine. Okay. You dated her a year later. Who cares? You told me that we would have ‘light conversation.’ This isn’t light conversation.”
“That was before I knew that you didn’t know I had kids.”
“Well, dude,” I said, exasperated. “You’re the one making such a big deal out of it. I only came here for lunch, but I haven’t seen any food yet.”
He shook his head as he tried not to smile. “Fine. I’ll feed you.”
“It’s about time!”
“Sit.” Grant directed me to a stool at a kitchen peninsula. “What do you want to drink?”
“Do you have wine?”
He raised a questioning eyebrow at me.
“What?” I asked defensively. “I’m a recovering heroin addict, not a recovering wine addict.”
“I didn’t think people in recovery were allowed to drink.”
“It is suggested that we don’t drink, that is true, but alcohol isn’t a problem for me. While you were stalking me, did you ever see me drunk?”
“No,” he said slowly, but then relaxed. He held up a hand. “I trust your judgment.”
I smiled primly. “Well, that’s new.”
“Smart ass,” he muttered. “Red or white?”
“White please.”
After giving me a glass of wine, and placing the bottle down within my reach, Grant picked up a remote and pointed it past me into the living room. A moment later, music drifted softly through the speakers perched high up on the walls throughout the ware-home.
“Smooth,” I said, trying not to smile.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” He grinned mischievously.
He took three apples from a bowl of fruit. He raised an eyebrow and then to my surprise, he began to juggle the produce.
My mouth fell open wide. That was a skill that Grant certainly did not have thirteen years ago.
One by one by one, he caught each apple in his hands and settled them on the countertop.
I closed my mouth and schooled my features, erasing any signs that I was dazzled by the performance. I gave him a half a shrug and said, “It was all right.”
He laughed and got to work on our lunch. I silently watched him as he moved about the kitchen, singing along with an old R&B song. When “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” by Stevie Wonder started to play, things began to get a little silly. He did Stevie’s speaking part in the beginning with extreme exaggeration.
I shook my head and bit the inside of my lip to keep myself from smiling.
“You’re going to cut off a finger,” I admonished as I watched him try to dance and slice the apples at the same time.
He didn’t stop singing, but he put the knife down and danced his way around the peninsula and took my hand into his, singing his stupid heart out. I refused to come off of my stool, but Grant wasn’t having any of it. I let out a yelp of surprise when he suddenly swept me off of the stool as if I weighed nothing, and put me gently on my feet.
I tried to pull away from him, but he managed to spin me around instead. My body was stiff and unyielding at first. He held my hands, dancing and trying to coerce me to dance as well as he continued. I rolled my eyes and again attempted to pull away, but he put an arm around my waist and proceeded to lead me across the hardwood floor.
It was a mess. I stepped on his feet, he stepped on mine, and more than once we almost went down. There was a vibration rumbling through my chest and an unusual sound rolling out of my mouth. I was laughing, truly laughing. Genuine, happy laughter was a rare occurrence in my life.
When I realized it, I wanted to clamp a hand over my mouth and make it stop. I wanted to yank myself out of Grant’s embrace and scream at him not to touch me. I didn’t want him to see me like that, believing that my life was the kind of life where such laughter came easily. I wanted to hold on to my pain and resentment, but I couldn’t do it.
My hand trembled in his. I felt the weight of his other hand on my hip. My heart pounded so hard that it ached and I couldn’t meet his eyes. Me, the woman who could stare down Death itself, but I couldn’t look Grant Alexander in the eyes.
As his exuberance decreased, his hand on my hip pulled me closer. His singing voice grew soft until he was almost whispering the lyrics. Our dancing slowed, even though the upbeat tempo of the song hadn’t changed. I closed my eyes as we danced in place and Grant whispered for me not to worry about a thing close to my ear. He felt so familiar to me, yet oddly foreign.
When the song ended and another began, we stopped moving and he fell silent. We were so close that I could feel his chest rising and falling too quickly, like mine. I opened my eyes, and the spell broke. I blinked rapidly a few times and hastily took a few steps back, forcing his hands to drop away from me.
With great effort, I forced another smile and put a hand on my hip before meeting his eyes. I ignored the desire I saw there.
“I thought you were going to feed me.”
For a moment, he only continued to stare at me. Then he smiled and nodded once.
“Right. Have a seat.”
He turned around and went back to the kitchen. With his back briefly turned, I was able to let my smile slip for a few seconds and pull myself together before returning to my stool.
“You didn’t used to dance,” I found myself saying as he went back to his knife work.
“And you did used to dance.” He gave me a quick, curious glance before sliding the apple slices off the cutting board into a pan. “My kids changed me, I guess. Especially, Nat. She loves music and dancing and she loves when Daddy dances with her.”
We had never discussed children when we were together, but it felt very surreal to hear him refer to himself as “daddy.” I told myself that I didn’t want to know anything more about his kids because it really didn’t matter. We were just having lunch, and that was it. We had already gone too far with the stupid dancing. There would be no more. By the end of the meal, curiosity about me and my life would be sated.
Despite what I told myself, however, the question tumbled out of my mouth anyway.
“How old are they?”
Grant didn’t look away from what he was doing, but tension I didn’t even realize he had been carrying seemed to ease in his shoulders and neck as if he were relieved.
“Alex is almost eleven and Natalie is four. They’re good kids, most of the time.” His smile was proud and made warmth flood my chest. It was the same kind of smile my dad used to have for me when I was a little girl.
Brushing that thought away, I changed gears.
“Where do you work?”
Grant’s eyes met mine briefly, but he didn’t comment on my sudden change in topic.
“I have my own business.”
“Grant Alexander’s Stealthy Stalking Services?” I asked with a sardonic smile.
As he put pork chops in the pan with the apples, he smiled. “Almost. G.A. Recovery.”
“What exactly do you recover? Cars? Boats? Dignities?”
“People,” he said as he turned to get something from the fridge.
I looked at him blankly.
“People?”
“Fugitive recovery,” he clarified.
My eyes widened. “Seriously? Like that Dogg guy in Hawaii?”
Grant scowled. “Don’t ever compare me to that guy. Shows like that make the job seem fun.”
“Oh? It’s not fun?”
“It’s serious,” he said solemnly.
“Oh,” I responded with just as much solemnity. I took a long sip of my wine before speaking again. “The fun stuff must come in at the part when you use your professional resources to look up your ex.”
He gave me a sour look, but I just shrugged.
“Who watches your kids while you’re working?”
“My mother takes care of them if I have to work over the weekend, but I have a nanny come in during the week.”
He didn’t mention the children’s mother having any part in their care, and I ha
d to wonder why. Did she still live in Texas? Or was she a deadbeat mother? Hell, maybe he fell in love with another hopeless woman and she was strung out on drugs somewhere.
I wasn’t going to ask about her. It wasn’t any of my business, but then again, Grant studied my habits in secret for three weeks. He probably knew what time I ate, when I ate, how long it took to digest, and when it made its exit. At least I would be asking him directly and not slinking around in the shadows like a creep.
“Are they with their mother right now?” I asked innocently.
Grant’s whole face changed, and it didn’t change. If I didn’t know every inch of his face by sight and touch, I might have never realized the change. He didn’t smile or frown or blink too quickly, but the muscles in his handsome face seemed to harden. He even moved a little stiffly as he put a pot of water on to boil.
His reply was quiet and he didn’t look at me. “No. She’s dead. Shyanne died two years ago.”
My heart twisted at that. Grant had already lost a sister to death and had almost lost me—not that I actually counted. I sincerely felt terrible for him, but I felt even worse for his kids.
I was much older when my dad died, and it was the worst emotional pain I had ever felt. I couldn’t even imagine how Alex felt to lose his mom at the age of eight. Nat probably had some memories of her mom, just enough to make her feel sad.
I felt like a douche puddle once again. Grant had tried to tell me about Shyanne and I kept blowing him off. It probably would have been easier for him to tell me in his own way instead of me forcing it out of him.
“We weren’t together when she passed,” Grant said when my mouth failed to make words. He retrieved a bottle of brandy from a cabinet. I thought he was going to start drinking it, but he left it unopened on the counter as he went back to work and continued with his tale.
“We divorced when Nat was only about eighteen months old, but we were better friends than spouses. There were no hard feelings between us. Once a month we met for lunch or dinner and caught up. Most of the time we just talked about Alex and Natalie, but sometimes we talked about other things. Shy was…she was a good woman, she just wasn’t the woman for me and I wasn’t the man for her.”