“A photo of her mother.” He looked over at Ashanti, not even bothering to hide the hurt in his eyes. He couldn’t even if he’d tried. “She looks as if she could be my mom’s twin.”
“Oh, shit,” Ashanti said.
Thad grinned at her curse, despite his somber mood.
“Yeah. Oh, shit,” he said. “It looks like my grandfather has an entire second family in a little town just outside of Mobile, Alabama.”
“Oh my goodness,” Ashanti said. “How could he do such a thing to Mrs. Frances?”
Her gentle outrage on his grandmother’s behalf sent a wave of reassuring comfort washing over him. It felt good to know he was justified in his anger. Not that he had any doubts that his rage was warranted.
But it wasn’t the anger that was eating him up; it was the disappointment.
“That’s the thing that keeps gnawing at me,” Thad said. “I can’t believe he would do this to Grams. I was young, but I was still aware of the sacrifices she made for the business. Sutherland Dry Cleaning wouldn’t exist if not for her. To now know that he was off fucking some other woman while myGrams was holding down everything at homeandat the dry cleaners?”
Thad clenched his fists so tight Puddin’s leash started to dig into the fleshy part of his palm.
“It feels as if everything I grew up admiring about my grandfather was a lie.” He huffed out a laugh. “And to think he used to call my dad a cheating bastard—which he was. That asshole doesn’t get a pass here. But it looks as if Gramps was just like him. And that kills me, Ashanti.” Thad pressed his fist against his stomach.
“Everything that I am—every virtue, every principle—he is the foundation of it. Every significant decision I’ve ever made, I made it with him in mind. I would always ask myself, ‘What would Gramps think about this? Would he approve? Will this make him proud?’” He shook his head. “I feel like a fool.”
“Thad, you had no way of knowing. Your grandfather kept this from everyone.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Thinking about what this will do to my grandmother kills me.”
Ashanti asked the question that Thad had been asking himself for the past hour. “Do you have to tell her?”
He brought his free hand up to the back of his neck and massaged the muscles there.
“I don’t know,” Thad said. “My gut says no. What good would it do to devastate her like this? But then I think about his other family. What if itdoesbecome about money? What if they try to make some kind of claim for the house or my grandfather’s estate? Grams made a good profit when she sold the dry cleaning business. Are they entitled to any of that? I don’t know how this shit works.”
“I don’t know either,” Ashanti said.
She took Puddin’s leash from him and wrapped it around the hand where she held Duchess’s. Then she took his hand and entwined their fingers.
Thad closed his eyes again and welcomed the peace her touch brought him.
“Come home with me,” he said. He didn’t know where the words had come from and cursed them the moment they left his mouth. She’d told him about her aunt’s threats. He knew she wouldn’t risk losing her sisters, even if those threats were bullshit in his view. It wasn’t fair to put her in this position.
Yet, instead of apologizing, he added, “Please.”
It felt as if a thousand years passed before she made him believe that not everything in his world was lost with one softly spoken word.
“Okay.”
32
They didn’t even pretend that they had come back to his house for any reason other than this one thing.
The moment they crossed the threshold, clothes began flying. Thad didn’t think about where the dogs were or if his grandmother’s nosy-ass neighbor was looking through the window, seeing him toss his T-shirt across the living room. His sole focus was getting Ashanti in his bed and getting inside of her as quickly as possible.
“This way,” he said, leading her to his room. He toed off his tennis shoes and shucked his sweats and underwear down his legs. Then he helped Ashanti with hers, peeling the jeans from her hips, traveling down with them as he made his way to the floor.
Thad brushed a kiss against her stomach, just above her belly button. He moved lower, trailing kisses along her skin, adding his tongue once he reached the spot between her legs. He groaned against her.
“Sit down,” Thad whispered.
When she did, he pulled her to the edge of the mattress and lifted both her legs, placing her thighs on his shoulders. Then he dipped his head and spread her open with his tongue.
