“I’m not sulking.”
“I’ve got a mirror in my purse to say otherwise. I can shove it under your nose to see.”
“No one carries mirrors in their purse anymore other than old people.”
She squinted and smirked. “Be happy I’m feeling some sympathy for you right now or you’d get another slap on the arm. Tell me what is going on. Process of elimination it’s your girlfriend because the pub is doing great. I see the books, so I know. I’m positive that chunk of money you paid out didn’t have your account squeaking.”
“Close enough for my peace of mind,” he said. Between that and his legal fees, childcare costs and everything else he’d had tocome up with in the past few months, he was sweating more than normal.
Even working less wasn’t beneficial, but he wanted to be there for his son too and hoped things would level out soon enough.
As much as he wanted to buy a house he was getting cold feet that he should wait a bit longer to build up his savings.
Did Jocelyn suspect he’d do that?
“Then what is going on? It has to be Jocelyn. Is this all too much for her? I’m just itching to give her a piece of my mind if that is the case.”
“No,” he said. “She showed me the land she was going to buy and the big house she’ll have built on it.”
“Okay,” his grandmother said. “She’s building a house. You’ve been looking at houses too, or said you were going to. Where is that different if she does it or finds one first?”
He blinked his eyes a few times.
“It’s nothing I’ll ever be able to afford.”
“So? She can. Is she asking you to put money into it?”
“No.” And maybe that was some of it too. It felt as if she didn’t need him. Which he knew financially was the case. She’d be fine without him and would she get sick of it?
“Do you want her to? Even if you could afford it? Is that the problem? You’re feeling more for her than she is for you?”
“She told me she loved me right after she handed my ass back to me with road rash on it.”
His grandmother laughed. “You need a good tongue-lashing. My guess, you got your private parts out of joint. See, I was good and didn’t say dick out of joint. Got to be on my best behavior around my little Mav.”
He snorted out a laugh. His grandmother had never guarded her tongue much in his life, but she had been now.
“He loves being around you,” he said.
“That’s right. So Jocelyn shows you the house she wants to build for whatever reason she has given you. Something she’s doing on her own and you’re bent because you can’t provide it for her and you think she’s rubbing your face in it.”
“Never.” She wasn’t rubbing his face in anything.
“Then you think she’s doing it to help you and your pride got damaged. Like she thinks you can’t provide for your child when we all know you can.” He stared hard at his grandmother causing her to point her finger. “That’s the one. Grow up, Chance.”
“I’m not getting any bigger than I am.”
“Grow your mind. Open it up. I could see how she felt about you. Only an idiot couldn’t, and though I might not have finished high school, I’m no idiot.”
“Guess I’m one,” he said. “I didn’t see it.”
“You saw it and you were scared because you’ve got all these ideas in your head that aren’t true. You broke the damn cycle in our life. Keep doing it.”
“I don’t need anyone to think I did it because of who I’m with.”
“Do you really think anyone will believe that other than you?”
His grandmother walked out after those parting words.
