The more time I spent with her, the more I understood why Trent was the way he was, polite, feet flat on the ground, and quietly confident. Claira was all steel wrapped in velvet. Still, even with her effortless sophistication, she seemed curious.
Eager, even. Like she wanted to ask me a hundred things all at once and I’d bet my inheritance that those questions were mostly about my relationship with Trent. Every time I mentioned him, even in passing, her eyes sparkled a little, but she held back.
For now. I wasn’t sure she would last the hour.
She didn’t make it two more minutes. “So, how are you and Trent doing, honey? You two seem to be getting along just fine.”
Her tone was carefully neutral, but her grin was not. That grin was wide and excited, like she already had the wedding halfway planned.
I blushed behind my biscuit. “He’s very kind to me.”
“Kind? Oh, honey, he’s something, alright.” Her voice had a tone mothers used when they were thinking about stories theirchildren would die if they repeated. “I’m just not surekindis enough to cut it.”
The heat on my cheeks intensified, but as I looked at her, I realized she knew everything about his past. The things he didn’t talk about. The things that had made him shut down in the truck last night and that he didn’t want me asking about. But curiosity was a terrible, unstoppable force.
After about twenty more minutes of Claira pretending not to vibrate in her chair with barely restrained wedding-planner energy, I finally decided to just go for it. She could shut me down too if she wanted, so I set down my fork and tried to sound casual.
“Claira, can I ask you something?”
Her brows shot up, but it didn’t look like surprise. To me, it looked a lot more like delight. “Of course, darling. Shoot. What’s on your mind?”
I took a breath. “Who is Savannah?”
The effect of saying that name was immediate, almost like I’d slapped her with a wet dish towel. Her whole body went still. Her smile vanished and even the air in the kitchen seemed to flatten. She recovered quickly, her smile reappearing a beat later, but her eyes were sharp when they met mine again.
“Did Trent mention her to you?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. We saw her yesterday at the club. She came over to say hi, but it didn’t seem like a friendly sort of greeting.”
Claira muttered, “I’m shocked that piranha showed her face in Dallas again.”
Suddenly rising from the table, she spun toward her pantry and started pulling out flour, sugar, butter. Basically, everything she needed to bake something elaborate and stress busting. A coping mechanism, if I had to guess. I watched her set out bowls and whisks like she was deploying weapons.
“Claira,” I said gently, repeating the question. “Who is she?”
She ignored me at first, or maybe she was just pretending to. It was hard to tell. She cracked two eggs with more force than strictly necessary, but when she finally looked up, her expression was pained. Protective. Maternal.
“It’s complicated,” she finally said before she went back to what she was making.
“Isn’t everything?”
She gave me a smile so tired that it made me feel terrible for bringing it up. Clearly, there was a story there, and it was definitely one that mattered, but if it hurt them all too much to talk about, I wouldn’t keep pushing.
That knot of possessive jealousy in my gut melted into disappointment, because if even his mother couldn’t talk about this woman, then Trent surely couldn’t be ready to move on. Not that he was doing that with me anyway, but after these last few days together, maybe I’d hoped.
After Claira had measured flour twice and forgotten both measurements, she sighed, leaned against the counter, and finally started talking.
“Savannah was the love of Trent’s life for a time,” she said, folding her arms. “She comes from a very respectable family. Old oil money like ours. She was polished, pretty, and sharp as a tack, and I thought, Lord help us, this girl is it.”
I stayed quiet, not wanting to push any more than I already had. Plus, the awesome, creamy grits seemed to be going sour in my stomach. I reached for my coffee to hide the unexpected sting of pain that zapped through me.
The love of his life.
“She and Trent were together off and on for a couple years, but we never pressured him,” she continued. “Not at first. They were so young and they were both happy. We just assumed marriage would be coming eventually. Everyone did, and whenhe didn’t propose, well, after about two years, Troy and I started wondering. And then?—”
She broke off, swallowing hard and literally reaching for her pearls. A pit of doom opened up in my stomach. “Then what?”
She hesitated. “I didn’t learn this from Trent directly, so it may not be the full truth, but there was a baby involved.”
