And from the too-perceptive, good-looking Gage, who’d managed to do in the space of an hour what I hadn’t been able to in nearly a month.
Let Everett just be Everett.
Chapter 9
GAGE
“Night, sweetheart,”I murmured as I pressed a kiss to my daughter’s neck just seconds before I blew a loud raspberry against it. She giggled and jerked back.
“Daddy!” she admonished. Her hair was damp from her bath and was hanging straight down her back. The bright pink nightgown she was wearing nearly went to her ankles.
“What?” I asked, feigning innocence.
She shook her head at me and then leaned in to give Everett a hug. Unlike the first night when she’d done it, Everett was ready for it and he quickly returned the embrace. “Sleep well, Charlie,” he said. “We’re on to the zucchinis tomorrow, right?”
“Right,” Charlie said with a nod of her head. “For zucchini bread.”
Everett chuckled. “Right, among other things.”
In the three days since Everett and Nash had arrived, Everett had taken it upon himself to tackle our gardens after asking for permission to clean them up. Since the garden had been my mother’s domain and had been steadily ignored since her death, other than picking the occasional vegetables, my father and I had readily agreed to hand the task over to Everett. It had been a bit odd atfirst, to think of the former president of the United States working in our garden, but it had become clear that it was the kind of work that Everett thrived on and that helped ease his nerves about Reese being discharged in less than a week’s time. Charlie had soon become involved in the gargantuan task of harvesting the vegetables from the garden before they spoiled, and Everett had used the combination of her hatred of most vegetables and her innate curiosity about things to turn the whole thing into a teaching moment. By having Charlie find recipes for each of the vegetables and then putting her to work in harvesting and then preparing them, my daughter had overlooked her supposed distaste of said vegetables.
“Charlie, let’s go, Castor and Pollux await!” my father called from upstairs.
“Gotta go,” Charlie said. “Night, Daddy. Love you more than zucchini!”
“Brat,” I said as I took a swipe at her as she darted past me. She giggled and then took off toward the stairs, Medusa and Happy at her heels. Zeus stayed where he was, not even lifting his massive head at all the commotion. Most of the cats had picked out their favorite spots throughout the living room, but Fat Cat, the huge orange tabby my father had rescued from the side of the road less than a year ago, was lying on Everett’s lap. The animal hadn’t moved even an inch when Charlie had hugged Everett.
“Castor and Pollux?” Everett asked.
I waved my hand. “Most little girls want bedtime stories about princesses and castles, my daughter lives for Greek mythology’s heroes and villains.” I reached for my beer on the coffee table. “When she was five, her kindergarten teacher called me into school one day to tell me my precious little girl was likely disturbed, since she was drawing pictures of hellhounds and women with snakes for hair. I had to explain that I wasn’t raising a future sociopath, just the granddaughter of a professor of Greek mythology who had a bad habit of turning his lesson plans into bedtime stories.”
Everett laughed and reached for his wineglass. I was entranced as I watched him take a sip. I couldn’t get past the thought of howhis lips would taste with the faint hint of wine on them. It took an enormous amount of willpower not to shift closer to him on the couch and find out.
“Can I…” Everett began, but then he shook his head and took another sip of his wine.
“What?” I asked. He was on his second glass and I could tell he was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk, but the alcohol had added some color to his cheeks and seemed to be loosening his tongue as the evening went on, enough so that he’d even relaxed enough to engage in the argument my father and I had been having about our community’s efforts to ban people from owning pit bulls after a recent attack had nearly killed a little girl just a few miles from where we lived. While neither of us agreed with the proposed ban, my father was the kind of guy who believed in going gung-ho on something he felt passionately about, while I tended to take a subtler approach.
Dad was talking lawsuits and protests right out of the gate, while I was more inclined to start with attending the public meeting the city was having to discuss the issue. Everett had seemed reluctant to share his thoughts when we’d asked him, but after a little bit of cajoling, he’d chimed in with a plan that had been a little stronger than mine, but not as aggressive as my father’s. It was a good plan that involved rallying members of the community who felt the same way as my father and me, along with a couple of experts on dog breeds and behavior, but didn’t ruffle feathers with political leaders right out of the gate.
“What?” I repeated. “Can you what?”
Everett glanced at me and held my gaze for a moment before saying, “Can I ask what happened to Charlie’s mother?”
I felt the familiar pain in my chest that always made itself known whenever I thought about the woman who’d given me the greatest gift I’d never even realized I’d needed.
“I’m sorry,” Everett began, then he started to stand. I grabbed his wrist to stop him. He was caught between sitting and standing. Fat Cat was forced to hop off Everett’s lap, but he didn’t go far. He merely plopped down on the couch between us.
“Everett, it’s fine,” I said gently as I urged him back down. Somehow, the move had him sitting even closer to me.
“Really, it’s none of my business…”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “Charlie and I talk about her mother quite a bit.”
Everett nodded. “You said she was biologically yours. Were you in a relationship with her mother?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking of,” I said as I took another drink from my beer and then settled the bottle on the coffee table. I turned so I was facing him. The position put my left knee up on the couch and when Everett mirrored the move, we were practically touching. Fat Cat quickly reclaimed his spot on Everett’s lap. “I met Grace when I was in the third grade and her family moved here from Boston.”
“You grew up in this area?”
