“I’d love to have them here too, but it would be hard for him to paint his urban landscapes if he’s living in North Carolina. Besides, he’s a grown man. He has a right to live where he wants.”
Dad’s gaze dropped to Oliver. “How am I supposed to know my grandson if he’s growing up halfway across the country?”
“I guess we’ll just have to go see them more often. Maybe they’llcome around here more too”—she gave him a pointed look—“if we make them feel welcome when they visit.”
Her dad shrugged off the comment. “Well, they’ll have their own house to stay in, thanks to your gram.”
“Have they decided what they’ll do with it?”
“Not that they’ve mentioned. They’ve been over there boxing up some things. We’re supposed to go get the rest of what’s ours and anything else we’d like to keep.” His voice cracked on the last word.
Shelby offered a sympathetic smile. He’d been close to his mom and he’d never see her again this side of heaven. “How are you doing, Dad? I can’t even imagine losing a parent.”
“You did lose a parent.”
“Not like this.” When she was seven her mom had taken off for Hollywood with dreams of fame. They’d barely heard from her after that—and certainly hadn’t seen her on TV or the big screen. It seemed their mom had given up her family for nothing. Shelby wished she couldn’t remember her at all. But she did. She remembered her glossy dark hair and expressive brown eyes. She remembered soft hands and melodious laughter.
And she remembered the night when her mom hadn’t come home from work. It grew late. The sky darkened and they ate supper under a cloud of concern. Then the phone rang and Dad sent Caleb and her to their rooms. But they sat in the hallway instead trying to hear Dad’s end of the conversation.
A while later, eyes red-rimmed and voice wobbling with emotion, he brought them the bad news.
Ollie squirmed in her arms. She shook the memory away and placed a kiss on the infant’s head, soaking in the soft baby smell of him.
“Going back to work this week has helped,” Dad said. “You know, staying busy.”
“I’m glad.”
“How’ve you been this week? You were close to her, too, and accustomed to seeing her every day. Now you’re cooped up in the building with that Briggs boy. It’s all I can do to stop myself from going down there and hauling his rear end out of there.”
“Just remember this was all Gram’s doing.”
He scowled. “I don’t get it. She always had such a blind spot for that kid.”
An image of the five-o’clock shadow on Gray’s jawline as he left the store this evening popped into her mind. “He’s hardly a kid anymore.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“If it makes you feel any better, he stays downstairs all day—crunching numbers, I guess. I hardly see him.” But every second of the day she was aware of his presence, always wondering when he’d come up to ask a question.
At first he’d tried to teach her some things related to the POS system. At her reticence he eventually offered to make her a detailed tutorial, and she latched onto that idea. The less time she spent with him the better.
Even so, Gray seemed to have grown increasingly quieter as the week progressed. Maybe he was just locked in on his task. Fine by her. Sooner he got it done, sooner he’d leave.
“What if he doesn’t know what he’s doing?”
“Come on, Dad. He has a business degree with a specialization in accounting. I’m pretty sure he’s qualified for the task. And this’ll get him out of the bookstore for good. It’s a small price to pay to regain 100 percent ownership.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“I know you don’t. I don’t either. That’s why I put it in writing. We’re all covered here. We just have to get through this, and then he’ll leave town and this will all be behind us.”
Dad’s gaze sharpened on her face. “It’s your heart I’m worried about. There are no legal papers that can protect it.”
She’d once been hopelessly in love with Gray. And the summer he left, it had been all she could do to get out of bed. Breathing seemed like a struggle. Then fall came and she went off to Belmont University where she struggled through a semester, too forlorn and distracted to make a real go of it. Why was she struggling so hard to become an English teacher when everything she needed was back home? She missed her family. Missed the bookshop. Missed home.
Most of all she missed Gray, but he was gone.
None of them wanted to see her return to that dark place. “Don’t worry, Dad. I don’t need a legal document for that. My heart has a ten-foot wall around it where Gray Briggs is concerned. Besides, I’m seeing Logan, remember?”
