Millie yanked her arm from mine. “I’m not ruining your grandmother’s birthday with having her drive clear across Tennessee the entire day.”
And the viper was back. Funny, a woman so afraid of snakes sure liked to act like one. Millie stepped into the front seat of the cab and buckled in, letting the cool A/C blow on her face.
Gran put the Ford into gear. “Come on, Nick is gonna call me once he starts working on your truck.”
Well, so much for getting rid of this chick and putting space between us.
Crawling into the back seat, I buckled up and pressed my face to the cool glass.
Millie buttered my gran up. “Thanks for picking us up. That was so sweet of you.”
Gran reached out and patted her knee. “If it were just Ashton, I’d have left him by the road, but I knew you were with him and didn’t want you to die from the heat.”
“Oh thanks, Gran.” I chuckled.
She waved me off. “You’re from around here. You’re used to it. Not Millie. New York is so cold I heard the pipes freeze!”
Millie giggled. “It does get cold there.”
They made small talk back and forth, and I was starting to doze off when I heard Millie ask something that made my entire body freeze.
“Who is that? She’s beautiful.”
My eyelids snapped open as I remembered the picture of Jenna that Gran kept on the dash. It was taken a month before the accident. Gran had snapped a pic of Jenna standing in a field of lavender on the farm. They used the same picture at her funeral and blew it up to be three feet tall so people could put flowers around it. Now I hated looking at it because it reminded me of the funeral.
“None of your business,” I said from the back seat and Gran’s eyes flicked up to meet mine in the rearview mirror.
“Ashton!” Gran hissed, and Millie’s shoulders shrank.
I hadn’t meant to sound like such a dick, but I didn’t want Millie knowing all my personal business. It would only make her take more pity on me, and I had to work with this chick. A chick I’d just kissed because I was a damn idiot.
“She’s my niece,” Gran said and left it at that.
Thank you, Gran.
We didn’t need outsiders coming in and knowing our business. She’d already seen too much with Wayne, and I’d gone and told her about the accident. The first chick I hadn’t lied to.
Millie didn’t say another word after that and we were quiet all the way to the farm. It wasn’t until we pulled up to the gates and Richie ran out with balloons that Millie spoke again.
“Oh crap. The cupcakes!” She slapped her thighs. “I made you maple cupcakes butAshtonleft them by the river.” She glared over her shoulder at me and I knew she was pissed about my earlier comment telling her to mind her business.
“Yeah, sorry, I was too busy saving your life from venomous snakes!” I shot back.
“Stop sassing.” Gran reached back and smacked blindly in the air without looking, connecting with the side of my neck.
“That’s okay, dear, you can bake me something else while you stay here.” Why was Gran being so fake to Millie? She wasn’t normally this nice. It was weird.
“We aren’t staying long. Got a bar to run,” I reminded Gran.
“I’m aware of that Ashton. I own half of it,” Gran snapped as she pulled into the large three-car garage.
“Technically forty-nine percent,” I said and then ducked as her hand came back again, blindly swatting.
Gran was a self-made woman. Her daddy died when she was sixteen and left her and her mom the farm. With no brothers to help out, Gran worked the farm with her mom day in and day out, raising cattle, pigs, and over twenty acres of corn.
Recently she’d gotten into selling free range chicken eggs and lavender oil and other hippy-dippy shit. All Jenna’s idea. I brought Gran on as a partner to the bar last year when it really started to go downhill after my accident. She injected some money into it to keep me afloat, but now it was a lost cause.
“You own half the bar?” Millie asked.
