Dangerous Alterations (19 page)

“It soothes him.”

Crinkling her nose, she inhaled sharply, a familiar smell bringing her up short. “What is that?”

Leona pointed a bejeweled finger at the first of four candles. “This one is Ocean Wave, this one is Warm Leather, and—”

“Ocean Wave?” She could hear the laugh waiting behind her words but she did her best to stamp it down. “Warm Leather?”

Leona arched an eyebrow at Tori. “Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem.” She looked back at Paris as the inventory of scented candles continued. The bunny’s nose began twitching at a rapid pace.

“This one is Sugar Cookie and the last one—which is his favorite—is Carrot Cake.”

Carrot cake
…

“What has he eaten today, Leona?”

“His usual organic carrot.”

“And …?”

“That’s it.”

She glanced up at Leona. “Are you sure? Because just since I got here I’ve seen him eating a piece of cracker and a shred or two of lettuce.”

Leona waved her hand in the air. “He has a way of making everyone give him scraps. It’s his charm.”

“Well, his charm has, apparently, earned him an upset tummy.” She reached out, stroked the back of Paris’s head. “He’ll probably feel better by morning.”

Leona reached over the side of the rocker and patted the bunny’s back. “Do you really think so?”

She couldn’t help but grin at the worry in her friend’s voice. She may have helped bring out a nurturing side in Leona Elkin but Paris had taken the ball and run with it. “I really think so. Though you might want to consider extinguishing Sugar Cookie and Carrot Cake. If his tummy is as full as I think, the reminders might be making things worse.”

And, just like that, two of the four candles went dark.

“Thank you, Victoria.”

Rocking back on her bottom, Tori opted to stay on the floor beside Paris, his soft fur begging to be stroked. “I’m sorry that Rose upset you out there.”

Leona’s body tensed.

“I don’t think she means any harm.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But she crossed the line tonight.” Leona rested her head against the back of the rocker. “I enjoy the company of men, I always have. And I suppose I enjoy the company of younger men because of my own youthful ways.”

She resisted the urge to comment a la Rose Winters, choosing, instead, to simply nod. That’s why she was there, wasn’t it? To listen?

“But I will never,
ever
allow a man to become so important to me that I lose sight of myself.”

She tried Leona’s words on for size, realized they didn’t completely fit. “What do you call what you did to me during the Tiffany Ann Gilbert debacle? When you had your sights set on Investigator McGuire from Tom’s Creek?”

The low lighting didn’t mask the crimson that rose in Leona’s cheeks at the reminder. “I call that distraction.”

“I thought you told Rose you don’t get distracted.”

Leona rolled her eyes skyward. “Of course I get distracted.
Everyone
gets distracted. But I don’t have to admit that to Rose.”

“In other words you enjoy yanking her chain just to yank it, yes?” It was a rhetorical question, really.

“Of course I do. It’s fun.”

She felt Paris flinch beneath her hand and wished she could help ease his discomfort. “So your distraction with the investigator wasn’t a case of you losing sight of things because of a man?”

“I might have lost sight of my growing friendship with you at that time—and for that I’m sorry. But I never lost sight of myself. No man is worth doing that ever again.”

Ever again …

She looked closely at her friend, saw the familiar lines of hurt and regret—lines she’d seen in her own face for months following Jeff’s betrayal, lines she still saw when she allowed her mind to revisit that painful time.

Margaret Louise was right once again. Leona’s wound was deep.

It was, perhaps, the one and only reason Leona had never married, never stayed in any relationship for longer than a few weeks.

“What was his name?”

Judging by the way her own mouth dropped open the second she uttered the words aloud, the question surprised her every bit as much as it did Leona.

“Who?” Leona finally asked.

“The one who broke your heart.”

For several long moments, the only sound in the room came from Paris as the rabbit shifted position in a futile attempt to get comfortable. Yet, just as she began to realize she’d overstepped her bounds by pinning Leona down for information, the woman spoke, her eyes glazed over with a pain so raw Tori’s heart ached for her friend. “Emmett.”

“Emmett,” Tori repeated, the name on her tongue causing a reactionary fisting of her hands. “I’m sorry, Leona.”

“So am I.”

“Wh-what happened?”

“I loved him. He didn’t love me.”

She considered her friend’s statement. “How so?”

Leona pushed off her chair and wandered around the room, her soft pink slippers making a tap-tap against the hardwood floor. “I had a talent for drawing when I was a young girl, did you know that?”

She shook her head as she followed Leona around the room with her eyes. “What kind of drawing?”

“Homes, buildings, that sort of thing.”

“Architecture?”

Leona shrugged. “I guess. Though it wasn’t a field for women at that time.”

“Why didn’t you pursue it?”

Leona spun around. “I did. It’s why my best friend Ginny and I moved to Chicago and—”

“Chicago?” she repeated, dumbfounded.

As if Tori hadn’t said a word, Leona continued, her voice taking on an almost robotic quality. “I took classes, I planted myself outside a prestigious architectural firm in the city and made a pest of myself until they gave me a shot. I followed the head of the firm everywhere, watching everything he did. And then, one day, a client came through the door wanting them to design a home for his son. Something refined while pushing boundaries, innovative yet traditional.”

She couldn’t help but notice the way a spark ignited in Leona’s eyes as the story continued to unfold. “So I started drawing. On my own time. I sketched during breaks, I sketched during lunch, I sketched after all of the associates left each day, I sketched during the weekends instead of going out with my best friend, Ginny.”

“And?” she prodded when Leona stopped to look out the window. “What happened next?”

“I left my sketch on a table in the break room one day. I’d up and left it sitting there along with my case of pencils. And the head of the firm saw it sitting there.”

She sucked in her breath. “Did he steal it?”

Leona turned from the window. “No. Good heavens, no. Russ Smithton was an honest man through and through. No, he saw it and called me to his office. He loved what I had done, said it surpassed what he, himself, had come up with.”

“Oh, Leona, that’s wonderful!”

Leona’s eyes became hooded. “It was until I met the client’s son, the one whose house I’d drawn.”

She stared up at Leona. “Emmett?”

“Emmett,” Leona confirmed. “The second I saw him, I fell in love. He was smart, he was funny, he had charm and mystique, and he told me I had talent. The kind of talent he said could move mountains.”

Her stomach churned as her mind began to race ahead to the details she’d yet to hear, yet had a sneaking suspicion she knew. “And he offered to help move those mountains?”

Leona nodded. “He had the means to set me up with my own firm, to track down connections and send business my way. It was a dream come true. A dream come true on top of one I wanted even more.”

“Emmett?” she repeated.

“We got engaged. The business was virtually set to launch. We’d moved into the home I’d designed, the one that brought us into each other’s lives. Everything was perfect. Or so I thought.”

She sat perfectly still as Leona continued, a faint rustling in the hallway doing little to distract her. “One day, after a meeting with my first potential client, I came home early, bursting at the seams to tell him everything that had happened, to share my excitement with the one person who believed in me more than anyone ever had. Only, when I got there, he wasn’t alone.”

The room began to spin, words her friend had said suddenly coming together to form the picture that had been Leona’s reality—a reality that had forever altered the course of her life from that one fateful day, forward.

“He was with Ginny, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Leona whispered.

“That little
hussy
,” Rose hissed as she pushed her way into the room. “I hope you kicked her clear to the curb, Leona Elkin!”

Tori swallowed as Leona’s face drained of all discernable color. “Rose Winters, you had no business standing outside my door, eavesdropping on my private—”

A funny noise from Paris’s bed made them all turn just in time to watch Leona become a grandmother for the very first time.

Chaos.

It was the only word she could think of to describe the moment Paris revealed himself to be a female. A rapidly multiplying female, to boot.

“What is he doing?” Leona screamed.

Rose snorted. “He’s having a baby—I mean,
babies
.”

“But how? He’s a
he
!”

Tori scooted back as a fourth and fifth baby made its appearance on the cushion. “Um, I think it’s safe to say Paris is a girl.”

Leona’s hand trembled as she brought it to her mouth. “But I bought him a bow tie …”

“I guess she thought it was a choker.” Rose shuffled closer to the dimly lit corner.

“I spoke with him about the proper way to treat a lady …”

Rose shrugged. “Maybe that helped her find a better mate.”

“But to have babies, he—I mean, she—would have had to have a mate. Paris never left my side.”

Tori felt her cheeks lift. “Never?”

Leona crossed her arms. “Never.”

“Land sakes what is goin’ on in this room?” Margaret Louise strode into the room, her heavy footsteps echoed by several lighter pairs. “We could hear all your hootin’ and hollerin’ clear into the other room.” She stopped inches from the birthing cushion and looked down, her mouth gaping open, then shut, then open again. “What on earth?”

“Paris is a girl,” Rose offered.

“And she just had six—no wait—seven babies.” Tori grinned. “Seven teeny tiny baby bunnies.”

Leona swooned into the rocker and fanned her face with her hand.

“Well I’ll be darned.” Margaret Louise clapped her hands together then poked Melissa in the side. “Paris must have found herself a Jake, too.”

Melissa’s face reddened. “Paris only has seven.”

“And so do you.”

Melissa looked from her mother-in-law to the bunnies and back again, the color her cheeks sported deepening all the more. “Talk to me again in about six months. I’ll have him, I mean
her
, beat then.”

A chorus of gasps sprang up around the room while Margaret Louise shook her head. “And when were you goin’ to tell me this?”

“When the opportunity presented itself?” Melissa teased before turning to Leona and verbalizing the reality that had so far gone unspoken. “Congratulations to you, too, Aunt Leona. I guess we can call you Grandma now, too.”

Leona’s chin rose into the air. “I am much too young to be called such a thing.”

Rose grabbed hold of the rocker’s arm with one hand and Tori’s shoulder with the other and slowly lowered herself to her knees, her gaze firmly fixed on Paris and her babies. “How about Nana?”

“Hmmm,” Leona pondered. “Nana? Nana. Yes, I like that.”

“What are you going to call them, Nana?”

Leona waved her hand in the air. “Call them? I’m not even sure how they got here.”

Margaret Louise’s laugh thundered around the room. “You’re not sure how they got here?”

“Oh stop it, Twin. Of course I know
how
they got here, I just don’t know how it happened. Paris is with me at all times.”

“Not all times.”

Leona stared at her sister. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talkin’ ’bout that time Paris got out. Took Lulu to track him down, remember?”

“It couldn’t have happened then,” Leona protested. “He—I mean, she—was only out for thirty minutes. Tops.”

“That was twenty-nine more ’n she needed, I imagine,” Margaret Louise mused.

Leona sucked in her breath then peered down at Paris. “Did I not teach you to play hard to get a little better than that?”

Tori couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe that’s what she used the first twenty-nine minutes for.”

Leona shot a glare in her direction. “This is not funny, Victoria.”

“No, it’s sweet.” Rose reached out, gently stroked the top of Paris’s head. “Happy Mother’s Day, Paris. You did a wonderful job.”

And just like that, Leona’s face and stance softened as she, too, left the comfort of her chair to kneel beside Rose and congratulate her precious Paris.

One by one, the latecomers left, tiptoeing from the room to resume their various sewing tasks, Melissa’s news and a gender-changing bunny no doubt landing the top spot on the group’s list of topics to dissect and discuss over the whir of the portable machines.

When they were gone, Tori released a sigh that made the new mother’s ears twitch. “Oh, I’m sorry, Paris,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You don’t need a two-timer like that Emmett fellow to enjoy life, Leona. And you certainly don’t need the kind of friend that would treat you the way that … that
Ginny
treated you.” Rose cleared her throat and continued, her voice hushed yet firm. “If you’d married that clown, you wouldn’t be here now.”

Tori cast a sideways glance in Leona’s direction, saw that Rose’s words were striking a chord.

“True friendship is a beautiful gift, Leona. It’s why it doesn’t come along every day. And I, for one, am glad you eventually found your way here.”