Hate (28 page)

“My God, they’re packaging things really well these days,” she continued, staring directly in front of her. Right at his crotch.

Blane’s arm flexed nervously, and a grin lifted the apex of his cheek, but he didn’t let it discourage him as he pulled his sunglasses off and tucked them into the front collar of his t-shirt.

“Hey there Mrs. Giadano, you’re looking incredibly lovely today.”

Gram, the old broad, ate it right up.

“Damn right I am.”

Blane chuckled.

“You know they used to call me Gumby back in the day.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, humoring her and leaning his shoulder into the jam of the open door with an easy sexiness that nearly brought me to my knees.

“Oh yeah. Flexible as hell and you can put just about anything—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, stepping in in a hurry.

Jesus.

Temporarily distracted by my tornado of a grandmother, I didn’t guard against my rush of feelings when I looked up and found myself staring right into Blane’s eyes.

I’d liked them before, found they had a certain pull on my emotions from the first moment I’d met him, but now, having connected with him physically, it was more.

And
holy shit
, that was scary.

His grin didn’t falter, apparently better at keeping up his mystique in awkward situations than I was.

“Hey, pretty girl,” he greeted casually, and I pretended it didn’t rip my fucking heart out. It was a botch job—I wouldn’t be up for an Oscar any time soon—but it got me through the moment.

“What’s your name?” Gram cut in. Apparently, she didn’t remember him. A sudden, small wave of sadness washed over me. It had to be awful to lose your memories. I’d be lost without mine. Even the ones that gutted me.

“Blane Hunt, ma’am,” he answered chivalrously. There was no hesitation at her lapse in knowledge and his eyes never left mine.

“Ma’am,” Gram huffed out in indignation. Even at ninety she wasn’t ready to be made into an old lady.

I had to laugh.

“How are you?” Blane asked me. But I wasn’t the one who answered.

“I’ve been better, Blane,” Gram offered, jumping on the chance to talk about herself. “You see, my granddaughter’s pretty, but she refuses to feed me. And I’m starving.”

Me eyes narrowed at the same time that my mouth gaped. That little rat.

A little
lying
rat!

“Gram, that’s not true. I have food cooking right—” I argued, only to be cut off again.

“Maybe you should take us somewhere. Treat us girls right. I know she,” she glanced at me, “doesn’t deserve it, but where I go, she goes.”

Blane’s smile multiplied as he played along with the little backstabber.

“I’d be happy to take you out to dinner, sweetheart. And if your granddaughter has to tag along, so be it.”

“Great. Let me just go get my face on.” She spun her chair quickly, and once again, came super close to crushing every last one of the bones in my feet.

At this rate, I would be crippled by the end of the week.

“What are you doing?” I snapped as soon as she was out of earshot.

“I’m taking the two of you to dinner,” he answered mock-innocently.

“Jesus. No shit. You know what I’m talking about. What are you doing
here
? In New Jersey. At my house.”

“I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.”

“Still, he explains nothing,” I griped to the universe.

As I turned back to face him, he murmured, “To be honest, I don’t think it needs an explanation.”

“It does. We said all we wanted to say that morning.”

“Maybe
you
did,” he countered easily. “But I didn’t.”

My deep pull of air inflated my chest. “Jesus. I thought women were the ones who wouldn’t shut up about their feelings.”

“Yeah, well,” he said with a chuckle. “You were always the one who avoided the issue. I’ve always had to push you to address it, and nothing has changed.”

“
Everything
has changed,” I stressed, knowing we were talking about two different things.

He opened his mouth to argue, but Gram didn’t give him the chance.

“Let’s roll, handsome.” She came screeching to a halt between us, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge me.

Blane’s eyes stayed on my face, the evidence of their weight heating the apples of my cheeks and bringing a noticeable flush to my skin. But I avoided his powerful eyes. I feared what I would find if I allowed myself to get lost in them.

Perhaps, the truth.

“Okay, darling,” he agreed, cementing him as her new favorite love interest. Gram had mentioned before how much she liked to be called “darling”.

He helped her chair over the lip of the door, and then turned back to me. He lowered his voice so she wouldn’t hear, even though at her age you’d think it wouldn’t be necessary.

“Why don’t you turn off the food I know you were cooking. Do what you can to salvage it, but if you can’t, I’ll cover the cost.”

How silly. He wasn’t responsible for this. “Blane, you don’t have to give me anything.”

“Yeah, but I want you to give me your time, so I’ll do whatever I can to make that easier. If you’re stuck working more hours to cover the cost of your grandmother’s every sudden change of heart, you’ll have less time to spend with me. See? Selfish.”

“Blane, I really don’t think—”

“Whoops,” he interrupted. “I think I hear a foxy lady calling for me. Meet you at the truck.”

“Blane!” Damnit. “Blane Hunt!”

Son of a bitch!

My dark brown hair flew in an arc over my shoulder as I turned on my toes and headed for the kitchen, my attitude nothing short of anger personified.

Stomping my feet like a petulant teenager, I cleared the door, rounded the island, and threw the knob to switch off the burner with a furious flick of my wrist.

“Freaking Blane Hunt,” I ranted to myself. “He thinks he can just show up here, take over everything, take me and my grandmother out to dinner.”

“
Maybe you did
,” I mocked, my voice high pitched and whiny and not at all like Blane. “
But I didn’t
.”

“Yeah, well, too bad, Bucko,” I snapped aloud.

A throat cleared behind me.

“Shit.”

“Impressive content memory, but the accent doesn’t really remind me of myself.”

Turning to face him, I narrowed my eyes. “I thought I was meeting you at the truck.”

“Yeah, well, see, I got to thinking as I was loading your grandmother in and buckling her seatbelt…”

She made him buckle her seatbelt? Man, she really was a saucy old broad.

“And I decided that if I left you alone in here too long, you might find a way to get out of it.”

“How am I going to get out of it?” I scoffed. He already had my grandmother in the truck for cripes sake.

“Oh, good. That means you haven’t come up with a plan yet. Come on,” he prompted, “Let’s go.”

“Hey,” I protested, as he grabbed my upper arm.

“All the burners turned off?”

“What?” I asked before I processed the question. “Yes.”

“Oven’s off?”

“Yes!” I responded indignantly.

“Great. Let’s just grab some shoes and you’re ready to go.”

Stalling, I argued, “I need to change clothes. These aren’t my going out clothes. These are my staying in clothes. Because I thought I was
staying in
.”

“You’ve never looked more beautiful,” he said as a way to appease me. Who knew if the bastard actually meant it, but I certainly didn’t care.

Definitely.

Not really.

Only a little.

Fuck.

He put his hand to the small of my back and guided me down the hallway back toward the entryway. His touch wasn’t impersonal. In fact, it hinted quite strongly at his carnal knowledge of my body.

I blushed despite myself.

Double fuck.

“Oh look!” he chimed, fake excitement making my ears bleed. “Flip flops. The perfect shoe for the season. And so easy to put on!”

“Can it already,” I snapped. “I’m headed toward the truck aren’t I?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And you’re only doing it at a slightly slower crawl than a turtle.”

“Don’t mock the turtles!” I yelled nonsensically. “Those things usually win the race.”

He played right into my demented line of conversation. “No, not usually. The turtle won that
one time
. And it was because that rabbit was a lazy son of a bitch.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he beat me to it. “And don’t try and cry that I shouldn’t say that because that rabbit is your best friend or some bullshit. The Whitney Lenox I know doesn’t make friends with many, and she certainly wouldn’t waste one of her few friendships on some lackadaisical rabbit.”

“That’s funny. The Whitney Lenox
I
know has
no
friends.” It came out harsh even to my ears, and it took both of us a minute to figure out what to say.

I was embarrassed by the truth, and he was still stuck in the deeper meaning of my words. My two very best friends, him and Franny, had both abandoned me, though in very different ways. And even though I’d had years to make new friends, I never really had. Acquaintances, sure. After work drinks with colleagues, yeah. But I’d never let anybody in the way I had them.

It was a pathetic way to live my life.

Even I had to admit that.

But that didn’t make it untrue.

It just made it something that needed changing.

When he spoke again, his voice was absolute. “Whitney Lenox
has
a friend. Whether she wants him or not.”

With no pause for a response, he forced me into my flip flops and ushered me out the door. His hand rested effortlessly at the small of my back and the tingle of its proximity ran all the way up my spine. He didn't move it until my ass met the soft leather of the passenger seat of his truck. And even then, it did it slowly and seemingly under protest.

Unable to fight it, figuring it wouldn’t that big of a deal to give myself just one little thing, I lifted my eyes to his and let myself get lost in the swirls of blue.

Lost in them, drowning so pleasurably that I’d never call for a rescue, I realized it was a mistake. Because I couldn’t look at him without letting him look at me. And my soul, my hurt, my very deep-seeded love was all there, burning bright and obvious.

For one frightening second, I thought he was going to kiss me. And even scarier, I was going to let him.

“Does no one want to feed the elderly anymore? Geez. Get in the truck, hot stuff,” Gram interrupted, saving me from myself and disappointing me at the same time.

I hated my uncertainty.

And I hated that in spite of that, I couldn’t seem to resist him.

But, most of all, I loathed that I had a reason to.

THE RIDE TO THE RESTAURANT would have been tense, but the old lady in the back just wouldn’t allow it. No, instead, she insisted on saying one ridiculous thing after another.

By the time we got the restaurant, Blane and I practically had tears in our eyes from laughing so hard and trying to hide it.

Now, after following the hostess to our table, Blane settled into the chair across from mine, with Gram nestled in between us.

Just as she had orchestrated it.

She may have been losing her mind, but she had enough of it left to mess with me. That much I knew.

A comfortable silence descended on the table as we each perused our menus. Gram’s eyesight was still twenty twenty despite her ripening age.

It was kind of nice having her around. As much as she was a pain in my ass, I had also kind of missed having her brand of entertainment.

Just as I thought this to myself, I lifted my eyes off of my menu in order to study the oddity of her and Blane sitting with me.

A smile crept onto her face, enhancing my own. That is, until, without preamble, she announced proudly to the room, “I’m peeing!”

Blane’s eyes shot upward at once and a hesitant smile lifted just one corner of his mouth.

Obviously, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard what he thought he had, but that only made one of us.

I, for one, was certain of what I had heard.

Gram was peeing.

While sitting between us.

In a restaurant.

And she was proud of it.

This was my life.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” she offered to the horrified woman at the table next to us. “I just got these new diapers, and I finally have the freedom to really do whatever I want.”

“I see where you get it,” Blane said on a nod to himself, looking directly at me.

“You see where I get what?” I asked, incredulity dripping from every last syllable.

“It. You’re attitude. This,” he said, doing the exact opposite of giving me an actual explanation while pointing between me and my grandmother.

Of course, Gram was still trying to charm the woman at the table behind her. It wasn’t working. Her face said appalled, and her pallor said grossed out.

I didn’t blame her.

“You think I’m like my grandmother?” I whisper-shouted, just keeping myself from jumping out of my chair in outrage. “She just announced to the entire restaurant that she was peeing!”

Bugging out my eyes, I watched as he laughed. “How is that like me?”