Page 7 of Love & Rockets

“It was gross, Mom.”

Darla blinked. “Gross?”

“I’m not a little kid. I know what you were thinking.” Grace’s lip curled and her nose wrinkled. To drive home the extent of her disgust, she gave an exaggerated shudder. “Gross. I bet he’s even older than you.”

“Two years,” Darla murmured. Her mind reeled, but facts were facts. “Jake was two years ahead of me in school.”

“See? Old.”

A breathy laugh escaped her as she took a cautious step closer. Gracie was a pretty easy kid, but when she was riled she made a wet hen look zen.

Nodding her defeat, Darla murmured, “Ancient.”

Their gazes met and held, then, right in front of her eyes, Grace deflated. Leading with her heart, Darla closed the gap between them. She had her daughter in her arms before her feet caught up, sending them both hurtling into a worktable. The trays Grace had so carefully stacked sailed over the edge. The platters crashed to the floor again and the Kennet girls clung to one another, bursting into giggles as they scrambled to regain their footing.

“Get out of my kitchen!” Marcel, the chef, shouted from the other end of the kitchen.

“Sorry!” Darla and Grace called in unison.

Grinning, Darla pulled back to look at Gracie, but her daughter’s laughter had already faded. Her little girl could almost look her straight in the eye. Luckily, Grace was still more child than teenager. She ducked her head and pressed her face into the crook of Darla’s neck, seeking comfort in the same place she’d found it since the day she came into the world. Darla brushed the heavy dark curls away from her daughter’s face and sighed. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“So embarrassing,” Grace mumbled, but to Darla’s relief, her daughter relaxed into the caress.

“I’m your mom. Embarrassing you is in the job description.”

“You excel at embarrassing me.”

Resting her cheek atop Gracie’s head, Darla smiled. “I’ve always been an overachiever. No one can screw up as big as your mama, kiddo.” Her daughter huffed with exasperation, and Darla had to fight to keep her smile in place. The truth hurt, but she wasn’t one to run from it. Pressing a kiss into Grace’s wild hair, she whispered, “I’ll fix things with Jake.”

“How?”

The catch in Grace’s voice made Darla’s heart thud against her breastbone. Smoothing the cursed curls she’d passed along to her offspring, she blew out a breath. “Don’t you worry about that. I have my ways.”

* * * *

The Pit barbecue shack stood on the same quarter-acre of undesirable land near the Alabama and Gulf Coast railroad tracks for over fifty years. Natives claimed the worn clapboard building was as much a part of Mobile as the bay itself. Everyone ate at The Pit. Governors, garbage collectors, movie stars, and construction workers rubbed elbows over racks of dry-rubbed ribs and succulent pulled pork topped with slaw. Darla had never met the original pit master, Beauregard Lavelle Pickett, but Beau Jr. had appointed himself her unofficial granddad the moment she first showed up at his counter asking for a job.

Pregnant, alone, and without any appreciable skill set.

He’d long-since turned the tending of the smokehouse over to his own son, Beauregard Lavelle Pickett III—a.k.a. Bubba—but Mr. Beau still held court each noontime at a small Formica-topped table in the back. And every day, Darla served him and his cronies quantities of sweet tea sufficient to float the USS Alabama.

Wearing squeeze bottles of Bubba’s famous sauce tucked into her apron pockets like six shooters, she cocked a hip and stared down at the septuagenarians, a sassy smile curving her lips. “If you loved me, you’d make an honest woman out of me and take me away from all this.”

“Darlin’, I’ve already made you the queen of my kingdom,” Mr. Beau protested. Brilliant blue eyes twinkled, but the hand pressed over his heart was twisted by arthritis and the skin covering the mapwork of veins was so thin it shone under the florescent lights. “If only I hadn’t let that hellcat snare me into marryin’ her. Why, that woman ruined me for all others. I’m not good enough for you, Sugar, and that’s the truth of it. Plain and simple.”

The old man heaved a gusty sigh, and his companions groaned good-naturedly. The ‘hellcat’ he referred to was none other than Miss Alee-Ann Sommers Pickett, Sunday school teacher, St. Augustine’s soup kitchen field marshal, and Mr. Beau’s wife of over fifty years.

Darla curled her lip into a playful sneer. “I can take her.”

Mr. Beau grinned so big Darla was tempted to shield her eyes from the blinding glare bouncing off his spanking new set of dentures. “Now, wouldn’t that be a sight worth seein’, boys? Say, you think you might wear one of those string bikinis when you do?”

“You’re a dirty old man.”

“Not dirty so much as still breathing.”

She planted a hand on her hip. “You know I could sue you for sexual harassment? Take you for all you’re worth?”

“Puh-leeze.” He coughed softly, then waved her threat away with his work-worn hand. “You came onto me, and I have witnesses. Right, fellas?” Right on cue, his companions nodded. Leaning back in his chair, he gave her the soft, affectionate smile she knew so well. “Tell you what, Sweetie Pie. You bring your pretty little girl around to see Miss Alee-Ann this weekend and we’ll forget all this ugliness ever happened. Deal?”

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