Page 82 of Slash & Burn

Almost.

My heart skipped a little when his mom opened the door, squealing with delight and then bursting into tears as she wrapped her arms around him. He grinned at me over her head, as if the reaction was embarrassingly over the top. But he couldn’t hide how much he loved it, not from me. Grady soaked up the attention in a way I never could, but it was really lovely to witness.

“And you remember Jill Jordan,” Grady said to both his parents once they’d greeted and fawned enough over their only son.

“Of course, Joey’s little sister,” his father said, looking at me with an innocent grin. Grady’s mother, on the other hand, pinged back and forth between us, awareness lighting up her smile with the same mischief she’d passed along to her son.

“Welcome,” she said, ushering us all off the front porch and into their gorgeous coastal home.

A natural stone fireplace sat between the living room and kitchen, with a small dining room off to the side that led out onto the back deck. The cedar shingles were aged from the salt spray and the house was filled with shells and nautical maps, worn drift wood and more smoothed round rocks than I could count. The whole place smelled of roses and all around were vases of white bouquets, petals dropping to the floor like sand dollars on a low-tide beach.

“We were going to have lunch down at Harborside, but let’s do lobsters up here instead,” Grady’s mom exclaimed, clasping her hands together with excitement.

“Mom, you don’t have to go to all that trouble,” Grady said as he took a seat on the wicker couch and patted the cushion next to him for me to join.

“Nonsense,” she groused. “It’s tradition anyway, and since you’re not here this year, this is the perfect afternoon to do it.”

Grady shook his head, but his smile told me he was far from put out.

“If I can help with anything, Mrs. Holloway, please let me know,” I said, sliding forward on the seat so I could get up to follow her.

She glanced at us, tracking Grady’s hand as he rubbed my back, before smiling at me. “It’s Carol, please. And I think we’re all set, but maybe you could help shuck a few more ears of corn?”

I popped up. “I’d love to.” I’d love to do anything so I felt less like a freeloader and intruder on what was clearly a very tight family that had missed their son terribly.

Grady took a hold of my wrist and tugged me back down beside him. “I’ll get the corn,” he said, smirking at me. “We can shuck together.”

The last thing I really wanted was to be left alone with Grady’s dad, but I didn’t want to make a scene, so when he winked at me I just nodded.

“Jill, you’re the mastermind behind this reading program, right?” his dad asked as soon as they were gone.

I laughed a little to myself, because Grady might have gotten his mischief from his mom, but he apparently got his penchant for embellishing from his dad.

“I did the book selection and coordination with the event sites. I’m not sure I’d called that masterminding, though.”

He scoffed, picking up his iced tea and taking a drink as he shook his head. “I certainly couldn’t do it,” he said, before holding up a hand and leaning forward. “Not to say that you aren’t capable of doing everything I do, and doing it better.” His smile titled off to one side as he laughed to himself. “Please don’t tell Lexi I said that. She’d have my ass.”

Now I really laughed, because I remembered Lexi as a sweet little kid who used to carry a stuffed sea gull around with her. It was hard to conjure the image of her giving her father grief.

“I won’t say a thing,” I reassured him. “Where is Lexi these days?”

“Ten feet behind you.”

Whipping around I found Grady’s little sister stepping through the screen door with a bowl of fresh corn in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. She was taller than I remembered and lacking the seagull, as I’d have expected.

“Oh, hi!” I said, feeling guilty even though I hadn’t said anything about her. I’d spent very little time with Adam’s family and it suddenly felt like it was probably pretty obvious I was not good with this stuff.Not that I was Grady’s girlfriend.

When Lexi went to sit next to me a whistle lit up the air and we all turned to find Grady sauntering over with a glass of iced tea in each hand. “Seats taken,” he teased his sister, bumping her with his hip as he slipped past her and reclaimed his spot.

Lexi chuckled ruefully, all too accustomed to her brother’s antics I was sure, before she plopped the corn and baggie on the table in front of us and grinned in his face. “Enjoy.”

After taking a quick sip of iced tea I dove for the corn. Anything to keep me busy and not forced to sit still while feeling entirely out of place. I wasn’t doing that bad, but Grady picked up on my agitation, taking my hand in his and pulling it into his lap while he carried on his conversation.

“So the doctor gave you the all-clear?” his father asked, his eyebrows up to his hairline and his mouth open in a quirky, expectant grin.

Grady nodded, but his eyes dropped to the lobster-trap table in front of us. “For the most part.”

I’d never seen Grady look like that, like he was trying to soft-touch news his dad didn’t want to hear.

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