Page 92 of The Grumpy Billionaire
I couldn’t help but laugh at his stupidity. “Go, Shel. I’ll get a ride home with Reid. And I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
He slammed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side of the news car. “Oh sure. He’s gonna give you a ride all right…”
“Goodbye, Sheldon.” I’d never had a tormenting older brother, but for the first time I thought I could relate to girls who did.
THIRTY-TWO
Better Late Than Never
Mara
Mom got in from her dinner with Dad much later than I’d expected.
I met her at the door around eleven p.m. feeling like I was the worried mother, and she was the tardy teenaged daughter.
“How was it? Where’d you go? What did you talk about?”
She laughed as she hung her keys on the hook in the mudroom. “Hold on, hold on, Miss News Reporter. Let me at least take off my jacket and go to the bathroom before you quiz me.”
When she stepped under the bright kitchen lights, I gasped. “Your lipstick’s gone. Your makeup’s all smudged. Oh my God—did you guyskiss?”
I felt a little dizzy, like I’d just fallen through a portal to a parallel universe.
She laughed again. “Youarenosy these days. Give me a minute, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I paced the kitchen, waiting for her to get out of the powder room. She sure was taking an extra-long time in there. When she came out, her hair was neat, and she had on fresh lipstick.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “So what happened?”
Mom filled the teakettle with water and set it on the stovetop, then pulled the tea basket out of the pantry before taking the barstool next to mine at the kitchen counter.
“We talked,” she said. “We were very honest with each other. He apologized again, and this time I saw a real change in him. He even offered to drop out of the race for governor if I wanted him to. That’s big for him. He reminded me of the guy I used to know. And it was good.”
“Apparently so,” I said, my tone a bit surly.
Mom’s face brightened with amusement. “Look at you. What a face—you look like you did when you were eleven and I tried to pick out your clothes for you.”
“How could you kiss him, Mom? After all the things you said?”
“Well, I didn’t kiss him at the beginning of the evening, I’ll tell you that. But your dad’s a charmer, Mare-Bear. And we’ve got a lot of history between us. That doesn’t just go away, even after a separation.”
Tell me about it.
"So… what? You guys are getting back together after one heart-to-heart chat?”
In spite of my relief at seeing her act so much like the Mom I’d grown up with, I felt sort of… betrayed by her apparent forgiveness of my dad. What aboutnever need a man, you can’t count on anyone?
“Of course we’re not back together, sweetheart. We’ll never be a couple again.”
“Oh. Why not?”
And now I felt a little disappointed. What a basket case—maybeIneeded to be on some mood-stabilizing medication.
She paused and looked at me, tears forming in her eyes. “Because I still love him. Ican’tbe with him again because he still has the power to break my heart.”
Ah… back at status quo. At least I knew what to do with this.
The teakettle whistled, and Mom got up to take two mugs from the cabinet, bringing them over to the countertop. I selected a bag of black tea and drank it strong without my usual cream and sweetener, for once craving its dark bitterness.
