Page 63 of Burning Love
“My sister, Janey, has talked about you before. I think she’s a year older than you. You used to play soccer, right?” Kelsey asked.
Fuck. Why hadn’t he thought of this?
“I did.”
“You played against Janey. Sorry, but you know how talk is,” Kelsey said.
“I do,” she said. “I hadn’t realized that. Jace hasn’t talked too much about specifics with his family. We haven’t gotten there yet.”
“Talia’s family is pretty private. I trust that you’ll keep this information to yourself.”
“Does that mean I can’t tell Mom or Dad? I don’t trust Janey.”
He saw Talia’s smile drop. “We’ll get back to you. It’s a conversation we haven’t had yet.”
“Got it,” Kelsey said. “It was nice to meet you. I’ll go now.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Scram, brat.”
The minute his sister was pulling out of the driveway, he turned to go back to the kitchen. “You sounded like Elias right now. He always calls me a brat.”
“I think it’s an older brother thing. Do any of your other brothers call you that?”
“To my face? Foster and Nelson. The rest probably just do it behind my back.”
“That’s not nice.”
She shrugged. “I might have deserved it when I was younger. I know you didn’t have this planned.”
“No.” He pulled the dinner out of the bag and put it in the fridge. “I can trust her to not say anything for twenty-four hours. How do you want to handle this?”
“It’s your family. That is up to you. I’ll tell you that my mother knows about you.”
“She does? Since when?”
“This morning. I planned on telling you tonight. She suspected I was seeing someone, but I hadn’t confirmed it. She had Laken grill me over the weekend. My sister informed me that my mother had suspected it was you. I’m not sure why, probably because I was being so quiet about it and I never am.”
“What did you tell her?”
“When I got back from running errands, she guessed I came to see you. I’m not someone to lie about it. I confirmed it. She wants to meet you and I told her that we weren’t at that stage. I didn’t know where we were, but I pointed out that she had already met you.”
He snorted. “I’m sure she didn’t buy that.”
“No. I told her to back off for now. That things were new and gave her a rundown of what was going on.”
He was surprised to hear that. “You’ll have to explain that better.”
“I said that we are taking it as it comes and having fun. If it changes to more for me, you’ll be the first to know and can decide where it could go for you. If it’s not what you want, then we’ll just part ways.”
He didn’t like the heat in his stomach and the sweat on his spine over those words.
“I’m not sure what I feel, but I wouldn’t have told my sister who you were if it was nothing.”
“She came to the door,” she argued.
“I could have met her outside and kept her there and not let her in. Don’t kid yourself.”
It hadn’t even occurred to him to do it.
