Page 51 of Claim Me
Chapter 33
Jade
Annoyance was an understatement to the way I felt. My mother was indeed thrilled to have another hot body in her house. She didn’t say so but she threw me an overly interested look when we walked through the front door.
“I was just trying out a new recipe for some cookies! Would you like one?”
Knox stood up straight and internally I swore I was going to rip his heart out if he tried anything on my mom. “I would love to have two, if you don’t mind.Cookiesare my favorite.” How he managed to make some kind of sexual innuendo about that was beyond me. My fist connected with his arm. He at least had it in him to scowl at me.
“Are you and Dad going on any trips any time soon?” The warm cookie practically melted in my mouth. I wanted to praise my mother for her culinary genius and possibly online tutorials. She was a goddess when it came to baking. I knew immediately that she and Vivian would be great friends.
Mom shrugged. “I’m not sure. They requested your father full-time again at the office.”
I blinked. “I thought he was retired.”
Mom picked up a cookie before she placed it back down. “There have been some issues that they need him back for. I don’t know, your father deals with many different clients. When they say jump, he jumps.”
Something like dread entered my body. “He has been busier a lot lately, hasn’t he?”
Knox watched me out of the corner of his eye. He could probably scent my anxiety in the air.
Mom sighed. “I don’t know, possibly. I love to travel but I’m not mad about being back at home with you. The house is a bit big for my liking now that you aren’t here.”
“Why don’t you sell it and buy something smaller?” Knox leaned against the counter as he snatched another cooling cookie.
Mom chuckled dismissively. “When Jade’s father was working full-time, he loved to have dinner parties. I’m sure now that he has some new clients and working more, he will be interested in entertaining.”
I barely remembered all the dinner parties they had. I always had a babysitter or a nanny taking care of me during them. Children were frowned upon in those circles. Not me, exactly, but other people’s children. They didn’t want to see children or hear of them while they were talking money and business. My father called it networking. I called it kissing ass. How could you kiss ass if there were kids running beneath your feet or screaming in the next room? That was exactly what would have happened too if their children had been permitted to go. They were loud and rambunctious. They didn’t listen and were too spoiled for their own good. Now, as I thought back on it, I was thankful that I had never been permitted to be friends with them. That was not a circle I wanted to get caught up in or looked down upon.
It was probably best that my father could entertain again. He didn’t have to worry about me and most of his clients didn’t have children younger than eighteen. I was almost certain that most of the children went to the dinner parties now, in the place of their parents anyway.
Knox waggled his eyebrows at my mom. “I love a good party.”
I was about to smack him when my mom did the one thing I never thought she would do. She gloated. “If you have a couple million to invest then you are more than welcome to come.”
My mouth fell open and a laugh burst from me. Knox cleared his throat. “Maybe in a few years.”
I had almost regretted bringing him here but now I was happy that I had. No one else could put him in his place besides Rafe and Rafe never went below the belt like my mom just did. She wasn’t afraid to bring someone to their knees when they got too cocky with her. I had seen her do it plenty of times when I had been growing up, but it had been years since I had seen that side of her. When you had money, you had to play ruthlessly. Though I never knew how much was at stake until that comment she made.
I decided changing the subject was best for all of us, especially Knox’s wounded pride. I couldn’t wait to tell Tracey. “You’ve been crafting still?”
Mom’s face beamed. “Oh yes! Would you like to come up and see what I’ve been up to?”
Knox held up his phone. “I need to make a call, you two have fun without me.”
Anything to get out of girly conversations now that my mom had put him in his place. Mom talked animatedly about all of her projects while we walked up the stairs. “We have been to all these beautiful places and done all these things for ourselves. I figure it’s time for us to do something for someone else.”
The craft room was on the opposite end of the hall as my former bedroom. The door was open already. Front and center was a sewing machine. On the floor beside her craft table was a stack of blankets. It took me a moment to realize they were baby blankets. I looked at my mother in question. Her grin only grew. “I’m going to convince your father to take me to a third-world country next. Not for a vacation but as a retreat to help others. I was reading online that this one country needs blankets and clothing for the children. I immediately got to work, dead-set on shipping blankets. But then I thought about it, why not bring them there myself?”
“That would be a vacation I would want to go on,” I ran my fingers over the materials draped over the crafting station.
“I also thought that maybe,” She paused to chew on the end of her thumbnail. “That you might have children someday and I wanted to make blankets for them.”
Panic flared up in my chest before it relaxed a bit. Years ago I would have bristled at that comment. Hell, not even a year ago. But now, things felt different. Especially knowing why Rafe had changed me. “Maybe one day, I think I want plenty of time with my future husband before we have children. But you never know. The universe does weird things.”
Mom patted my shoulder. “You’re right and I won’t be upset one bit if you have children and you aren’t married. I’m not naive.”
I snorted in surprise. “I would like to be mat- married first.”
Oh gosh, I hadn’t even thought that far. There was supposed to be a mating ceremony. I had heard that somewhere. Did that mean my parents would be allowed to come? I hadn’t thought to ask these questions before. But now that the pieces were coming together, it made sense for me to think about it.
“I want to be in love before I have children.” That was the best answer I could give her. I liked Rafe. I appreciated the time we spent together. He made me feel good and his kisses made my body feel like it was burning. But did I love him? I had only just found out why I was changed and I needed time to still process that. Thinking of love right now was just too much. Plus there was still Damian in the picture and there was absolutely no telling what would happen with that. We could all die for all I knew.
The wolf in my pocket wasn’t far from my mind. It weighed heavily there. I fished it out and handed it to my mom. “Tracey’s brother made this for our family. It’s supposed to protect us or something.” My mom had always been more superstitious than I had ever been. If I believed that it worked, my mother would really think I had grown two heads.
“With Dad working with new clients and being out of the house more, will you give it to him and tell him to keep it on him all the time?” I didn’t know what else to ask. How could I keep my father safe when he was leaving to go to the city every day? I was sure when Lucas made it, he imagined my parents being together all day. As long as my mother stayed in this town, she would be as fine as anyone else. Which didn’t give me much comfort but what else could I do? “Lucas said it would protect him against evil or something silly like that.”
Once I said that, the look on my mom’s face transformed. Going to other countries and getting to experience their differences in cultures had changed her. She had a different outlook on the world and what was out there beyond ours.
