“You can’t go around punching people in the front yard,” I yelled, practically tripping over my own feet to get to them.
Jack got there before me, with that spooky tiger speed of his, and jumped in between the two of them, but I could tell he was having to fight the urge to laugh. “Would it be better in the backyard?”
“Not what I meant, and you know it,” I hissed at him, grabbing Aunt Ruby’s arm before she could do any more damage. “Uncle Mike! A little help here?”
My poor uncle was still standing by the car, utterly flabbergasted, to use one of his own words against him.
My aunt was still struggling with me, and I was completely out of patience. “Ruby Callahan! Do you want Shelley to see you acting like a lunatic…redneck?”
That stopped her cold. She tossed her head and yanked her arm away from me.
“Shelley is still at school, and then she has a play date at her friend’s house,” she said haughtily. “And I owed Leona that. We can go inside and eat lunch now.”
Leona rubbed her jaw ruefully, and to my complete shock, nodded. “Yeah, she kind of did. Long story. Can we go inside now? I could really use some coffee.”
“Still no sugar, heavy on the cream?” Ruby asked her.
“I try to use a lighter hand on the cream these days. Cholesterol,” Leona told her, and then both of them headed toward the porch of the beautiful old farmhouse, chatting about coffee.
Like old friends.
Or at least like two women who didn’t want to kill each other.
Mike walked up to me and folded his arms while the three of us watched the two women in varying degrees of surprise.
“Will wonders—”
“If you say ‘never cease’, I’m going to ask Aunt Ruby to punch you next,” I warned my uncle. “Now start talking. What the heck was that about?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not getting in the middle of that one. How about we get something to eat? Full bellies make for calmer minds.”
“I’d appreciate a little more information and a little less ‘sayings from the embroidered pillows’,” I muttered, but I followed him into the house, because, of course, he was right.
Jack perked right up, as if my life wasn’t turning into a bad joke right there in front of him. “Do you think there will be pie?”
Now I wanted to punch him. Aunt Ruby was rubbing off on me.
By the time I dragged my unwilling butt into the house, the coffee was brewing and Aunt Ruby was setting out sandwich fixings and slicing homemade bread. And there was pie—which Jack had already managed to sit next to—fresh blueberry and apple, from the looks of it.
“I won’t lie and offer any false condolences for that rat bast—Tess. You’re finally here. Wash your hands and offer your grandmother something to drink,” my aunt, the boxing champ instructed me.
“I’m not five. You don’t have to tell me to wash my hands,” I said with exaggerated patience.
“Tess, don’t be smart with your aunt,” Leona said.
My mouth fell open and I looked from one to the other. “You…she…I…”
I gave up and washed my hands. Jack snickered at me until Uncle Mike pointed a finger at Jack and then the sink, and the terrifying predator, ex-soldier, and shapeshifting tiger sighed and got up and washed his hands.
He nudged me with his shoulder. “Do they still send you to bed without any supper when you’re bad?”
His eyes were gleaming with amusement, and a tiny bit of perversity nipped at me. Because he was making fun of me, because my aunt suddenly thought she was Rocky Balboa, and because I was tired of the whole stupid situation.
Also, I was rich now. I had twelve thousand dollars burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. Rich people could get away with stuff.
So I leaned closer and whispered: “Sometimes I like being bad.”
Then I snagged the dish towel, wiped my hands, sauntered to the table and grabbed the blueberry pie and pulled it over to my side of the table, leaving Jack making weird choking noises at the sink.
We managed to get through sandwiches (one each for me and Uncle Mike, one-half each for Aunt Ruby and Leona, and six for Jack) and pie (pretty much the same proportions, except Jack also finished off half a gallon of homemade peach ice cream and six chocolate-chip cookies).
By the end of the meal, we were all too busy watching Jack eat his weight in lunch to remember what we were talking about.
“Now I remember why I liked Owen so much,” Uncle Mike grumbled, grabbing the pie plate before Jack could get the last sliver of apple.
“You never liked Owen. You thought he was boring,” I protested. “You were rude to him.”
“Only when he started talking. That boy could wrestle a story down to the ground and choke the life out of it,” Uncle Mike said, sliding the last of the pie onto his plate. “And then resuscitate it long enough to murder it all over again. He’d be useful in the zombie apocalypse. He’d bore all the zombies to death.”
“That is so unfair. He was a nice man,” I said hotly.
“He was a dentist,” my traitor of an uncle said.
“He was a nice dentist.”
Jack grinned at me. “He was very nice. That story he told us about the antique dental equipment gave me chills.”
“I hate you all.” I slumped down in my seat and put my head on my arms on the table. “Hate.”
“Dentists are useful to have around,” Leona said helpfully. “If you get a tooth knocked out the next time Ruby goes ape-shit with her boxing lessons, you’re all set.”
“Language. And I would never strike the child,” Aunt Ruby snapped, and just that quick, we were off the subject of my ex-boyfriend and back on whatever had caused the Hatfield and McCoy back in my pawnshop.
“She’s not a child anymore,” Mike finally interjected, sounding as calm as if unknown grandmothers showed up every day at his house. “And maybe we’d better get this all out on the table, so we can get on with whatever it is you want.”
“I’m right here,” I pointed out, to the zero people who were paying any attention to me.
“I’m here to get to know my granddaughter. Maybe give her the guidance she clearly needs, if she’s dating dentists when there’s a hot tiger sitting right next to her,” Leona said, pointing at Jack with one well-manicured fingernail.
“Leona,” I groaned, clutching my head.
Jack raised his hand, which should have looked ridiculous but somehow didn’t because—see above—hotness. “Also sitting right here,” he said mildly, but he was smiling. “And thank you, Mrs. Carstairs.”
“Call me Leona, dear,” she said, patting his other hand. “We’re going to be family, after all.”
“That’s about enough out of you,” Aunt Ruby said, standing up and leaning over the table.
“Over my dead body,” Uncle Mike said, glaring at Jack, who smiled at him like…like…oh crap, like a cat who’d gotten into the cream.
Argh.
Leona flinched, but Ruby was only reaching for the empty carton of ice cream. I saw the smug smile on her face at Leona’s reaction, though.
“You’re starting to scare me, Rambo,” I told her, but she didn’t even look a little bit sheepish.
“You tell her, Ruby,” Leona said tiredly. “You’re obviously dying to do it.”
Jack stood up. “I think this is a family thing—”
“Sit down,” all three of them told him at once.
It was a little bit funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. I could feel a headache coming on, and I wasn’t the one who’d been sucker punched, except for metaphorically, by the whole “you have a grandmother and here I am” thing.
Jack raised one eyebrow, probably because nobody had tried to tell him what to do in the past ten years, but he sat down.
Uncle Mike stood up and poured coffee for everyone, and then he told Leona that she’d better get on with it.
“But where do I even start?”
“At the beginning’s usually good,” my uncle replied.
She laughed a little. “Hard to argue with that.”
“So, you’re my mom’s mom,” I ventured, still unwilling to say the word “grandmother.”
“Yes.” She twisted her pearls and looked at me out of those eyes that were so much like the ones that stared back at me in the mirror every day. “She was our only child. Trey—your grandfather—wanted a boy, but once I realized what a horrible person he was, I refused to have any more children with him.”
Aunt Ruby scowled at her. “But you didn’t leave him.”
“No, I didn’t leave him. Or, actually, I left him dozens of times. But he always tracked me down and brought me back. The last time I left him, he told me that he’d take Kate away from me, have me proven mentally unfit and toss me in a psychiatric institution if I ever tried it again.”
Aunt Ruby’s tiny gasp was almost drowned out by the quiet growling sound that Jack was making. He caught me looking at him and stopped, but not before reaching across the table and taking my hand.
Uncle Mike stared pointedly at our clasped hands, but Jack bared his teeth in something too scary to be a smile. “Don’t make me start collecting antique dental equipment and telling you about it, old man.”
“That’s just evil. I never liked this boy, Tess.”
“Suck it up, buttercup,” I retorted, grinning. I was weirdly content, for some reason that didn’t make any sense at all. Just sitting in my family’s kitchen, hearing about my horrible grandfather, holding hands with my—okay, I admit it—hot tiger.
Leona and Aunt Ruby both started laughing at Uncle Mike’s disgruntled expression, but then a phone rang, blaring out a Katy Perry ringtone, and everybody looked at me.
I shrugged. “For once, it isn’t mine.”
Leona sighed and started digging around in her teal-with-silver-accents Michael Kors bag that I immediately lusted over. “I forgot. Ned put that on my phone. Just a moment, please. He’s at the Black Cypress RV Park getting settled.”
Jack and I blinked at each other, and he let go of my hand. (In the privacy of my own mind, I pretended I’d been getting ready to let go first. Sadly, I didn’t believe me.)
Anyway, Leona so didn’t look like the type to be traveling by RV. If they made RV limousines, maybe, but staying in the RV park? So no.
“Hello?” Leona said into the phone with enough warmth that we knew Ned wasn’t her chauffeur. Hmm. How long ago did good old grandpa die?
“Yes, she can stay here,” Aunt Ruby said in answer to the question Uncle Mike hadn’t asked yet.
Jack jumped up out of his seat so fast he knocked the chair on the floor, in plenty of time to catch Leona when she started to slide out of hers.
“They killed Brenda,” she whispered, and then she started to shriek.