Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 130022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
My gaze moved to Manon, who had Remy’s coloring, my skin, and some of my features, the rest was all her.
It was Yves who looked most like one of his parents, that parent being his father. Yves moved like Remy, with that big cat’s prowl. They even had a similar sounding deep, rich voice.
And they were all hanging about the family room like it was their home.
Which it was.
“I’m sorry. No excuses. Something happened, I should have ignored it, and didn’t and—” I started.
I didn’t finish because Yves interrupted me, wearing the same exact expression his father had only moments before while his eyes moved over my face.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine, honey.”
“Wyn is here.”
I twisted at the waist and looked back at Remy, who said these words.
And from where his attention was focused, I saw he said them to Myrna.
I just didn’t know why he said them since I was there, the woman could see, we’d both stared at each other not a minute ago, so my arrival didn’t need to be announced.
“Yes, sorry,” I put in, attempting to interpret what was going on with him and rectifying what I thought he was noting was my mistake. “Hello, Myrna.”
“Wyn,” she pushed out like she’d done it after sucking a lemon.
“Wyn is here,” Remy repeated.
My gaze went back to him.
His face was bland.
Oh boy.
Trouble was definitely flirting with paradise.
“Remy—” Myrna started.
“What’d I say?” he asked like he really didn’t care if she remembered, but regardless, what she was not doing that he wanted her to do, she needed to do it…immediately.
Yikes!
Trying not to call attention to myself, I walked into the family room thinking at least I’d never had that Remy.
I’d seen that Remy, when he was around people he did not care for, they annoyed him or frustrated him, or were simply of an ilk he didn’t have any fucks to give them.
His deep freeze was chilly, believe you me.
But his bland indifference seemed worse.
I used to tease him about both.
For my part, I might get the deep freeze on the most intense of our occasions.
Predominantly, though, I got the hothead, shout-the-roof-down, never-say-die, duke-it-out-verbally until someone either slammed out of the room or you attacked each other and fucked it out.
I had honestly thought it was all going to be okay when I got back from California those three years ago because, before I went, we’d gone at it but ended fucking it out.
But when I came home, he’d been packing.
And he’d already had a furnished apartment to go to. So even before that, he’d been planning.
So I’d obviously been wrong.
“She can stay, Dad,” Sabre put in.
Remy cut his eyes to his son, and I was about to hug Yves, but I went still and stiff, like I had to be prepared to throw myself between them to protect my boy with the way Remy did it.
Sabre clamped his mouth shut.
I didn’t hug Yves, or Manon, and definitely not Sabre, as I watched with perhaps inappropriate fascination as Remy turned back to Myrna and lifted his brows.
My gaze shifted to her, and I saw her face get red with embarrassment, anger or hurt, I had no idea.
Though it was probably all three that made her stomp loudly in her Birks toward Remy, grab her multi-colored woven crossbody (I wasn’t lying) from the counter, then turn and stomp the other direction to the door to the garage where her old pickup rested beside Remy’s Tesla.
She slammed the door behind her.
She did not say goodbye.
“Can we do this?” Yves asked impatiently, but there was a pitch to his voice that had me belatedly studying him closely.
He was ill-at-ease, for certain.
I read this as the fact he knew what this was about.
And I was seeing with the way my youngest was being, and also taking in the demeanor of my middle, not to mention my eldest, that my thought processes needed to shift to dealing with something like Sabre having gotten some girl pregnant and now, I not only had to get over being a divorcée, I had to come to terms with becoming a grandmother.
We were a touchy, affectionate family. We’d started that way because of me (Remy’s mother was an overbearing, snobbish, horrendous Southern woman—the exact opposite of every single Southerner I’d ever met—and his French father was largely absent, and when he wasn’t, he was indulgent of his wife, so we could say hugs weren’t de rigueur in the Gastineau household). And our open affection had never died.
But so this could get started, then be over for my son, I didn’t do the physical greetings I usually would.
I took a seat in an upholstered armchair with a low, double-buttoned back and short legs, and tucked my clutch in my lap.
Once down, I watched, morbidly enthralled, as my kids sat one-two-three on Remy’s couch, with Yves sandwiched in the middle.