Page 30 of Moonshine Lullabies
“Sounds mighty fine to me,” I replied, and I took up a dish towel off the handle on the oven door.
He grinned at me and got the dishes going in the sink. We talked strategy for our next mission on the game we were playing while we worked.
He was a good kid, and I think he was just a little starved for some male attention and definitely needed a good example in that department. I loved Cy like a brother from another mother but where his nephew an’ sister was concerned, he was layin’ down on the job some. I could see Jessie-Lou just quietly pickin’ up the slack. Not because she wanted to, but because she was expected to.
My momma had been the same way, and it took her to an early grave when I was seventeen. That left my papaw and memaw to pick up the slack and my papaw? He was an extraordinary man. A man ahead of his time, that was for sure. He treated my memaw like a queen, and I never forgot it. Taught me quick that a real man looked after his family, and he always made a good example and had learned me good. Ain’t never steered me wrong.
I always wanted to be that for a kid, mine or not, it didn’t matter. Some lessons were just meant to be passed on.
We finished up the dishes pretty quick and had everything put away. I set up the coffee pot for the next morning so it’d be one last thing Jessie-Lou had to do, and by the time I was done with that, her hair dryer had started up down the hall, steam billowing out from the bathroom in the light of the open doorway.
“Alright, Tate! That’s enough!” she called out midway through drying her hair. Tate looked like he was going to do the typical thing and call for five more minutes, but he caught my look and raised eyebrow, and called out, “K, Mamma!” instead.
“It was good playin’ with you,” I said. “Tomorrow night, same time?”
He grinned.
“Yeah!” he said, and I gave a nod.
He went on into his room after giving his mamma a hug and I stretched out on the couch to catch up on things on my phone.
A minute later, the dryer cut, Jessie sighed, and the light from the bathroom switched out. She slipped out, looked down the hall at me, and wordlessly, went into her room. Her bedside lamp clicked on and I waited a while so she could get settled before I went on down.
I’d liked our little chat the night before and I wanted some more of that.
Hell, I wanted more than that, but for now, just the closeness and conversation would do.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Jessie-Lou…
I sat up in bed and used my hand cream to treat my chapped hands from working in the freezer and washing them up so much in a day working at the butcher. I had a sack full of rabbit heads I’d forgotten to bring home to have my beetles clean off for me. It was rabbit trapping and hunting season and nobody had the use for the heads, which meant more for me to carve up and lay with semi-precious stones to put up on my online shop.
I stared off into space and worked the lotion into my sore hands and relaxed some, letting my mind drift to the night before and the play of golden light from my bedside lamp over the pale skin of Collier’s shoulders and back, and that damn smattering of freckles like the stars in the sky that painted his skin.
I didn’t know why I found that so hot. That and the play of his absolutely shredded muscles beneath that skin. I liked ‘em lean, boy… and he was the right kind of lean.
A knock fell on my doorframe and I jumped, startling right out of my impure thoughts.
“Hey, you alright?” he asked.
“Huh? Yeah! Yeah, I’m good. Just daydreaming, I guess.”
“Yeah?” he asked, stretching out and sliding along the top of my covers, lying on his stomach and capturing the pillow as he had the night before. I’d never been so jealous of a lump of feathers in my life, I’ll tell you what.
“Yeah,” I said with a nervous laugh, knowing I’d painted myself into a corner and that the question was coming and by God, I didn’t have a good answer on deck and ready to go…
“About what?” he asked.
…and there it was.
Shit.
“Aw, nothin’,” I said. I couldn’t stop the blush if I wanted to, bringing my book off the end table and into my lap in hopes that he would make a grab for it again.
It was a peculiar thing, this man with his Moonshine ways and strange lullaby voice. I liked it… I think I liked him, but I didn’t think I could trust him.
Ain’t no one ever picked me in all my years, short as they were at twenty-eight, for anything good. I’d started to believe I wasn’t destined for anything right. The way things were supposed to be.
