Chapter 23
“Did I show you the picture of Reese being potty trained?” Mary, Reese’s very determined mother, asked, smiling hugely as she closed the thick leather-bound photo album. She tossed it aside and grabbed an identical photo album off the coffee table and opened it to the page of Reese smiling, naked and very adorable as he held up a bra for whoever had been holding the camera before she could utter a response.
Not that she had one, because she really didn’t.
She was used to mothers glaring at her, ignoring her, mouthing, “bitch,” at her when they didn’t think anyone else was looking, and crying hysterically, demanding to know where they went wrong when guys brought her home, but this…
“Wasn’t he adorable?” Mary asked, gushing over the picture of Reese as a baby, sitting on a blue plastic potty that matched the one his twin brother was sitting on.
“Very adorable,” she agreed, nodding, because that’s what she assumed she was supposed to do in this situation.
Well, besides being amused, because she was definitely amused. Should she be smiling? Probably not this much, she thought, pulling back her smile a bit. If she had known that coming here would end up like this, she would have dragged Sara along, because she would have freaking loved this!
“He was such a sweet little boy,” Mary said, smiling as she flipped to another page, this one showing Reese running around naked outside.
For a second, Kasey considered asking her if it would be cool if she snapped a picture of that picture so that she could taunt Reese whenever the need arouse, but reluctantly decided against it. Besides, Mary was already moving on to the next page where Reese and his twin brother, Darrin, whom she hadn’t known existed until this afternoon, were playing in a kiddie pool, smiling hugely for the camera.
“He used to smile all the time,” Mary said with a wistful smile as she turned the page, making Kasey frown, because she never had a problem making him smile.
Granted, he was usually smiling at her expense, but that was neither here nor there at the moment. Right now she was wondering what happened to change this smiling little boy. As Mary continued flipping through the pages, she watched as things slowly changed and that easy, carefree smile of his was replaced with that scowl that she knew so well. He still smiled in most of the pictures, but now that smile was tainted with a level of seriousness that just broke her heart.
As Mary flipped through the book, it became easier to tell Reese apart from his brother. While Darrin had a carefree smile that reached his eyes, Reese had that haunted look of someone who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She watched as he went from an incredibly cute baby to the insanely handsome man that she liked so much.
There.
She admitted it.
She liked him.
It wasn’t a big deal. She was a grown woman who was attracted to an incredibly handsome man, who apparently loved to glare a lot. It was normal. This was normal. She was normal, which meant that this whole thing between them was no big deal. Just because she was attracted to him didn’t mean that she had to act on it. She’d been attracted to other men in the past and she’d never acted on it before, which meant that this was fine.
More than fine.
Then again, she’d never been this attracted to any of them before, but...
Whatever.
She’d figure it out.
Until then, she fully planned on enjoying this lovely visit with his mother.
“Is that his prom picture?” she asked, really enjoying the fact that someone had decided to shove him into a pink shirt with ruffles.
“Yes, he was so handsome,” Mary said with a watery smile.
“He still is,” Kasey said, only realizing seconds later that she’d made a tactical error.
“Yes, yes he is,” Mary said with an assessing look that she actually found a bit frightening.
Kasey opened her mouth to change the subject, but Mary wasn’t having that. “I like you.”
“Umm,” was the clever response that she came up with, but again, Mary didn’t seem to mind.
“I didn’t like Missy,” Mary announced with a firm shake of her head and a hard press of her lips as she reached for another album, making Kasey wonder how she was supposed to respond to that.
Since she had absolutely no idea who Missy was, she went with a nod.
“I try to stay out of my children’s lives, but it just broke my heart to see him with her. She was so vein, selfish and mean, god was she mean, and Reese-”
“Isn’t,” Kasey said, unable to imagine someone like Reese, who was gentle and kind, being with someone that was selfish or mean.
She just couldn’t see him going for someone like that, because he was…honorable.
“No,” Mary said, shaking her head, “he isn’t. I should have said something the first time that he’d brought her home, but I didn’t want to overstep. I just didn’t think he’d end up with her or maybe it was more like I’d hoped that he wouldn’t end up with her.”
“When she left him like that, and for his best friend, I was actually relieved. I think we all were. I just wish that she hadn’t hurt him like that,” Mary said, shaking her head in disgust while Kasey sat there, waiting to hear what this Missy woman had done to Reese, which was kind of funny, because she hated gossip.
Hated. It.
It probably had something to do with the fact that she’d been a topic of gossip since before she was born, but whatever. She didn’t want to hear it, didn’t share it, and avoided it at all costs. Yet, that didn’t stop her from sitting on the edge of her seat, tapping her foot, and wringing her hands as she waited for more.
Instead of saying anything more, and god, was this woman good, she shook her head and went back to looking at pictures while Kasey sat there, waiting.
And waiting…
Finally, Kasey couldn’t take it any longer and she blurted, “What did she do?”
“What didn’t she do?” Mary asked with a disgusted shake of her head as she continued to flip through the pages while Kasey sat there, not really sure how to proceed on this one.
On the one hand, it wasn’t any of her business, but on the other hand…
It wasn’t any of her business.
With a disgusted shake of her head at herself, she shifted her attention back to the pictures and couldn’t help but smile when she spotted the picture of Reese in his uniform the day that he’d graduated from the academy. He was so handsome, she thought with a smile, somehow resisting the urge to reach over and trace her finger along his chin.
“He’s so handsome,” she said, smiling as she leaned in to get a better look.
“He really is, isn’t he?” Mary said softly, turning her head to study her.
“How old was he in that picture?”
“Twenty. He’d just finished training with the reserves before he went to the academy,” Mary said, going back a few pages to show her a picture of Reese standing at attention in an army uniform.
“I didn’t know he was in the reserves,” she said even though it kind of made sense.
He was just a good guy all around and god, did he look incredibly sexy in a uniform, she thought as she watched a familiar large, tanned hand pluck the photo album off Mary’s lap. She followed that hand up to the large muscular arm, well-defined chest showcased by a navy tee shirt and up to the handsome face marred by stitches and an aging bruise, reminding her of how incredibly kind he’d been to Mikey after it happened when any other man would have probably screamed at her.
“There’s a lot that you don’t know about me,” he murmured with a challenge in his eye as he closed the book with one hand and reached out and took her hand into his, “Why don’t we go get this done, sweetheart?”