He gazed down at her, stroking her collarbone, and pressed his lips together for a moment, resigning himself. “To be honest, I’m worried that she—and my crazy family—will scare you off.”
Gwen still seemed doubtful. “Really?”
“I guarantee you they’ll tell you every embarrassing story they can think of about me. Ma will get out the nekkid baby pictures.”
“Really?” she asked hopefully. “I’d love to see your nekkid baby pictures.”
“She’ll probably tell you about how much I weighed when I was born and how long she was in labor with me—”
“Steal her thunder. Why don’t you just tell me how much you weighed and how long she was in labor? Honey, I have to confess I want to hear all those stories. It’s part of who you are.”
“Yeah, but it’s the spin they’ll put on all the stories. It’s like a rite of passage or something. Grill the single guy and his girlfriend. The goal is to see if they can scare you off. And I weighed eleven pounds and two ounces. Ma said she was lucky I was the last one and not the first one, or there wouldn’t have been any others.”
Gwen squeaked and clapped her hand over her mouth and burst into giggles. The sound made him laugh and warmth filled his heart when she wrapped her arms around his waist and patted his back sympathetically. “You poor baby. So she’s showed your nekkid baby pictures and told all the wretched stories about your growing-up years to all your girlfriends when you bring them over?”
He shook his head and then she looked up at him questioningly. “Since I’ve moved away from home, I’ve never brought any girlfriends over for her to meet. I know what she’ll do because she’s done it to all my married siblings. It’s sort of like culling the herd to see if the person is strong enough to join the family. What amazes me is how she keeps the stories straight with each kid.”
“You’ve never brought anyone home to meet your parents since you moved out on your own?”
“No.” He wished he could tell her it was because he’d never met anybody special enough to bring home but really it was just because there hadn’t been anybody. One-night stands who were gone the next morning didn’t generally want to go meet the folks.
Gwen released him to turn to the sink and said, “You could tell me some of your stories, the unvarnished versions, to give me a frame of reference.” She scrubbed the potatoes to prepare them for baking as she worked.
“I’m not sure I want to. I was an awkward, big kid growing up.”
“How bad could it be?”
“I was taller than my teacher…in third grade. Puberty was the worst.”
Gwen smiled up at him and leaned close enough to rub her cheek against his bicep, a sweet gesture he really appreciated. “Tell me.”
“I bulked up early and was mistaken for a high school football player when I was in middle school.”
Her eyes twinkled as she dried her hands. “Oh, but I bet you had girls coming out of your ears by then.” She looked like she honestly believed that.
Chris liked that she assumed the best. “I wasn’t any better looking then than I am now. I had acne, I smelled funny, I had facial hair before any other boys in my class or the next grade up for that matter—”
She paused in her work and looked up at him, a furrow growing between her eyebrows. “Wait a minute.”
Oh hell, please don’t ask for details about all the gross puberty crap.
“What do you mean you weren’t any better looking then than you are now?”
Chris sighed. “Darlin’, I have eyes. I know what I look like. None of the girls I was in school with ever gave me a second glance. Some of them were even intimidated by me. The one girl who ever showed an interest in me got teased unmercifully about it until she ignored me too.”
“Kids are so fucking mean, especially middle schoolers. What does that mean that you know what you look like?”
Chris stared out the window but didn’t really see the landscape beyond. “Ugly. ‘Pug ugly,’ my brothers say. Heard it all my life.” His face flushed with heat as he remembered the teasing. “I come from a genetically blessed family. All my siblings look like movie stars. You should see my parents. Except for the fact that I’m the biggest among my brothers, I’d say I was the runt of the litter.”
Gwen had grown quiet and still. He looked down at her and frowned as he saw the redness in her cheeks and the angry set of her brows and her pretty mouth. He grimaced when she pricked the potatoes, afraid she’d ram the fork right through them and hurt herself, before she wrapped each one in foil.