The Trouble With Tomboys(5)

Striving to keep her dirty thoughts at bay, she attempted to start a conversation.

“How’s the twins?” she asked of his two younger sisters. Jo Ellen and Emma Leigh had been a couple of years older than her in school. She hadn’t been close to them, but, hey, what else was there to talk about...beside the fact she wanted to put the plane on auto pilot and jump his bones at thirty thousand feet?

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The Trouble with Tomboys



“They’re fine,” Grady answered.

B.J. nodded. “I haven’t gotten around to seeing Jo Ellen’s kid yet. It was a boy, wasn’t it?”

Grady nodded. “Tanner,” he said.

B.J. glanced at him. “Beg pardon?”

“His name’s Tanner,” he explained. “Jo Ellen’s son.” “Oh…” B.J. nodded. Then, “Right. Yeah, I think I knew that. Probably a good-looking tike.” Both his parents certainly were.

“He has a lot of hair.”

“Well, huh,” B.J. said, wondering what the hell else there was to say about a kid. She knew squat about ankle-biters. The only child she’d ever really been around was her niece. And Buck’s daughter was an honest-to-God brat. “That’s...that’s good. I guess.”

Grady didn’t bother to elaborate; she wondered if he was thinking about his own baby, the one who’d been born dead, the one who’d taken Amy’s life when it’d tried to make its entrance into the world.

Starting to feel ill at ease, she squirmed in her chair to get more comfortable. Grady kept his face turned away from her as he stared out his side window at the scenery below.

“Can you see your house from here?” she asked.

When he glanced at her, she winked. But he

merely turned away again and continued window gazing.

B.J. took a moment to study him, wondering if it was possible to describe someone as skinny and muscled at the same time. He looked like an

Ethiopian on steroids, minus the potbelly. Okay, it wasn’t quite to that extreme, but he was pretty thin.

He’d always been a slim man. Now he

looked...hollow. He was definitely leaner than when she’d last seen him, which had probably been about six months ago.

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Before she realized what she was going to blurt out, she commented to herself, “Amy must’ve been a good cook.”

But no sooner did the words leave her tongue than she snapped her mouth shut, wishing them away.

Grady’s head whipped around so quickly B.J.

swallowed her gum.

“What?” he said in a strangled voice.

She froze for a good three seconds. Oh, damn, oh, damn. She’d forgotten Amy was a taboo topic.

Feeling like she should apologize or something, B.J. stalled a moment by checking all her gauges and making sure everything was still running smoothly. But just as suddenly, she felt like a big weenie. What the hell did she want to apologize for?

This was her plane, and B.J. never watched her words. She had a right to talk about her old babysitter if she wanted to.

Lifting her chin in stubborn rebellion, she

nodded her head in his direction and found a fresh piece of gum in her front shirt pocket to stuff inside her cheek. “You ain’t so meaty around the ribs anymore. I just figured you might be missing out on your three square meals.”

There. She’d shown him. She hadn’t backed

down from the formidable Grady Rawlings. And she’d dared to mention his wife.

He was quiet a moment before he answered with a quiet, “I get by.”

Thinking back on Amy, B.J. let out a quick

laugh. “I remember when she used to babysit Rudy and me. She never did cook much, but this one time it was Pop’s birthday. She wanted to bake him a cake and, man…”

She paused to shake her head at the fond

memory. “She didn’t check the oven before she turned it on. Preheated it to three hundred fifty 14



The Trouble with Tomboys



degrees. But not two minutes into whipping the batter, she stopped and sniffed the air. ‘You smell something burning, B.J.?’ she asked me. So, we ran to the oven and pulled it open, only to find a stack of magazines catching fire.

“I guess since no one ever used our oven, Leroy had been hiding his porn in there. I couldn’t tell who was more upset over the whole ordeal. Leroy because all his good smut was charred black, or Amy because she was afraid she’d ruined our stove.”

Grady looked a little shell-shocked, like he couldn’t believe someone other than he had a memory of Amy tucked away inside them. He

frowned thoughtfully. “I remember her telling me about that.”

“That’s right,” B.J. said, her shoulders slumping because her story wasn’t as original as it could’ve been. “I forgot. You were seeing her back then too, weren’t you?”