That made Derrick pause. He eyed the man as he grabbed the sunshade for Morris. “Strays?”
“Yeah, dogs, cats, you know?”
Alarm bells sounded in Derrick’s head, but he kept his reply cool. “Not often. You lookin’ for a stray?”
His gaze connected with Derrick’s, holding it, searching it, his jaw tight, but he relaxed it almost immediately and said, “Nope,” before walking out the door into the late-afternoon sun without looking back.
Morris poked his head around the shade, his brow furrowed. “Friendly fella, huh?”
Derrick reached for his cell phone and scrolled for Max’s number, an ominous, unsettling feeling grabbing his guts and twisting them in a knot.
It was too coincidental for his taste that some stranger had suddenly shown up asking about strays. After last night, something he still hadn’t been able to discuss with Martine. And the fact that she’d all but run out on her old life, and now this guy shows up, left him feeling damn uneasy.
Fuck.
It left him feeling more than uneasy.
He shot Max a text message. He needed an ear to confirm or deny his suspicions.
And to get back to Martine. It was fine to request “no questions asked” if there was nothing to ask about. But this wasn’t nothing.
So what was it?
* * *
Martine sat at the big table in the middle of Faith Adams’ kitchen and absorbed the endless conversations going on around her as everyone ate dinner together.
She and Derrick still hadn’t talked about last night, and as the day wore on, her fear Escobar would hunt her down began to fester as she stalled the conversation she knew she had to have with him.
Yet, being here with the Adamses, observing them as they passed bowls full of steaming mashed potatoes and green beans, laughed, joked, listened to one another, she almost didn’t want anything to come between this warm feeling she was having and her reality.
This wasn’t something she was accustomed to. Her mother had kept her quiet during meals. Either because her father was passed out and she didn’t want to wake him because he was a belligerent monster when he was drunk, or he had a hangover and too much noise bothered him.
The Brooks meals from days gone by certainly weren’t the occasion this one was.
This one was nice. It was easy. It was talking about your day. Poking fun at each other, sharing mealtime chores, listening. It was a big table, scarred and worn from many family dinners in a kitchen that screamed family first.
And she had to admit, it beat her old kitchen back in her apartment with its shiny appliances and virtually unused, slickly polished countertops.
She ate on the run, takeout, leftover takeout, and alone. She almost always ate alone.
As she sipped her wine and simply observed, she found no one seemed to care that she was sitting quietly and absorbing her surroundings.
Well, except for Faith Adams, who shot occasional unblinking stares from across the table when she thought Martine wasn’t looking.
Martine didn’t have to ask why she was staring. Derrick was her son, and from the looks of it, a good one. She was supposed to be his life mate. Any good mother would want to know what her good son was getting into with a woman who’d been dumped in his lap.
As she chewed her last bite of the most delicious rib eye she’d ever had, she wondered if she shouldn’t just ease Faith’s fears, and tell her the truth about she and Derrick’s arrangement. If maybe it would ease her worry if she knew Martine wasn’t going to let him die.
And then she thought better of it. That was up to Derrick to share. She didn’t want to blow anything for him, and she certainly didn’t want to be the one who told his mother they were just going to have death-sex.
Clearly, his mother was of the old school way of thinking—life mates stayed together forever. It was tradition. So who was Martine to mess with their beliefs?
But it wouldn’t be long before Faith took the bull by the horns and wanted a word with her.
By the looks of things, that would happen in three, two, one…
Faith’s chair scraped back as she rose, smoothing a hand over her shoulder-length hair. “Martine? Would you help me gather some firewood?”
Derrick pushed out of his chair, placing his hand on Martine’s shoulder. “I’ll get it, Mom.”
Faith shook a finger at him. “No. No you won’t. Martine and I are plenty strong enough to manage some firewood, aren’t we?” She shot Martine a smile of encouragement.
Martine patted Derrick’s hand and grinned at the panicked look in his eyes. “I got this, Farm Boy. Sit. Have some coffee. In fact, make me a cup, too, would you, please?”
Derrick nodded his head, making his way over to the coffeepot when Max laughed out loud, draping an arm around JC. “Would you look at the unwhippable, totally whipped.”