Flirting with Temptation - By Kelley St. John Page 0,33
she needed to, for Henry. And for herself.
She went to the bathroom, grabbed her robe from behind the door, and slipped it on. Then she paused a moment to look in the mirror. Her hair looked even whiter in the mornings, eyes a lighter shade of brown, though that could be because she wasn’t focusing all that well yet. She still had the morning squint that her mama had always called “sunshine eyes.” She tilted her head one way and then the other, examined the tiny slivers of wrinkles that bordered the corners of her eyes, as well as the thicker ones that spanned her forehead. When her hair was fixed, those were virtually unseen, and she liked them that way. But she had earned them, after all, and she wasn’t going to do anything cosmetically to have them changed. Those were her own version of an officer’s bars, each of the three on her forehead standing for milestones in her life. Her marriage. Her children. Her grandchildren. She expected a fourth one to show pretty soon; the great-grandkids were almost five now and due their own place of honor on Granny Gert’s face.
She slipped her feet into pink satin slippers that matched her robe, gifts from Babette and Clarise, and then took one more look in the mirror. Standing there in her nightgown and the pink satin robe, she didn’t look all that bad for wear. Henry had said she was always a teenager in his eyes. However, now that she was thinking about getting “out there” again, Gert wished she had someone giving her the same encouragement, that little smidgen of an ego boost to let her know that she could do this and do it well.
And more than that, she really needed to make certain that Henry was okay with her dating again. Even though he wasn’t here anymore, and even though he’d been gone for over a decade, she knew that he was still around, in his own way. He’d promised her he would be, and occasionally, she could almost feel him near, making her smile, cloaking her with love and approval. She wondered whether he’d approve of her finding Rowdy Slidell.
She made her way to the kitchen and found her favorite mug, one that little Ethan had bought her for Christmas last year.
“World’s Greatest Grandpa,” she said, reading the side of the mug and smiling the way she always did when she took it down each morning. Little Ethan had never even met Henry, and the darling thought that the picture on the side was an older woman, instead of a man. Gert had to admit, it could go either way. But Clarise hadn’t asked him to swap the gift that he picked for Gert, and she was glad that she hadn’t. In his own special way, little Ethan had given her a new morning ritual, a way to be reminded of Henry, and that he really was the “World’s Greatest.”
She kissed the picture on the side of the mug, poured her coffee, then sat at the kitchen table to think. Last night, she’d waited up to reach Babette partly to know she’d arrived safely, but also because she wanted to ask her if she’d started calling the list of Slidells in Tuscaloosa. Babette had printed all of the possible numbers before leaving and told Gert that she felt certain she could find Rowdy and provide her with his number and address.
Gertrude sipped the hot coffee and glanced toward the mantel, and the tall urn in the middle. If she got the number, would she call it? Should she? It’d been a long time since she’d even talked to a man in the way that a couple talks.
Babette had been flustered when Gertrude reached her and hadn’t even mentioned the phone numbers. Instead, she’d talked nonstop about the clothes she bought in Montgomery, and then about seeing Jeff but not talking to him, visiting Rose Nettles, one of her friends at the retirement condo, and she’d also mentioned something about hiding out behind a building and being afraid that she and Rose would get caught. Oh, and then she said something about a “brunette bimbo who’d cut her off.”
Gertrude laughed, then drank more coffee. There was never a dull moment in Babette’s over-eventful life, and there had been too much going on in her life yesterday for her to remember to call the Slidells in Tuscaloosa, which was just as well. Gertrude still wasn’t certain