“Chocolate?” Sam and Miss Janie asked at the same time.
“If that’s what y’all want, it’ll be ready by noon, but you’ve got to promise to eat your fried chicken first,” Teresa replied.
“We will,” they chorused together the second time.
Noah was glad that Teresa was there. She had been able to get Miss Janie to eat healthy food better than he could, and she’d stepped into the caregiving position like she was made for it. Every time he looked at her, he remembered those stolen kisses and the way they had made his pulse race. She’d been a pretty teenager, but she’d grown up to be a beautiful woman. They were adults now, not teenagers, but he still felt like the latter when she was around him.
And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t feel the same, the pesky voice in his head reminded him. When he passed her on the way to take his empty plate to the sink, his elbow brushed against her shoulder. The embers of an old fire he thought had been put out stirred inside his heart. She seemed to still have a chip on her shoulder about those teenage kisses, and he—well, his chip wasn’t on his shoulder but in his pocket, in the form of a five-year sobriety coin. Yes, she might have a past, but so did he, and after the way her mother had drowned herself in booze, Teresa would never be interested in a recovering alcoholic.
Besides all that, Noah had control of her and Kayla’s inheritance from Miss Janie—she thought he’d be better at talking to them about it. Maybe she had known about those kisses . . .
He was supposed to decide how to give it to them once he found them. Should he hand it over to them in a lump sum or give it to them in monthly checks? This position complicated everything. He had tried to talk Miss Janie into putting another lawyer in charge even before he knew Teresa was coming home, but she’d have none of that. No sir. Her only living relative was a good attorney, and he would handle her affairs the way she wanted him to.
Sam nudged him with his shoulder. “You look like you’re trying to solve the problems of the world.”
“I was thinking about a case.” Even if it wasn’t the truth, it wasn’t a lie, either. How he handled his great-aunt’s property was a case.
“Shouldn’t a PI be off investigating stuff?” Teresa asked.
“I have been working on finding you,” he answered. “Now that you’re here to help with things, and as soon as we locate Kayla, I’ll take a few cases.”
“But first you find Kayla,” Miss Janie said. “I don’t care how much money you spend. I want my daughter to come home.”
“Why did you foster me and Kayla? You were almost ready to retire when you brought me home, and you brought Kayla in right after your last year at the school.”
“I had one more year when the social workers came to the school to inform us that they were taking you from your mother’s home.” Miss Janie smiled. “I was dreading living alone in this big old place, and I’d been watching you girls out on the playground for years. If I had to make a trip over to the elementary school, I’d wait until lunch recess so I could see you—you both looked like how I imagined my girls growing up.”
She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. “And . . . I hated y’all’s mothers for not taking care of you right. I even wondered if my girls were being treated like that, and then finally one day, the social worker came to the school to talk to me and some of the teachers. That’s when I knew I had to take you home with me. I needed someone and you needed a home. I got approved to be your foster mother, and you came to live with me.”
She paused again and then went on. “Folks had invited me up to the senior citizens place in Sulphur Springs, but who wants to drive that far every day to have lunch and play dominoes? You had dark skin like my babies, so I could pretend you was mine. Where are my babies again? Did they have a good home?”
“I’m sure they did,” Sam answered. “Me and Delia used to talk about how nice it would be if Birthright had a senior