The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,38
to you except apologize to your face.
I added, See you then! and sent it, hoping the exclamation mark would say all the rest.
Then I decided it wouldn’t matter because when he got there, he’d knock on the door like he always did, and then I’d be able to ask him in and share what I needed to share.
The thing was, between vacuuming and dusting and cleaning the downstairs powder room, and looking after my kid and my dog, and dragging out Christmas decorations and inventorying my stock of craft stuff to plan out my cards and finding Lora on Facebook and friending her, the two hours since he texted came and went and it was ten thirty before I knew it.
“Shit,” I whispered when I saw the time on my computer.
I looked at my phone, and the screen was blank (outside of a picture of Brooks giggling)
He hadn’t texted to say he was running late.
And Toby (nor Johnny) were ever late to anything.
I looked to my kid, who was alternately sucking on and throwing the balls he should be dumping into the tubes in the big tower that was beside him on the floor in the office. Balls Dapper Dan was retrieving for him, so Brooks was essentially sucking up Dapper Dan’s spit.
Great.
I nabbed my phone, got up and grabbed my boy. He squealed because he was having fun playing with Dapper Dan and consuming dog drool, so he wasn’t feeling Mom putting an end to his good time, and I headed downstairs.
I went to the front door, just to check, not expecting I’d see anything, and looked out to note, to my shock, Toby’s kickass old red Chevy truck with the silver panels parked by my Focus.
I stared at it.
He was there.
He was there and he hadn’t knocked on the door.
I was so stunned by this, kid, dog and I walked right out (well Dapper Dan and I did, I carried Brooklyn out). We went across the porch and down the steps. I looked right then turned right when I saw Tobe up on a tall ladder, staple-gunning some fat, retro Christmas lights to the eaves.
He’d shown and started work.
And he didn’t knock on the door.
“Hey,” I called.
He didn’t look down at me when he replied, “Yo.”
I stood there staring up at him, speechless, because yes, I was again in shock.
Yo?
Just . . . yo?
This was so un-Toby it was Anti-Toby.
“Dodo!” Brooklyn yelled, clearly having seen Toby, “Dodo” being what he called his Uncle Tobe (“Zee” was Izzy, “Jaja” was Johnny, “GoGo,” Margot, and Dave had to share “Dada” with Dapper Dan).
Toby looked down then.
“Hey, bud,” he called to my son. Then, without the barest pause to shoot my kid a smile, his eyes moved to me and he declared, “He isn’t in a jacket, Adeline, and it’s cold.”
That was what he said.
He didn’t climb down to give my son a cuddle (he pretty much was always about Brooklyn, especially when he first saw him).
He didn’t acknowledge Dapper Dan, who was excitedly cruising the bottom of the ladder, waiting for attention, something else Toby gave with only the delay of giving it to my boy.
He didn’t ask if I liked the lights, of which he seemed to have a lot done, which meant he’d been there awhile.
He didn’t even mention I wasn’t in a jacket.
He just told me Brooks didn’t have one, something, by the way, I knew.
“You should get inside,” he advised, and turned back to the lights.
“Dodo!” Brooklyn shrieked.
I waited.
Tobe stapled some chord to the eaves.
Cold stung my cheeks.
Woodenly, I walked my son and dog back into the house.
I closed the door.
“Dodo!” Brooks screeched at the closed door.
Dapper Dan barked at it.
“He’s working, baby,” I whispered, put my lips to his head, felt his skin was chill and mentally kicked myself in the ass and rubbed his head warm with my hand while Brooklyn angrily jerked it away.
I put him down and stared at the door.
Okay, so that fight on the sidewalk had been bad.
But things, clearly, were worse than I’d thought.
The Gamble Men were raised by Margot. This meant, even if they didn’t know you well, they were gracious and polite. If they knew you, they were open and friendly, and depending on your gender, affectionate.
But if they didn’t like you a whole lot, they weren’t assholes, but they weren’t about bullshit.