Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,78

watched you grow up here in my own house and I know who your mama raised you to be. I know why you’re back, but do you?”

She busied herself with plating cake slices.

I traced the condensation on my glass, absorbed by her question and my answer. “Yeah, I do. I’m ready to face the past. I’d give everything I have for another chance with Zora.” I followed the woodgrain pattern of the table with a finger, unable to meet her eyes while I delivered the naked truth. “When I left here, I left a part of me with her. It’s always been her for me. She’s all I’ve ever wanted. She’s all I’ll ever want.”

“Uh-huh.” I snuck a glance at Ellie and found a smile that contrasted with the obviously manufactured skepticism in her voice. “And you don’t have any of those actresses and models waiting in the wings? Your head’s on straight?”

“Yes, ma’am. My head’s on straight. Straight.” A thought occurred to me. “What do you, uh, think about Jackson James in all this?”

She drowned her expression in her glass of iced tea, took her time gulping a bit more down before swallowing. “Y’all are grown,” she said when she finally surfaced. “I care about Jackson, too. I watched him grow up and he’s become a fine man and is growing into a wonderful sheriff. I don’t know that I should have an opinion one way or the other about any of it.” I wasn’t at all fooled by her philosophical tone, or the mild shrug she sent me. “It’s Zora’s decision. It’ll all work out.”

“He’s not with her, you know.” I made it a statement, but I watched her face for any reaction, any indication of what was really going on between those two.

“I don’t get in grown folks’ business, Nick.” Her guileless smile made me certain she killed at poker.

I heaved a breath, unsurprised at the unsteady, gelatinous state of my gut. All of my supreme CEO courage was nowhere to be found now talking to Zora’s mother. Not when it was about Zora, and when so much was at stake when it came to the future I wanted with her again.

Well, and all the positively filthy things I wanted to do to Zora were never all that far from my mind nowadays. Maybe a little fear was appropriate right now.

“You have any advice?”

“Oh, it’s advice you want, do you?” Her smile was like the sun coming out.

“Yes.”

She chewed at her lip. “My advice for you is the same advice I’d give her. Trust yourself. Let down your defenses. Trust you’ll love each other the way you deserve. All that instinct, that knowing you two have always had about what was best for the other? It’s still there.”

Then she leaned forward suddenly, her eyes steady on mine. “And Nick, you were never your father. Never. You didn’t need to change your last name to know that. You hear me?”

It was, perhaps, the most profound thing she could have said, and lifted and eased a weight I’d been carrying ever since that night twelve years ago. I felt somehow freer as I met her solemn dark gaze.

“I hear you.” Several beats of silence descended as we eyed each other.

“Mrs. Leffersbee . . . this won’t be easy. She thinks I moved on with . . .” What had Zora been saying? A redhead? I’d meant to pursue that revelation with a line of questioning, but to be fair, she’d been half-naked and my body had been all busy saying “hell yes,” distracting me. “And she still doesn’t know—”

She cupped her forehand in her hand. “God.”

“That’s right. She doesn’t know what actually happened all those years ago.”

“We have to tell her.”

“I have to tell her. It was my decision. It’s my mess. It had to be done, I had to protect her.”

Her mouth twisted. “No, we all co-own this. It was our decision then, and I still stand by it. It’s just time to pay the piper now.” She let out a thin sigh. “When are you going to tell her?”

Chapter Eighteen

Zora

“You’re on birth control, right? Hand me that black sweater.”

I stared at the back of Leigh’s head. My mouth fell open.

We’d just completed an exhausting shop-a-thon in Knoxville. Leigh needed the distraction in light of her impending trip back home to New Jersey and no one loved a mall more than she did. The result of our excursion was a bold new haircut for her, new coppery highlights