Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,18

the years, but there’d never been a smile that sweet or a laugh that genuine. Even sick as a dog, Maggie was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She let that smile linger, let it hang on her lips for a few seconds as she watched me fussing with my hair again before she dropped her hand, holding onto my fingers again, keeping them close to her chest.

“I can never repay you.” Her voice was quiet, but clear.

“I’d never ask you to.”

“Smoke…”

She’d never asked me for a damn thing. But then, Maggie wasn’t the sort who would. That’s why I knew she was a decent person. What she gave me came from the heart and it came with zero expectation. What I gave her came from a place I didn’t understand, not completely, but I was starting to see parts of it.

Taking her hand in both of mine, I kissed her knuckles, hoping she saw me clearly and honestly. Hoping she knew what I said, I meant. “I’d be a liar if I said you don’t matter.” I couldn’t quite hold her eyes, not when they went glassy and wet. Maybe that’s why she looked away, moving her lashes like a fan, like blinking quickly would get rid of the wetness behind them. But I wasn’t done. She had to know that. “You matter to me,” I said, holding her attention. “You and the kid. You matter more than I thought you would.”

“You… matter to me too,” she said, blinking again before she rubbed them with her fingers.

“Don’t hate hearing that.” Maggie nodded again, turning further on her side, her smile sweet, but tired as she looked up at me. The meds were strong, and finally starting to kick in. I moved down to kiss her forehead, brushing the hair off her shoulder. “Sleep, bella.”

She listened, her eyes slipping closed and staying that way as I watched her, letting the room stay silent and that quiet fill my head with a thousand thoughts about this woman and her kid and the kind of joy that might be mine if I let myself have them. Worse yet was the million worries of what losing them would do to me.

6

Maggie

Angelique Carelli was a calculating woman. Twice she’d asked about my taking Mateo to the lake with the family on the Fourth since I returned to work after my bout of strep. She was a good woman. Kind. Sweet, but there was only so much patience left in her and I suspected she was still a little irritated that I’d, politely, turned down the clothes she’d picked out for Mateo.

“Take it, it’s for the baby,” she’d said a week ago, holding out the brown bag to me. She almost dropped it when I kept my hands curled around my car’s door handle instead of reaching to take it.

“You’re too good to us, Mrs. C., but I can’t take that. I’ve already bought Mateo his summer clothes. I’m sorry you went to all the trouble.”

“It’s for your baby.” She’d stepped forward, motioning with the bag like my words meant nothing. “I insist.”

“No ma’am. I can’t.”

No one ever told the woman no. That much I’d gathered from all the tall tales my co-workers told me at the restaurant.

Not her husband.

Not her kids.

Not a single employee or patron.

Mrs. Carelli was simply a woman who got what she wanted when she wanted it.

Me, a nobody waitress, the mother of the cutest baby who’d stolen everyone’s heart in the months we’d lived there, had been the one to break the unspoken Don’t-Tell-Mama-C.-No rule.

I’d thought being sick and her sending soups and breads and her own personal doctor would have satisfied her, and likely done a lot to satisfy any insult I might have caused at turning down the clothes, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Ma holds a grudge,” Smoke had told me before he left my apartment two nights ago as Mateo slept on his chest. “Don’t think she’s forgotten you telling her no.”

That, I reasoned, was cause enough to play nice and go in early for my shift today.

Despite how generous the Carellis had been to us, and God knew Smoke had been extra generous lately, I couldn’t always lean on others. Despite my being sick, things were getting better. My finances were firmer now, and I could relax a bit more since this small town and these generous people had made us part of their family. I had to learn to be self-reliant. There was