Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
“Mum’s food is always amazing,” Lavender says, looking eagerly at dessert.
They don’t know how lucky they are. Family to break bread with and an abundance of food are rare blessings for some people.
“Hope you have a chef.” I glance Brin’s way to find his gaze mocking. He sets a jug of cream next to the dish. “Your new wife can barely boil an egg.”
He seems far too entertained by that thought.
“The 1950s called,” Lavender mutters, reaching for the serving spoon. “They want their attitudes back.”
“I didn’t marry your sister for her cooking skills.” Our eyes lock as I place my hand over Lavender’s.
His lips thin and his gaze narrows because he knows exactly why I chose Lavender. If not why I married her. And now, as I stroke her hand, he’s remembering that married couples also fuck.
Usually.
“Lavender can cook,” Polly interjects, swatting Brin with her oven gloves. “Her repertoire might be small, but at least she doesn’t burn water.”
“You’ve already fed us so well, Polly. The whole meal has been outstanding.”
“Don’t tell me you have no room for pudding,” she says, meaning pudding as a general term for dessert and not the shit that comes in a pudding cup. She turns a fond expression Lavender’s way. “Take a leaf out of Lavender’s book.”
“Yep, eat well when you can,” she says, dishing a creamy spoonful into my bowl. “I’m too busy to cook.”
“I mean, when you were a little girl. I remember how you used to say your vegetable tummy might be full, but your pudding tummy still had space.”
“That sounds familiar,” I reply with a sudden smile.
“Oh, she told you!” Polly looks charmed.
I glance Lavender’s way to find her looking at me as though I’ve grown another head. Fuck. I could bite my tongue off. This is a monumental fuckup. I hadn’t meant for it to come out like this. I should’ve said—should’ve told her in Gibraltar. Instead, Lavender is about to hear this for the first time in front of an audience.
“No.” I sit straighter in my chair and drop my hand under the table to give a warning squeeze to her thigh. “It’s actually something Daisy, my… little girl, is fond of saying.”
17
RAIF
“Lunch was… pleasant.”
Small talk? I must be going soft. Can it be that I prefer Lavender’s attitude to the silent treatment? At least I’d decided to drive from the airport myself. It gives me something else to focus on.
I glance her way when she doesn’t answer, and she holds up her hand, the gesture softer than don’t talk to me. I let several beats pass as she continues to stare out the car window.
“I’m not not talking to you,” she says eventually.
My little girl. Why the hell did I frame it like that? Well, other than because that’s what she’s become to me. But it was sloppy. At best. At worst, a monumental fuckup.
At the Whittington dining table, Lavender had stilled, the silver serving spoon still between her fingers and suspended midair. No one but me noticed this as a quiet shock had passed around the table. Bad enough that Lavender brought home a surprise husband, but one with my kind of baggage? I guess I should be glad I didn’t make my announcement while the carving knife was still on the table.
Lavender eventually brought the spoon to my dish, and the hush was eventually broken. By Primrose, of course.
“That’s classic!” she’d said with unmitigated glee. “Lavender, the wicked stepmother!”
What a fuckup.
“I think I’m just processing.”
Lavender’s quiet voice snaps me back to the present moment. I flick the blinker left and turn out of the quiet residential street. Her gaze briefly meets mine, and I find myself jarred by the fact I can’t even guess what she’s thinking.
When she ordinarily wears her moods so obviously.
“I can’t imagine you as a parent.” She accompanies her statement with an uncomplimentary glance. “I mean, I don’t know you all that well, but it’s still weird.”
“Technically, I’m not her parent. Just her uncle.”
“Yeah, you said. Was it the shock factor you were going for by announcing it at the table?”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
I had qualified it by briefly explaining the situation. That my seven-year-old niece lives with me as her primary caregiver, but she also has contact and visitation with her father. A father who, up until my sister’s death, was not part of her life. He makes his living as a DJ of all fucking things.
I kept the details to myself, failing to mention what a piece of shit he is. I also let them assume my sister and I were close, as they are themselves. For all their petty squabbling, the Whittington clan is obviously tight-knit. But the truth is, I didn’t even know I had a sister until my father died. And then Adrienne died in a car crash just as we were getting to know each other. Daisy was left parentless, and her father was nowhere to be seen. So of course, I took her in.