Page 90 of Price of Angels

“I do.”

It wasn’t a smile, but it was a pleasant expression that touched Denise’s face.

“Ava’s really coming along,” Maggie said. “With her cooking, I mean. She’s always been leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us academically” – she rolled her eyes and Ava blushed – “so she’s determined to cook us all under the table now, too. She made the cookies for today.”

“Did you?” Denise’s gaze came to Ava. “They were very good.”

There was something penetrating about her grandmother’s eyes that made her want to squirm. Denise was looking at her, through her, like she was trying to detect some visible hint of the madness that had driven her to marry a biker and set herself on this path she’d chosen.

She stared at Ava a long moment, and in a quiet voice, said, “How far along are you?”

Ava almost dropped her fork. Her throat went dry immediately and she swallowed. “About fourteen weeks.”

There was no explosion, only a small, sad smile. Denise’s eyelids seemed heavy in the candlelight, her face tired and old. “Hmm. That’s why the sudden wedding, then.”

Maggie gathered a breath and Ava touched her mom’s foot with her own under the table.Let me handle this, please. I have to.

Ava said, “No. The wedding was sudden because we couldn’t wait any longer.”And we were running from a man hell-bent on killing Mercy, but who wants to hear that story?“I wasn’t pregnant then.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t. She never had and probably never would.

“His name is Felix,” Ava said. “He’s from New Orleans, originally. He loves Tolstoy and he likes when I read Shakespeare to him, and he cooks a mean stir fry.”

Maggie was watching her with open approval, Denise with something like shock.

“He’ll be thirty-six in a couple months, which means, yes, he’s a good bit older than me. And yes, he’s been around since I was little. But he’s my best friend, Grammie, and my husband, and I love him so much…and I won’t defend him to anyone, not even my grandmother. He’s here. I’m hoping you can get used to that.”

Denise sat back in her chair, eyes too large. Finally, she blinked. “Well, aren’t you growing up to be just like your mother?” It was said without malice. A simple statement of fact, and she picked up her fork again. “What did you do to these raspberries to turn them into syrup?”

Fifteen minutes later, after the candles had been blown out – Maggie hugged her close, stroked her hair; “My precious girl, you give ‘em hell” – Ava tiptoed back to her room.

Mercy was sitting up against the headboard, reading. He’d dug a paperback collection of Tennyson poems from her old stash and he put it on the nightstand when she entered and closed the door behind her.

His brows lifted. “Better?”

“Much.” Despite the running heat, the house was cold with the snow packed all around it, and she was shivering between taking off her robe and climbing back under the covers. “How can you stand to be shirtless?”

“I’m just hot, baby. C’mere, you wanna feel?”

She rolled her eyes, but burrowed through the covers to get to him. His skin was warm, the bone and muscle beneath a solid comfort. She snuggled against him, into the hollow he made for her beneath one lifted arm.

“You know what would make Christmas even better?” he asked, and there was a mischievous note in his voice that she knew too well.

“What?”

“If we did it in your dad’s house.”

She sighed. “That’s romance for you – ‘did it.’ I’m afraid doing it to stick it to my dad isn’t exactly a turn-on.”

“Fillette.” He twisted his upper body toward her, so he could put both arms around her, press her back against the pillows and blot out the lamplight with his shoulder. “I only ever want to love you because it’s you, and it’s me, and I can’t help myself.” He whispered against her neck in French and she felt herself melting.

His hand found her stomach and covered the growing swell of the baby. “How?” he asked, in a faraway, wondrous voice. “Just my little baby, and now you’re all grown up and having one.”

And he showered her with more French, and she was lost to him, as the snow rained silently against the window.

Sixteen

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