Page 39 of Summer Affair
“Tell me about your car.” While Jillian didn’t know many professional athletes—okay, she knew exactly one—his vintage muscle car wasn’t what she expected. Maybe a Humvee or a G Ride, like they show on television.
“It was my dad’s,” he said, nostalgia thick. “Every Monday, he’d pick me up from school and we’d tinker on his car. It’s a ’64 Pontiac GTO. The original muscle car.”
“He left it to you?”
“Yeah. When my mom told me, I was shocked. I wasn’t even old enough to drive but he’d left me one of the things he loved.”
“He sounds pretty amazing.”
“He was,” Clay said. “I still do all the work on it.”
“I bake in my mom’s apron because it feels like she’s somehow right there with me.”
“Tell me about your mom.”
“She passed when I was nine and I went to live with my grandma and uncle Eddie. I was having a hard time getting over the grief, so my grandma told me to write my mom a letter and put it under my pillow. I did and the next morning there was a note from a fairy who told me to go in the backyard.” At the memory, Jillian felt her eyes prick. “There was a tiny fairy house with a note from Fairy Jane, named after my mom. Every time I felt sad or I missed my mom I’d write a letter to Fairy Jane.”
“Now I know why you’re a great mom. You get it from your grandmother.”
“Thank you. That was an incredibly sweet thing to say.”
“You’re an incredibly sweet woman and that’s a compliment,” he said, and their gazes locked and hung.
After a moment, she cleared her throat. “What was it like growing up with so many older brothers?”
“Loud and fun, with a few brawls here and there. We put my mom through the wringer when we were younger. Especially me and my brother Kyle. There was a time we were like piss and vinegar.”
Jillian knew that Kyle had passed a few years back. In fact, he was Kylie’s biological father. But unlike the rest of his brothers, he hadn’t had the Easton compass to steer him down the right path. “I’ve seen you with your family. You’re the gentle one. With your mom, your brothers. With Sammy.”
“I don’t know about gentle, maybe something more like rugged or tough.”
“While you are both of those, you’re also gentle.”
She thought he’d laugh but he turned serious. “I think it comes from being the youngest. There wasn’t a huge gap between me and the twins, but it was enough that when my dad died my brothers were almost adults. They knew my dad as a parent and a friend, so they all grieved the same. I guess I felt somehow left behind. It’s still like that.”
“Like what?”
“This is going to sound lame, but it’s as if it’s the four of them against the world, and me as the kid brother. They probably don’t see it like that, and I’m sure me living in Seattle doesn’t help, but when I do come home, sometimes it feels as if I’m the odd man out. The brother who experienced things differently.”
“Have you told them?”
“Nah. It would only make them more protective of me.”
“That would be hard. And probably isolating.”
He blinked as if she were the first person to get that. “Sometimes. But I can’t really complain; as far as big brothers come, they’re pretty amazing.”
“Your family is pretty amazing. In fact, I’ve always been a little intimidated by them.”
“Intimidated? How’s that?” he asked as though he really didn’t see what the rest of the world saw.
“The way you and your family love. The way you’re there for each other is pretty rare these days. So, yeah, it’s a little intimidating for those of us whose family can fit in a two-seater,” she admitted. “Do you want a big family?”
“Yeah. Maybe not six. But kids? Definitely. You?”
A familiar pain started in her chest, and she squashed it down, putting it back in the dark corner where it always lurked. “In a perfect world,” was all she said.
“Can I ask, how did Dirk happen?” He sounded flabbergasted. She understood the flabbergasted reaction, she’d come to use it every now and then.
