Page 14 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
I strolled into the kitchen, dropped my knapsack on the floor next to the square wood table where I ate every meal as a child, and sat down, watching my mother put together a plate of food for me: a scoop from one pot, a ladle from another. She was more at home in front of a stove than anywhere else in the world.
I asked, “Another sleepover? Is this getting serious with you two?”
My mother looked over her shoulder and smiled. Her eyes danced with mischief. “No man could ever compete with your father, chère, God bless his soul, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop them from trying.” She fanned herself. “And my word, the Colonel is certainly trying.”
“Ugh. It’s depressing that you get more action than I do. I can already feel the emotional scars forming.”
“Please, child, you’re not that fragile. And how many times do I have to tell you to get back out there? Don’t let that fool boy put a hex on your love life. He isn’t worth it!”
The “fool boy” in question was my ex, Trace. I’d been head over heels for him, sure we’d get married, until I discovered his definition of monogamy meant he’d only cheat on me with one girl at a time. I’d been happily single for almost two years now, much to Mama’s dismay. As an only child, I was her sole hope for the grandbabies she so desperately wanted.
Avoiding that minefield, I quickly steered the conversation into safer, and more important, waters. “So what did Doc Halloran say?”
Mama turned back to the stove. There was a brief, almost-unnoticeable pause before she answered. “Just what I told you he’d say, baby. I’m right as rain.”
I frowned. “But you’ve had that cough for months now, Mama.”
Smiling brightly, she turned around again and faced me. I was struck by how beautiful she still was, her face unlined in the bright morning light spilling through the kitchen windows. I got my complexion from her—“toasted chestnuts” my milk-pale father called it—and hoped I’d age as well as she was.
Though if the bags under my eyes were any indication, I was out of luck.
“It’s nothing to worry about.” She placed the plate of food on the table in front of me. “Just a side effect of getting old.”
I laughed out loud. “Am I hearing things, or did the fabulous Miss Davina Hardwick just say the word old ? I didn’t think it was even in your vocabulary!”
“Hush, you!” My mother gave me a light, loving slap on my shoulder. “Or the whole neighborhood will hear!”
“Hear what?” said a booming baritone behind me.
I turned to find the Colonel in the doorway, grinning and pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. Trimly built and of below average height, he nonetheless had a big presence, fashioned in part from that booming voice, but mostly from twenty-five years leading soldiers in the army. As always, he was dressed in impeccable white, right down to his patent leather shoes. His eyes were an unusual, gunmetal gray, pale and arresting against the dark canvas of his skin.
My mother laughed and waved her hand at the table. “Nothing for you to be worrying about, just girl talk. Sit yourself down and eat.”
Grinning wider, he propped his hands on his hips. “I’ve already got a belly full of sweetness from spending the night with you, woman.”
/> My eye roll was so loud it could probably be heard from space.
Coy as a debutante, my mother pursed her lips and batted her lashes at him. “Why you silver-tongued devil. Whatever will I do with you?”
Faster than you’d think a seventy-year-old man could move, the Colonel had crossed the room and embraced my mother. He swung her around, lifting her so her feet cleared the floor, laughing in delight when she girlishly squealed.
“I can think of one or two things!” he boomed, rattling the windows. Then he set her on her feet and gave her such a passionate kiss my cheeks went red.
“Only one or two?” she said breathlessly when the kiss was over. “I thought you had more imagination than that, tahyo!”
Tahyo is Cajun French for a big, hungry dog.
I dropped my face into my hands and groaned. “Someone please kill me. Just kill me now.”
“I told you not to talk to yourself, child, you sound like one of the hobos over on the boulevard!” Mama scolded.
Into my head popped a vivid image of Jackson Boudreaux’s shocked expression after I’d told him he looked like one of the homeless panhandlers on the boulevard. It made me feel much better.
“You look a little tired this mornin’, sugar.” Finished slobbering all over Mama, the Colonel sat down beside me at the table and eyed me with concern. “Everything all right?”
Mama said, “Says it’s a man that gave her that face, but she isn’t saying who.”
With a wink, she made another plate of food and set it in front of the Colonel. She gave us forks, and we dug in.
