It could hurt a lot, he discovered as her gaze locked onto his.
For an instant, Maleah looked puzzled, and he could almost read her thoughts: That isn’t Ian Sylvestry, is it? Confusion changed to mild interest as her gaze traveled the length of him, taking stock of the small gold hoop in his left earlobe, tattoos, his ponytailed, gray-at-the temples hair.
Something told him that if he didn’t walk away, right now, he’d have to add revulsion to the flurry of emotions that had flickered across her pretty face.
THE SCENT OF fresh-brewed coffee greeted Ian. He’d grown accustomed to finding his father or aunt making themselves at home in his apartment. It didn’t usually bother him, but on nights like this, he just wanted to be alone.
Brady held up his mug. “Care for a cup?”
“Thanks, but I’d better not. I’ll have enough trouble falling asleep.”
His dad’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? Something went wrong at the bistro?”
Ian dropped onto the seat of a ladderbacked chair. “If only.” He scanned the room. Gladys had been after him to update the space, but the homey, old-and-stable look reminded him of happier days, spent in his maternal grandparents’ kitchen, where rising bread dough and fresh-baked pies welcomed family, friends and country-born neighbors.
“So where’s Gladys?”
Brady shrugged. “How should I know. She was in here not ten minutes ago, lecturing me, reminding me that with all I have to be thankful for, I have no right to behave like a moody teenager.” He nodded toward the hallway. “Wish I could say she went home, but she’s probably in the head.”
Nearly thirty years since Brady’s honorable discharge, and he still used Navy terms to refer to things like the bathroom.
“So what’s eating you, son?”
“Aw, it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Eventually...
“Lay it on me, so I’ll have something to think about besides my own pathetic life.”
They’d been down this road before, and Ian wasn’t in the mood to cover the same ground yet again. His dad had a good job. A safe place to live. Food on the table and clothes on his back. And a family that loved him. Would it ever dawn on him that when Ruth left him, she’d left her only son, too?
Her self-centered move drove her husband to cheap whiskey and her only son toward a bunch of wild hoodlums that made him feel like part of a family again. Those first few years in lockup, he’d found plenty of reasons to lay everything rotten in his life at her feet. Additional years—and a lot of maturity—led him to the conclusion that he, alone, was responsible for the state of his life. Seemed to Ian his dad could benefit from the same attitude adjustment.
Brady lifted the mug to his lips. “So...?”
Ian leaned back and, arms crossed over his chest, said, “So I saw her tonight.”
The mug hit the table with a clunk.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt.”
“Jeez, son. I... I don’t know what to say.”
Of course he didn’t. Good advice—advice of any kind for that matter—wasn’t in Brady’s parenting manual. At least it hadn’t been since Ruth ran off with the professor.
“Man.” Brady ran a fingertip around the rim of his mug. “That had to be tough.”
“Yeah. Tough.” Particularly that last moment, when those huge blue eyes traveled from the top of his head to the toes of his boots and back again.
“So how did you two leave things?”
“Leave things?”
Brady shifted in the chair, clearly uncomfortable playing Good Dad.
“Was she civil, at least?”
“We didn’t speak. And that’s fine with me.”
“What’s that old saying? ‘You sucker your friends and I’ll sucker mine, but let’s not sucker each other.’”
“If that’s an old saying, why haven’t I heard it before?”
Grinning, Brady gave Ian’s bicep a friendly punch. “Maybe because you’re just a young whippersnapper.”
Brady had exceeded his fatherly concern limit. Ian could put responsibility for Brady’s me-me-me mind-set on Ruth’s shoulders, but common sense told him that, hard as it was to admit, his dad had always been this way; put to the test by his wife’s betrayal, he’d simply shown his true colors. As a teenager, the role reversal thing caused resentment that revealed itself in dour expressions and whispered complaints. But Lincoln had taught him that it didn’t pay to waste time wishing for the impossible, and he’d taught himself to accept things—and people—at face value.
“Whippersnapper,” Ian echoed. “You’re not old enough for language like that.”
Gladys breezed into the room. “Who’s a whippersnapper?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“This boy of mine. I recited an old adage, and he’d never heard of it.”
She joined her brother and her nephew at the table. “What old adage?”
Brady got to his feet, stretched and yawned, then said, “I’m beat. See you two in the morning.”
Gladys sized up the situation in two seconds flat: “So the kid laid something on you that you couldn’t handle, and you’re off to escape to dreamland, are you?”
Ian had developed a talent for sizing things up, too, and unless he was mistaken, his dad was about to retaliate. He’d been on the receiving end of the man’s sharp tongue often enough to know that Brady didn’t play fair. Only the good Lord knew what awful thing from her past he’d dredge up to even the score...if Ian didn’t intervene.
“Hey auntie...who you callin’ kid?”
In one blink, he got a taste of the glare she’d aimed at his dad. In the next, her expression softened.
Gladys clutched her throat and wrinkled her nose. “Auntie?” she repeated. “Auntie? Real funny, nephew, but fair warning—Call me that again and...” She leaned closer and patted his forearm. “...and I’ll wait until the bistro is filled to capacity to give you a big juicy kiss, right on the lips, and call you sweetheart!”
She’d do it, too! “Fat lotta good that’ll do ya,” he said, snickering, “when everybody knows I’m nobody’s sweetheart.”
Brother and sister exchanged a questioning glance.
Brady shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.”
“Yeah, well, he’s your son.”
“Yeah, well, you played a bigger role in raising him than I did.”
“Only because you’re such a—”
Ian made a big production of shoving back from the table. Grabbing a mug from the drain board, he filled it to the rim and said, “Knock it off, you two, or I’ll send you both to bed with no supper.”
Gladys’s left eyebrow rose. “Sweetheart,” she said, accentuating each syllable, “it’s nearly one in the morning.”
“And I had supper at six.”
“Way past your bedtime, then,” he told them. “Don’t forget to say your prayers...”