Chapter Fourteen
I loved Mrs. Bloodsworth’s house. It was white, the gingerbread and trim were painted lavender, and her front door was robin’s egg blue. You have to respect, and possibly fear, any woman who has the guts to paint her house those colors. The porch, which wrapped around two sides of the house, was wide and gracious, filled with ferns and palms, and ceiling fans had been installed to provide a breeze whenever nature fell down on the job. Roses of various hues provided explosions of color. Dark green gardenia bushes, heavy with the fragrant white blooms, punctuated each side of the wide steps leading up to the porch.
Wyatt didn’t park so we could go up the front walk, though; he continued down the driveway and parked behind the house. I was escorted to the back door, which opened into a small back foyer and then into the kitchen, which had been modernized without sacrificing the style. His mother was waiting for us there.
Roberta Bloodsworth wasn’t the type of woman who is ever described as matronly. She was tall and slim, with a short, chic hairstyle. Wyatt had inherited his sharp green eyes from her, and his dark hair. Hers wasn’t dark now, though; instead of doing gray, she’d gone blond. As early as it was, not even eight o’clock, she already had on makeup and earrings. She hadn’t dressed up, though; she was wearing tan walking shorts with an untucked aqua T-shirt, and regular flip-flops. Her toenails were painted fire-engine red, and the left foot sported a toe ring.
She was my kind of woman.
“Blair, honey, I couldn’t believe it when Wyatt said you’d been shot,” she said, putting a careful arm around me for a hug. “How are you feeling? Would you like some coffee, or hot tea?”
Just like that, I was in the mood to be mothered. Since my own mom was forbidden to do it, Wyatt’s mom had stepped into the breach. “Tea sounds wonderful,” I said fervently, and she immediately turned to the sink to fill an old-fashioned kettle with water and put it on the stove to start heating.
Wyatt frowned. “I’d have made tea for you if you’d said you wanted it. I thought you liked coffee.”
“I do like coffee, but I like tea, too. And I’ve already had coffee.”
“Tea gives you a feeling that coffee doesn’t,” Mrs. Bloodsworth explained. “You just sit at the table, Blair, and don’t try to do anything. You must still be feeling shaky.”
“I’m a lot better than I was last night,” I said as I obeyed her and took a seat at the wooden kitchen table. “I actually feel fairly normal today. Last night was-” I made a rocking motion with my hand.
“I imagine so. Wyatt, you go on to work. You need to catch that creep and you can’t do it standing in my kitchen. Blair will be just fine.”
He seemed reluctant to leave. “If you have to go anywhere, she should probably stay here,” he said to his mother. “I don’t want her seen out in public right now.”
“I know; you’ve already told me.”
“She doesn’t need to do anything strenuous, after losing that much blood yesterday.”
“I know; you’ve already told me.”
“She’ll probably try to talk you into-”
“Wyatt! I know!” she said in exasperation. “We went over all of this on the phone. Do you think I’ve gone senile?”
He was smart enough to say, “Of course not. It’s just-”
“It’s just you being overprotective. I get it. Blair and I will do just fine, and I’ll exercise my God-given common sense by not parading her down the middle of Main Street, okay?”
“Okay.” He grinned and kissed her cheek, then came to me and rubbed his hand down my back before squatting beside me. “Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone,” he said.
“Excuse me, but how is any of this my fault?”
“It isn’t, but you do have a talent for the unexpected.” He reversed the direction of his hand, sweeping it up my spine to brush the side of my neck with his thumb, then laughing at my alarmed expression. “Be good, will you? I’ll check in during the day, and pick you up late this afternoon.”
He kissed me, tugged on my ponytail, then rose to his feet and went to the back door. Pausing there with his hand on the doorknob, he looked again at his mother, and this time he was wearing his cop face. “Take very good care of her, because she’s the mother of your future grandchildren.”
“I am not!” I shrieked after a split second of pure shock.
“I thought so,” his mother said at the same time.
He was out the door by the time I got there. I wrenched it open and yelled at him, “I am not! That is so underhanded, and you know you’re lying!”
He paused with the car door open. “Last night, did we or did we not talk about having children?”
“Yes, but not each other’s!”
“Don’t fool yourself, honey,” he advised, then got in the car and drove away.
I was so mad I did a Rumpelstiltskin, punctuating each stomp with “Shit!” and of course the jumping up and down hurt my arm, so it went like this: “Shit! Ow! Shit! Shit! Shit! Ow!”
Then I realized I was doing this in front of his mother, and I turned a horrified look on her. “Omigod, I’m so sorry-”
Except she was leaning against the sink laughing her head off. “You should have seen yourself! ’Shit! Ow! Shit! Ow!’ I wish I’d had a video camera.”
I could feel my face burning. “I’m so sorry-” I began again.
“For what? Do you think I’ve never said ‘shit’ before, or a lot worse? Besides, it does me good to see a woman not rolling over for Wyatt, if you know what I mean. It’s against the natural order of the world for a man to always get what he wants, and Wyatt always has.”
Holding my arm, I went back to the table. “Not really. His wife divorced him.”
“And he walked away without a single backward look. It was his way or nothing, no compromising. She-her name is Megan, by the way, but I don’t know her last name because she remarried within the year-always deferred to him. I suppose she had stars in her eyes because he was this big football star, and as rough and dirty as football is, the NFL is a glamour job. She didn’t understand it and couldn’t handle it when, without talking things over with her, he quit playing ball and walked away from everything she expected out of life. What she wanted didn’t matter to him. It’s always been like that; he’s never had to work for a woman, and it has driven me crazy. So it’s nice to see someone standing up to him.”
“For all the good it’s doing,” I said glumly. “He seems to be winning every battle.”
“But at least there is a battle, and he’s aware there’s resistance. What made you so mad about what he said?”