Love Revealed: A BWWM Sweet Romance Novel (7 page)

"Right, I'm just gonna change out of my work clothes, can you make sure the table is laid, Adeen? Please?"

"Of course momma, anything for you,” she gave her mother a full body hug and squeezed her so tight, well tight for a nine year old girl.
 

Her sisters daughters were off at their fathers house for two weeks so the house would be a little quieter than normal, which she was thankful for.
 

Guy ran into the liquor store and grabbed a bottle of red wine. He also picked up a large bottle of american soda, thinking about Darla's daughter and her cousins. As he drove, he thought, maybe I should pick up something sweet too, so he pulled into the gas station and bought a tub of double choc chip ice cream. Guessing everyone loves that flavour, right?

He finally made it to their house and with his bags in tow walked up the driveway and rang the doorbell. He heard some noise from inside and then the door opened. He looked down and there was a small child, a girl, skinny and with her hair in two braids, one on each side of her head.
 

"Are you Guy?" she asked, raising her right eyebrow.

"I am, are you Adeen?"

"Yes," she stuck out her hand, "nice to meet you. Thanks for saving my mom."

"I didn't save her, it was actually my fault she got stuck out in the storm in the first place..."

Darla rushed out.

"Guy, wont you come in? Adeen, you don't just leave guests standing at the door."

"I had to make sure it was him mom."

Guy just laughed.
 

"It's fine, nice to meet you Adeen."

"oh mom look, he brought stuff."

"Yes, I brought some soda for the kids and some ice cream, I wasn't sure if you wanted me to bring dessert, I forgot to ask. And some wine, if you want to drink something, we don't have to drink it now, though, thats fine. I'm driving anyway. I don't know why I bought it."

They just stood staring at him as he rambled on yet again. Darlas lips moved into a smile though and that eased his awkwardness.
 

He followed them into the kitchen and put the ice cream in the freezer.

"My shopping, I forgot to bring it in. Do you mind helping me in with a couple of bags, Adeen? Maybe your cousins can help too?"

"Oh, they're not here, they are visiting with their father for a couple weeks. I'll help you though. Also, I'd just like to add, thats my favourite flavour of ice cream in the whole world."

Guy smiled, he knew everyone loved that flavour!

Adeen helped him taking in the two bags of freezer food, and the three bags of stuff for the refrigerator.

"Wow, you certainly are planning ahead there Guy." It was Darla's sister, "Hi, I'm Monika, Darlas older sister. Nice to meet you,” she put out her hand to shake his and gave a very good handshake.
 

"Nice to meet you too Monika. Well, Darla and I did get through a lot of snacks while we there and when I got to the mart I realised I should stock up for potential guests too. You just never know who'll stop by!" he said with a wink.
 

After all his food was put away, he was told to sit at the table with the others while Darla finished plating up dinner, she served fish tacos.
 

"I hope you like spicy, as I make my fish tacos spicy."

"Yes, I love it. Only one in my family who does. So I always had my own bottle of hot sauce at home, and took to carrying one with me through college, as I found things mostly under spiced, or not hot enough rather."

"A man after our own hearts then. We love hot food in this house, even the kids."

"So, you have two girls Monika?" Guy asked.

"Yes, they are spending time with their father at his families cabin out by Lake Winstead. They love it there, there's so much to do on the lake and there is a sports field nearby where they play games and things. I just hope they stay away from the poison ivy!"

"I went with them last year, but I decided to stay here with momma this year." Adeen said.
 

"Are you going to any summer camps this year" Guy asked her.

“I’m going to a camp in the end of June for two weeks. It's a reading and writing camp. We read books together and by ourselves and we learn how to make good book reports and we will write our own short story by the end of it."

"Wow that sounds really exciting. Your mom told me you love to read, but that's great you want to write too."

"Guy is a writer, did I tell you that?" Darla said.

"What have you written? Are you well known? Have you been on the New York Times Best Seller list?"

Guy laughed, "I have written a lot over the years, but have one published novel. I'm out on the island to write the follow-up to that now. I'm known by people who have read my books, which is not a whole lot, I wouldn't be in any of the supermarket magazines. I was number three on the list for a month, which is fine"

"Okay enough with the interrogation, time to eat!"

Darla brought the food to them and they tucked in. Guy enjoyed the meal, the spice was just right and the fish itself was delicious. Darla had given them all some homemade lemonade along with their meals, which she told him Adeen had made, so to blame her if it was too bitter.

Guy spoke with Monika about her job as assistant to a special needs child in junior high.
 

"So you are basically attending school again?"

"Yeah it feels like that sometimes. I am studying social work at community college, so I get to do my studying while he is taking the class. I'm right at the back, so if he needs anything I'm right there."

"Will you go with him to High school, or take on a new person in junior high? I find it so fascinating and great that there is someone like you doing this job, so all kids can get an education."

"I will go to the high school, if I haven't found a social work job by then. That I'm dreading, at least they are just little kids in junior high, but high school?" she shuddered, then laughed as she looked at the face of her young niece.

"It's not that bad, I promise,” her mom told her.
 

After dinner, Adeen offered herself and Guy up for washing and drying the dishes. Her mother chastised her, but Guy said it was no problem, he could pick Adeens brain about her favourites authors.
 

"So," he said, as he picked up his first dish to dry, with a slight smile, then, he said “Whats your ulterior motive here? You pin me outside the front door and question me and interrogate me over dinner, what you playing at young'en."
 

"Well, I just want to make sure that you are a good guy for my mom, that's all."

"But, Adeen, your mom and I are not dating. We hardly know each other. I know, to you it probably felt like forever that your mom was gone, but it was only two days, that's not long enough to start dating someone." Although, he has done that before, but it didn't go well at all.
 

"That may be so that you are not dating now, but I saw how my moms face went all weird and smiley when you called her earlier, it's the same face she makes when Chris Rock is on t.v, and she looooves him."

He didn't know what to say, kids do see things for what they are sometimes, as the silly adults try to hide their feelings. Then he remembered what Darla had told him earlier that day even, she waits months when she is dating a guy to introduce him to her daughter, there is no way this is a date, or a pre-date.
 

"I don't know what to tell you, there is nothing going on."

"So you don't like my mom then?"

"Your mom seems great, as I said I don't know her very well."

"It's been a while since mom introduced me to anybody, I just guessed you were into each other. I think you should ask her out on a date,” she smiled a big silly smile like her moms when she said this, and turned her head at an angle looking at him, like she was trying to see into his mind about what his feelings were.
 

"Well, we will definitely see each other over the summer, I mean I don't have any friends out here, so it would be nice to meet up when I come to the mainland once a month."

"Once a month! That’s not enough, you need to come over, like every weekend!"

"I'm here to work Adeen, I need to get this book written, or my editor and publishers will take me to court! You wouldn't want that now would you?"

"No, but how long will it take you to write the book?"

"Well so far I have not written anything, so it's going to take me quite a while."

They finished up in the kitchen, with Adeen telling him her ideas for the book she would write in camp this summer, she wanted to set it in space and have the astronauts on the space station getting highjacked by an alien spaceship and towed back to their own planet with them, where they were going to be held for ransom of some sort. Meanwhile the aliens grew to love the astronauts who tell them stories of earth and sang them songs, which to the aliens was amazing as they had no musical instruments and didn't sing like us earthlings. Guy had told her that that was a great fantastical idea for a story and to make sure she wrote everything down, so as not to forget what she wanted to say, as loosing a good idea is one of the worst things that can happen to a writer, because you will never know if it would have been better than what you ended up with.
 

Guy brought everyone their bowls of ice cream out on the back porch. The back garden on the house led down to a river, which was fenced off. Adeen told him tales of growing up and seeing birds swooping down for fish and coming back up with small fish in their beaks for their young. Her mom had bought her binoculars at the age of five and she had been following the birds as best she could, seeing them feeding their babies in the trees and the birds then getting bigger and leaving the nest. Her neighbours had a cat and sometimes she would find dead birds on the porch. That upset her, as she loved both cats and birds, but would ignore the cat for a week after each dead bird visit.
 

Guy couldn't help but laugh at Adeen and her stories, not in a mocking way, but in a gee this kid sure has spunk, kind of way. He hadn't been around kids much, just his nieces and nephews, but he saw them less often than he liked. He promised that when this book was done, he would spend some time visiting each of his siblings families, wether they liked it or not. This kid was showing him kids could be fun and smart and not a complaining pain in the ass, like how they mostly seem to him when he's at the airport or the occasional visit to the mall, but then thats how he feels at the airport and the mall.
 

He never thought of himself being a father, but he has also never outright said no to kids in his mind. Adeen was a great kid and Darla was a pretty great woman too. She was pretty and funny, why didn't he make a move on her at the cabin? It had felt too awkward he thought to himself, like it wouldn't have been right to try it on with her, having been brought there on a job. But now they were out of the storm, the emergency was over, the seal had rescued itself and she was no longer being hired, in a way, by him. It would be perfectly natural for him to ask her out on a date. But would he? His thoughts were broken by Monika asking Adeen if she wanted to have a game of badminton. Adeen said no, at first, but when Monika winked at her and nodded her head outside with a stern face, Adeen followed her onto the grass and they began a game.
 

Darla moved to the chair next to Guy, that Adeen had vacated.
 

"She's a little spark of fun isn't she?" she said, looking out at her daughter.

"Yeah, she's a keeper al lright."

"Hey, mister, that's my kid you’re talking about."

"I'm serious, she's a great kid. I don't think any of my nieces or nephews would be able to have a conversation with an adult. But she's not annoying like those movie kids you see, where they end up turning you off the film. Adeen has the goods to back up what she says, she's only eleven, so I think she'll grow into a very fine young woman."

"Well, thank you. It hasn't always been easy. Having no male role model around is a tough one for girls, just as much as it is for boys. It's not like Monika is another mother to her, so she doesn't get the two parent balance.We've tried to instil in all the kids, that we love them and their fathers love them too, just sometimes love isn't enough to keep a relationship together and sometimes the mom or dad has to leave. In Adeens case, of course, with her father dying, it's been even harder. My brothers and my ex's brothers all have families of their own, so they can't really be surrogate fathers for her, although she does get along with them all very well. She has taken a shine to you though I can see, the fact you are a writer means the world to her, to see that you are a real person, and not just a name on a book cover."

"You know she was bullying me in the kitchen earlier, insisting we were secretly dating. I told her that no such thing was going on, but then she informed me that you don't take guys home to meet her unless you have dated them a few months. Which I then remembered you telling me yourself. So why did you invite me over?"

"Well.. I don't really have a clear answer for that one, only that Adeen definitely caught me off guard on the phone when she asked me to invite you over, it happened before I really thought about it, but it didn't seem like a bad idea. I mean we aren't dating and you already knew that Adeen existed, so I felt there was no harm."

"Ah, so it wasn't secretly that you have the hots for me and wanted to lure me in with your amazing cooking skills. Bowl me over with all them spices you use, eh?"

Darla laughed quietly.
 

"Well, I wouldn't say I don't have the hots for you. What about you? Why did you take up the offer? Surely it wasn't because you had the hots for me, a single mom of a nine year old, that lives with her sister and her kids?"

"Well, I would be lying if I said I didn't fancy women in overalls. Especially when they fit in all the right places."