His “all right” sounded pretty dubious to me, but I could appreciate him not trying to get out of it. I guessed.

He kept the diaper bag over his shoulder as he pulled her in real close to his chest, eyes widening the slightest. “We’re going to get along just fine, aren’t we, Mo?” Jonah asked as he gazed down at the girl with his same eyes.

Mo answered by grabbing his nose and pinching it with a quick burst of animated commentary.

He grinned right back at her.

All right. Enough of that. I was glad I wasn’t the jealous type.

I turned around and headed toward the entrance to the training facility, Jonah and Mo trailing behind me. I punched in the code then opened the door. I held it wide and watched the corner of his lips arch upward as he headed into the building first, stopping just inside.

He really was a big son of a bitch, I thought as he brushed by me.

Gesturing him toward the office like he didn’t know where it was, I stopped almost immediately at the sight of Grandpa Gus, a woman, and Peter standing right outside the office door. But it was Grandpa’s posture that had me pausing. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and the look on his face was one I hadn’t seen, ever. Not even when he mean-mugged Jonah the other day during breakfast.

But even Peter, who was pretty damn easygoing, looked tense.

Taking in the woman, who had to be somewhere around my height, she had to easily be in her sixties or early seventies. Slim without looking exactly frail. Her hair was all white and was cut in a chin-length bob. She had on a dressy blouse and white pants.

She was… elegant.

And I had no clue who the hell she was, but I already knew I wasn’t going to like her because of Grandpa Gus and Peter’s body language.

If I had thought I was imagining that something was going on, it would have been confirmed when Grandpa Gus spotted me and winced.

This was the man who had given me the puberty talk complete with visuals and a book. Who had bought me pads and tampons without flinching dozens of times. Who had shaved his own calf to teach me how to shave my legs. This was the same man who had given me a very serious sex talk before blatantly asking if I needed him to take me to get on birth control, even though I’d never said anything that would give him the impression I was interested in boys. This was the same man who had gestured toward my boobs a hundred times while helping me train and growled, “Do something with them!” when they were halfway popping out of my sports bras back before I’d gotten smart and started doubling up on them.

This was the same man who had left a box of condoms on my bed eight weeks after I’d had Mo.

Grandpa Gus and I didn’t do awkward. We never had. So the fact that he was sucking in a breath, making a face that said he was dreading whatever was about to happen…

I already didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

And I knew somehow that it wasn’t because of the man with me.

And I got that reconfirmation to listen to my gut instinct not even two minutes later.

“Elena,” Grandpa Gus greeted me tensely, making that dread grow even bigger.

This person here wasn’t a friend. She wasn’t someone to be trusted. That’s what that name meant.

I braced myself, trying to rack my brain for whatever the hell this lady could mean. Who was she? “Grandpa,” I said as I stopped beside him, giving him a kiss on the cheek and then going up to my toes to give Peter one too, right as Jonah stood beside me. Really, he shouldn’t be surprised I’d shown up. He’d basically asked for it by being so weird and cryptic. He knew me better than that.

“Peter, Mr. DeMaio,” Jonah said, extending a hand toward Peter first, shaking it, and then doing the same toward my grandpa.

Honest to God, even I was impressed right then that he’d taken the initiative to be the bigger person and try shaking his hand again. I was going to have to think about that later.

Something was off because Grandpa Gus decided this woman was the greater threat because he shook Jonah’s hand after a moment of hesitation, when I damn well knew that if things were normal, he would have just stared at it until things got uncomfortable.

That was how we rolled.

Usually.

I turned my attention to the woman standing there, holding a pale pink leather purse in her hand. A hand that had a huge diamond ring on it. And something weird happened when I took in her face. It looked familiar…. I couldn’t think about when I had possibly seen it before, but it was really, really familiar looking.

“Hello,” the woman said in a careful, lightly accented Texan drawl. A brief smile flashed across a very nice face that had taken the years and rolled with them. She really was beautiful in a fancy kind of way.

I was narrowing my eyes as Grandpa Gus’s hand moved in my peripheral vision as he gestured to the woman. “Elena,” he said again, reminding me that I could go another thirty years before he ever called me by my name again. A name he had passed down to me from his own mom, who I had never met.

I waited, glancing at Jonah who was looking totally calm… because he didn’t know the weird shit Grandpa was saying and doing that was setting off my own inner alarm.

“This is Rafaela,” Grandpa Gus said in a tight, unwelcoming voice.

Was he… uncomfortable?

I didn’t smile or extend my hand. I did frown though and stare at him, trying to pick up more hints.

Grandpa stared, something about his face… apologetic? “This is….”

Since when the hell did this man struggle for words? I glanced at Peter and saw even more how uncomfortable he must have felt right then. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen this man feeling weird. Defensiveness rose up inside of me.

The woman coughed discreetly, looking awkward too. Then she thrust out her hand toward me and said, “I’m your grandmother, Elena.”

I stared at the hand in the circle between us and asked very slowly, my ears starting to ring as I asked, like I had heard wrong, “Who?”

Peter blew out a breath, but it was Grandpa Gus who replied. “Your dad’s mom.”

That had me looking up at the beloved face to my right, raising my eyebrows, my ears buzzing louder, and still ignoring the hand that was holding steady in the middle of the air. “Your ex-wife?”

He grimaced but nodded. Not even bothering to say the words out loud. The simple yes being too much.

I glanced at Peter who was busy looking up at the rafters, peeked at Jonah, who looked really confused, and then at the woman herself. At Rafaela. My dad’s mom. My grandmother.

Grandpa Gus was already watching me when my eyes met his, and I couldn’t help but smile. And then I kept right on smiling because I couldn’t help it. Grandpa closed his eyes just as I started laughing and sliding my hand through the woman’s.

Fucking shit.

“It’s nice to meet you, Grandma.”

Chapter 10

11:55 p.m

I’m getting real sick of your shit now.

Can you please,

PLEASE, call me back?

11:57 p.m.

You know what?

Fuck it. I take back my please:

Just call me back.

It’s the least you could do.

11:58 p.m.

It’s Lenny.