Page 7 of Colby (Tucker’s Pride #5)

Taylor was spending the day with her grandma and Jack.

Her mother’s trial was going on, and as soon as she was given a date for her sentencing, she was going to have herself a little party and enjoy her mother being out of her life for a bit.

She’d been driving her crazy since they’d moved in with her grandma and Jack in the family home.

Well, it had been all her life, but it had been especially hard since she’d moved in with her husband and Grandma.

She supposed that her mother had been getting on her last nerve for some time now.

It had been a long time in coming, this separation from her mother and her demands.

And now that it was nearly over, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d been given amnesty in the form of not having to put up with her anymore.

And she’d decided that her mother’s demands had more to do with her than Taylor anyway.

At least that’s the way she felt about it.

Gilda Jane had always been selfish about her time.

Taylor was to be at her beck and call all the time, or she’d throw a fit about it.

And it wasn’t that she just wanted to hang out with her, but demanded, literally, all her attention on her.

She still felt the hurt from her mother telling her that she’d never wanted her at all and was glad that she’d been able to care for all her needs when she got older.

She actually said that everything was about her and nothing about Taylor.

Taylor hadn’t been able to date, never marry, and she’d told her that if she’d had kids, she would make sure they never made it to term with her.

That babies would demand all her attention, and her mother didn’t want to be second in her life.

She needed to be first and foremost in her mind at all times.

Catering to her needs was all Taylor was good for; she’d told her as well.

It wasn’t until she met Jack that she realized what she’d been missing in all her life.

Someone for her to love and to be loved by, too.

She and Jack had been married at the courthouse a few days prior to her mother getting arrested, and they’d been able to keep it a secret until she was put in jail for threatening the judge to kill him when she got out of jail.

She had a feeling that was going to play a large part in her jail time, and she was not listening to anything anyone said about her.

Again, it had to be all about her and nothing or no one else.

Well, she supposed it was all about her now, but not in the way that she was craving.

At three, she heard from one of the jailers that her mother wanted to see her.

She’d not go, of course. It would just be more of the same, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

Telling him to tell her mother that she was finished with her had felt good, though she knew it would be hard on the man who had called her.

Her mother didn’t ever like to be told no under any circumstances.

Just as they were sitting down to dinner that evening, she heard again from the jailer.

Her mother had been sentenced to twenty-two years without any chance for parole.

That suited her just fine, as she’d be well on her way to having the children that she never wanted her to have and so madly in love with Jack that things would be perfect for her.

Not that it wasn’t already, she reminded herself.

With her mom behind bars, it had been wonderful to wake up every morning and not have to be dragged away from other things just to cater to her mother’s needs.

“She wanted you to be locked up, too, so that she could keep an eye on you. Saying that you were ‘fornicating with that man’ and that you needed to be catering to her only, even if people were too stupid to realize that she should be first in everyone’s thoughts.

” She asked him what she’d said when she was sentenced.

“The woman actually said that she was going to get out and kill every one of the people in the courtroom. Then she did that thing where she looked around the room like she was memorizing everyone there. Scared a few people, too. I’m not going to lie, Missus, she scared me a bit, too, the way she kept staring at the lot of us. ”

“Perhaps she’ll be too old to remember when she gets out.

” No she wouldn’t, she thought to herself.

Her mother would remember every bad deed that was put against her in the courtroom and beyond.

It would be like her to remember their faces until she died, too.

“We can only hope that she learns something while in prison. Even if it’s only that the world doesn’t revolve around her all the time. ”

She’d not learn that either, and she had a feeling that would be something that would get her killed, too.

Taylor could well imagine her mother trying to get everyone to do her bidding until someone took exception to her and killed her where she stood.

It wouldn’t matter if they’d been told that she was like that.

People didn’t like doing everything that someone told them, no matter what was going on around them.

Her mother wouldn’t last a month, she didn’t think, and it was hard for her to think of that as a bad thing.

It hurt her heart that she was so over her mother that she would think of her being killed as a blessing.

After dinner, she and Jack stayed in the living room while Grandma went up to her bed.

She was going on her cruise tomorrow, and it would be good for her.

She and Jack would have the whole house to themselves, and they were planning on making a good go at getting in practice so that when she was ovulating, she could get pregnant on the first go at it.

That’s all she wanted was a baby of Jack’s to make herself feel complete, now that she had a love of her life to be with.

As she was headed up to bed around midnight after spending a great deal of time on the phone with the stationhouse, she thought that she could sleep until the following morning, as she was so tired.

With the opening of the new warehouse and the employee hiring, she had been busier than she’d ever been before.

As it was now, she was short fifty or so employees and could use another dozen drivers like she had already hired.

Christ, would there ever be enough hours in the day? She didn’t think so at the moment.

“Did you get them situated?” She told Jack that she thought so.

“It shows that they’re eager to start work if they come in the night before you need them, doesn’t it?

I mean, I don’t know what I would have done had that happened to me.

I have a good crew right now, and if they showed up twelve hours before working, I’d just tell them to get a new job; waiting tables doesn’t need that much dedication. ”

“Your staff loves you and would do that just to show you how much they care about you. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re making good money on tips, too.

What did you tell me that you paid out last night in tips this morning?

Wasn’t it about four grand for six waitresses?

” He said it was a little less than that, and he was happy for them.

“I am as well. People always leave Jack’s Place with a full belly and a big smile on their faces.

That’s what I love about the place, too.

You wanted to serve comfort food, and people took that to heart. They love the place.”

People really did, too. There hadn’t been an open table since he’d opened, and there was usually a line out the door of people hoping to get a seat if they hurried through their meal for the next set up and table filled.

It had been written up in some nice articles about the place, too, about how it’s always busy but well worth the wait.

One critic wrote their entire article on the mashed potatoes, telling how they were so fluffy and delicious that he compared them to his own grandmother’s dishes she used to make when there was a family dinner.

And she’d never been so proud of anyone as she was of Jack and Jack’s Place.

Snuggling up with Jack, she closed her eyes.

It was going to be a longer day tomorrow with getting things caught up, then it seemed like today had been.

But she wouldn’t trade anything for the world, as she loved being busy and seeing her idea come to fruition.

With her businesses, she’d been able to create nearly five hundred new jobs for the city, and she was going to keep right on hiring until anyone who needed a job there was one there for them.

The next morning, she was asked to go and see her mom.

She had no plans to visit her in prison, and the judge who had called her said that it might go a long way in paving the road to her own salvation.

Not that he thought her mom was going to learn anything, she had been spouting off things like she was going to kill the judge as she was being dragged from the courtroom.

But it might give her the closure that she might need down the road.

“I’ll go and see her, but I’m not going to be nice about it.

She didn’t want me.” He said he knew that was true, as she had said it a great many times during the trial.

“Well, I don’t know what sort of salvation it’s going to give her when I’m not going to be locked up with her. I won’t, will I be?”