Page 39 of Finding the One (River Rain #7)

“Actually,” Blake began nonchalantly, “we don’t need you to leave to discuss this.” She looked to her sister. “Do you give a shit about Mum’s reputation?”

Jeff twitched.

And at first, Alex seemed startled, then her lips quirked.

“Not really,” she responded.

“Dad?” Blake asked.

“Not at all,” Ned replied, sitting back down at the desk and relaxing in the chair.

Blake hefted an arse cheek on it and returned to Jeff, who was suddenly not looking so certain of himself.

Dair nearly barked with laughter.

“So, I suppose, be our guest to whatever you can get out of some gossip magazine to print the story about you servicing an older woman,” she invited.

“Actually, in this current atmosphere…you know, the whole resurgence of the feminist movement, I think there will be many who applaud Mum taking care of her needs in that manner. I mean, why not, if some guy is willing? It’s hardly scandalous.

Men do it all the time. And you did well on your end.

Arrangements like yours have been going on for years, though the majority of the time with a gender swap, but still. ”

Blake seemed to be pondering something before she went on.

“Though, you might have trouble getting laid again. I don’t mean finding another client.

I’m sure they’ll be lining up. But, say, you were attracted to someone like”—her eyes changed, they turned poisonous, and Dair hoped like fuck he never earned that from her, it not even being aimed his way gave him a wee shiver—“Dru or Cadence, you know, someone your age, you’ll be fucked. And not literally.”

This time, Jeff didn’t move or speak.

“Rethinking that, if you tell your tales, you might find clients hard to come by too,” Blake carried on. “No one likes their filthy little secrets shared.”

Jeff’s face flushed.

“Now, I think I made myself clear,” Blake continued. “But just to reiterate, I want you out of my home. You have two hours to vacate the premises, or I’ll be phoning the police.”

“Okay, I’ll keep quiet for half a million,” Jeff scrambled to negotiate.

“It seems you’ve not been following,” Blake retorted coolly. “To make myself perfectly clear, you are not getting another fucking pound out of the Norton estate.”

“A hundred thousand,” Jeff said desperately.

Blake drew in breath and crossed her arms on her chest. “I get it. You have nowhere to go, and let me guess, you blew all the money she gave you.”

Jeff didn’t reply, but his face said it all.

Stupid eejit.

“I hope you understand that is not my problem,” Blake went on.

Jeff opened his mouth.

And Dair was done.

Because Lady Norton had spoken.

“It’s over, mate. Get up.” He jabbed a finger toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Helena would never do this to me,” Jeff groused as he pushed out of the chair.

“I keep telling you, my mother is gone,” Blake retorted. Then she huffed, “Kids these days. Never planning for the future.”

“Let’s go, bud,” Rix urged.

Jeff didn’t move.

“Right, I’ll tell you the easy,” Rix said. “You go pack your shit and get the fuck out. That’s the easy. The hard, Dair and I put you out right now, we pack your shit and throw it by the road when we’re done. Which way is this gonna go?”

“Fuck you,” Jeff spat at Rix.

“Thanks, no,” Rix muttered.

“Fuck you all!” Jeff shouted with a swing of his arm.

“Ye done?” Dair asked.

“Fuck you too,” Jeff snapped unnecessarily, but then he stormed out of the room.

“Can you see to the wee horse, lass?” Dair asked his sister.

“No worries,” she replied.

As Dair followed Rix, who had followed Jeff, he didn’t miss Christine grinning madly.

So he wasn’t the only one thinking that was superb.

Unfortunately for Jeff, he had a lot of stuff.

Also unfortunately for Jeff, he didn’t have many mates who were okay to come get him and all of his shite, dragging it to their place and letting him crash there.

In the end, his mum came and got him.

Which, as they discussed it over dinner that night, they all found hilarious.

Standing in the doorway to their bathroom the next morning, Dair asked his woman, “You’re doing what?”

“You don’t have to go,” she replied, releasing a lock of her hair from a curling iron.

“Maybe ye need to think more on this, love.”

She turned from the mirror to look at him. “Why?”

Dair moved into the room, rested a hip against the basin and a hand on her waist.

“This will be a lot for ye.”

“I know.”

“Ye dinnae have to put yourself through it.”

“I know that too.” She turned back to the mirror and lifted the iron.

“Blake.”

She put the iron on the counter and again turned to him.

“Alex and I agree. We have to go.”

“You never met the wee lass,” he said gently.

Some bloody way, Blake had learned that the funeral of the two-year-old girl was that day, and she was getting ready right then to haul her arse into a car with her sister and go to it.

“You know, I’m glad Mum had Jeff,” she announced.

“He was a dick, and he didn’t care about her, just her money, but she was Mum.

She didn’t care about anyone. She probably knew that, and it didn’t matter in the slightest to her.

She was a woman who wanted what she wanted and got it however she needed to get it. Including him.”

“All right,” he said when she stopped speaking.

“I’ve been through all the paperwork with Dad. She had a massive allowance. That was probably why she had a ton of designer clothes in her closet. Expensive perfume on her vanity. And a jewelry box that would make most women weep.”

“Aye,” he said on another prompt when she said no more.

“I’m sure when we get there, we’ll find the same in the London house. She vacationed in Cannes and Capri. She skied in Switzerland. She had two lovers, that we know of. She delighted in making her daughters’ lives living hell, and she enjoyed that pastime copiously.”

“Darling—”

“She lived her life, Dair,” she said, her tone suddenly harsh.

No, grating .

And it grated right over Dair’s heart.

“Baby,” he whispered.

“And that little girl didn’t get the chance to,” she went on.

Her eyes were getting bright with tears, so he used his hand on her, engaged the other one, and pulled her to his body.

“I’m not over it. I’m not okay with it. Mom dying,” she announced, her voice having turned husky. “It feels weird to laugh and enjoy time with family and friends when the flowers on my mother’s grave are still fresh.”

“Aye, it would,” he soothed, rubbing a hand up and down her back.

The tears were threatening to spill. “I don’t feel sad. I don’t not feel sad. I don’t know how I feel. Except, I struck her the last time I was in her presence. I can’t think about it without cringing. Physically.”

“I wish I could help you with that,” he told her.

“But just to say, words would never reach her, if you tried to explain what she did to you. But that made its mark, and you deserve that, Blake.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tighter to him.

“Even if it didnae penetrate, all ye had pent up that you needed to say to her, you deserved to have that moment where ye let it be known.”

“That’s certainly a way to pretty it up, Dair.”

“Makes it no less true, right?”

She looked to his shoulder and took a shaky breath into her nose.

When she came back to him, she said, “I just need to be with that family. I don’t know why.

I’m not going to make a big deal about it.

I’m not going to introduce myself or intrude on their grief.

I just have to… be there . And when I talked to Alex about it, she said she was feeling the same thing.

I think it’ll give us closure Mum’s funeral couldn’t.

To be around the love that little girl had.

To be around love…and loss that isn’t conflicted.

Loss that’s just loss. Am I making sense? ”

Aye, she was, and he felt for her at how confusing Helena’s passing was emotionally.

Therefore, he gave in.

“All right, lassie, then we’ll go.”

Her eyes lit with hope, but her mouth repeated, “You don’t have to.”

“Aye. I ken. But I’ll not be letting ye go on your own.”

“Alex will be with me. Which means Rix will too.”

“And I will too.”

Both her hands came up to hold his cheeks.

She stared into his eyes.

He stared into hers.

Fucking hell.

It hit him like a bullet.

He already loved her.

And, Christ.

She felt the same.

“Thank you,” she whispered, saying that instead of the words he read in her eyes.

“Never thank me for looking after ye, lassie,” he whispered back.

She got up on her toes at the same time she pulled him down to her so she could press her forehead hard against his while closing her eyes tight.

He gave her that moment to pull it together.

She took it, and as Blake had a tendency to do, bested it and rolled down to her feet, let him go and turned back to her curling iron, saying, “We have to leave soon, honey.”

He took his cue.

Fortunately, as it happened, Nora had arranged for a selection of hats for the Sharp women.

They both went understated, Alex in a black and white tweed blazer, black trousers, a black blouse and a simple black hat with a downturned brim.

Blake redefined funereal elegance in a slim black pantsuit, black turtleneck, black heels and a little black hat that came down further over her head and had a little veil.

They sat at the back, but even so, caused a mild sensation to those who caught sight of them.

They didn’t bother the grieving father and mother, the latter of whom was in a wheelchair with her arm in a sling, a cast on her foot and torment etched in her face.

Regardless of the occasion, and the privacy it should have earned, someone snapped shots of them.

They were all over social media within hours.

So going to that wee lass’s funeral hadn’t been the least bit fun, but it gave his woman some peace.

Even so, because of those photos, it would become a problem.

“Ye were faking it?”