Читать книгу Shameless - Tori Carrington, Tori Carrington - Страница 9

4

“THERE’S SOMETHING different about you,” Nina’s grandma Gladys said, pointing a red nail in her direction. “I don’t know what it is, but rest assured, I’ll figure it out before I leave here today.”

Nina took a sheet of cookies out of the oven, placed them on the counter and then shook her hands out of the oven mitts she wore. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Everything is exactly the same as it was when we had lunch last week.”

Liar.

Everything had changed. Not physically. But emotionally, Nina felt as if a door had opened, offering views out onto a lush vista she hadn’t known existed.

All she had to do was step through that doorway and welcome the change.

And those emotional changes would then also become physical.

Through the round window in the kitchen door, she watched as Kevin chatted with Heidi Joblowski, her assistant. She gave an involuntary shiver.

“Ten years younger,” Gladys said, her gaze following Nina’s. “That’s all I’d need and that man would have been in my bed aeons ago.”

Nina nearly choked. “Ten years would make you sixty.”

Her grandmother grinned. “Your point being?”

Her point being that there still would have been more than twenty-five years between her and Kevin.

Then again, her grandmother was probably right. She would have found a way, by hook or crook, to back Kevin—or any man she wanted—into her bed.

She shook her head.

Thankfully Gladys wasn’t sixty anymore. She was seventy. And finally beginning to show it.

Nina hid a small smile as she took off her apron and then picked up the two plates she’d prepared. “Grab those soft drinks, will you? Our table’s just been vacated.”

Their table was the one for two in the far corner of the café Gladys swore was the only place to sit. “All the better to see the hot young men you work with,” she’d told her granddaughter.

Nina positioned the plates on the table and moved her chair so that she sat more next to her grandmother than across from her. She’d learned long ago not to block her view. Besides, there was always the risk of getting whiplash from Gladys asking her to quickly lean this way or that so she could get a better look at something, or rather, someone.

Of course, her grandmother had no way of knowing that she now shared her interest in her coworkers. Rather than cluck her tongue or put up her hand to ward off any unwanted comments on either Kevin or Gauge’s posteriors, she intended to appreciate the view with her.

“So, are you done with your redecorating yet?” Nina asked, waiting until Gladys was seated and had placed her paper napkin in her lap, despite her casual surroundings.

She was long accustomed to her grandmother’s oddball behavior. She might sit with perfect posture, but her sometimes purple hair, her hot-pink lipstick and her gold lamé jackets gave her an air of regal yet trashy pride.

Gladys waved her hand as she took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat. “That’s been done for weeks. Where have you been?”

Right here. And she’d enjoyed three lunches with her since then. But Nina figured it was as good a place to start conversation as any. Urging her grandmother into a monologue about the fit nature of the handyman the decorator had sent to do the more difficult work—or the good-looking decorator himself, even if he did prefer men to women—would have gotten the ball rolling.

But her grandmother wasn’t biting anything more than her sandwich as she watched Gauge entering the café for a cup of post-lunch coffee.

Her grandmother elbowed Nina so hard she almost fell from her chair.

“There he is.”

Nina relaxed back in her seat, slowly chewing her own bite of tuna sandwich. Ah, yes, there he was, indeed.

A little thrill ran up her back at the memory of their conversation the other night combined with the interesting dreams she’d been having. She told herself she should be appalled, but her own recently awakened decadent side refused the response.

“He’s a lazy lover, you can tell.”

Nina nearly choked on her food. She quickly reached for her drink.

Gladys smiled widely. “Lazy, but his endurance would be out of this world. All day. And all night. That’s my guess.”

Nina watched the lines of Gauge’s bottom in his faded jeans, and then appreciated the muscles of his back and arms in his snug black T-shirt.

She looked over to find her grandmother staring at her.

“If I didn’t know better, girl, I would think you were giving him the lover’s look.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nina said, hoping that her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “Gauge and Kevin and I have been friends forever.”

“And partners…”

“Business partners,” Nina stressed. She shifted in her chair. “I talked to Mom yesterday.”

Nothing was capable of derailing her grandmother more than mention of her daughter, Nina’s mother.

In all the world, she didn’t think there were two people less alike. Where her grandmother was a free spirit, her mother was as uptight as they came, attending church three times a week, working with Meals on Wheels and playing the role of perfect housewife to her father’s perfect corporate gentleman. While they weren’t wealthy, they were well-off. And her mother had never worked a day of her life.

Her grandmother, on the other hand, refused to let any man take care of her….

Of course, it probably didn’t help that Gladys called Helen her mistake.

Nina’s mother had never liked the attention that Gladys had showered on her granddaughter from a young age. Growing up, Nina’d never understood the feud between the two most important women in her life, but as she got older, she’d come to realize that perhaps Gladys regretted not taking more time out with her own daughter, and was determined to rectify the mistake by playing a significant role in her granddaughter’s life.

Then again, maybe the two women were too different to ever have been close.

If that was the case, what did it say about her and her grandmother? Could it be that Gladys saw herself in Nina? And that’s why she’d formed the bond?

Or could she be trying to counteract Helen’s influence so she wouldn’t turn into a “dried-up old prune,” as Gladys called Nina’s mother?

Another elbow, another scramble to keep herself from falling off her stool.

“There’s the other one.”

Nina didn’t have to ask to whom her grandmother was referring. She’d watched as Kevin joined Gauge at the cashier’s counter in the audio section, apparently having finished his own lunch. Speaking of which, Nina looked down, surprised to find she’d nearly demolished the contents of her plate, as had her grandmother.

“Now him…he’d be a generous lover,” Gladys said. “He’d be eager to please you. Loving.”

Nina watched as Kevin leaned both hands against the countertop, his shirtsleeves rolled up, revealing the coiled muscles of his forearms.

“Do you think so?” she was surprised to hear herself ask.

Gladys’s grin made her wish she hadn’t said anything. “I don’t think so, Nin. I know so.”

Her grandmother made a play at wiping her mouth with her napkin, pushed her plate away, and then went about refreshing her lipstick. “So…which one are you looking to bed?”

“Grandmother!” Nina whispered harshly when a couple of women at a neighboring table gave them a hard look.

“Don’t ‘grandmother’ me. I see those looks you’re giving both of them. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.” She put her lipstick and mirror away and closed her purse with a click. “And I know you.”

Nina grimaced. She’d never credited Gladys with knowing her well. Gladys bought her only granddaughter bizarre Christmas and birthday gifts in garish colors that were more her own style than Nina’s. Instead of taking her to Disneyland when she was kid, she’d taken her to the Windsor casinos, convincing the pit bosses that she was eighteen when she was only fourteen and earning her a spot at a blackjack table, which made things easier for Gladys because it meant she wouldn’t have to go up to the room so often to check on her, although Nina hadn’t played.

At least not until she did turn eighteen and could enjoy a hand or two on her own.

“They’re my partners, Grandma, my best friends. I couldn’t possibly get involved with either one of them,” she said, but even she knew that there was no strength behind her words. Only a vague fear.

“You’re also adults, Nina.”

If only her grandmother knew what Gauge had suggested and what Nina was hoping the men would act on. The topic hadn’t been mentioned again since that night. But, oh, how she wished it would be.

“Where are you going?” Nina asked, grasping Gladys’s arm as she started to get up.

She was half afraid that her grandmother would make a stab at a matchmaking effort—if matchmaking was the right word for a connection that would only involve sex.

“I have a date for the matinee in twenty minutes.”

Nina instantly relaxed. “It’s not like you to make plans on our lunch day.”

“I didn’t.” She smiled wickedly. “But since it looks like things are well in order here—” she spared the two men another glance “—very well in order, I’m going to give you the space you need to make your decision and go check out the new usher at the cinema. I hear his wife died last year. So that makes him prime mattress-boogie material.”

Nina gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Do you ever think of anything other than sex?”

Her grandmother shrugged into her coat and smoothed down the front, appearing to give the question some consideration. “No, I don’t. And seeing as at my age there aren’t too many opportunities, I have to take full advantage of those that do come my way.” She waggled a finger at her. “And it’s nice to see that you’re finally beginning to follow in your grandmother’s footsteps.”