Always Read Free Page B

have another
drink, too. How about you, ma?”
    “Maybe after we get our food.”
    After the waitress was out of earshot, his
mom finally said, “I believe the two of you have some explaining to
do.”
    “Don’t tell me you don’t know where babies
come from,” Dess said, before taking a smug bite out of a
breadstick.
    “Maybe I should be the one asking you that,”
his mom replied without skipping a beat.
    “Amalie wasn’t exactly planned,” Graham
said. “But, now that she’s here–”
    “I’m not placing any of the blame on this
sweet child.” His mom hugged Amalie a little closer to her chest.
“It’s this whole affair. I can tell just from the way you look at
her.” She looked back and forth between him and Dess. “This baby
isn’t the result of a one nightstand.”
    “I can assure you,” Dess said, “that I am
very much in love with your son.”
    Without giving it any thought Graham reached
for Odessa’s hand and she curled her fingers around his, sinking
her long fingernails into the back of his hand to where he felt
compelled to add, “That feeling is most definitely mutual.”
    “Okay, then what about–” His mom tactfully
stopped in mid-sentence as the waitress placed a salad in front of
her.
    Graham knew exactly where she’d been going
with that question and it was something he didn’t want to answer.
He stalled, asking the waitress to bring an extra plate so he could
share his salad with Dess. Normally he would have just fed her
straight off his plate, but he didn’t think his mother would take
too kindly to such an intimacy at the dinner table.
    Dess must have picked up on it too because
she got surprisingly motherly and reached for Amalie, saying, “I
can hold her while you eat.”
    “Honey, you need to eat a lot worse that I
do.” Refusing to let go of Amalie, his mom turned to him and said,
“I think you should have bought that skinny little thing some
groceries instead of giving her that Mercedes of yours. I know how
much you loved that car.”
    Odessa stabbed a cucumber out of his salad,
chewed it up and dramatically dropped her fork. “There, I’ve
eaten.”
    “We had a big breakfast,” Graham lied,
knowing Dess probably hadn’t had anything more than a glass of
orange juice or maybe some fruit.
    “We?” his mother’s eyebrow shot up.
    Once again the waitress made the save,
returning just in time with that extra plate and another basket of
rolls. “Who’s ready for another drink,” she asked.
    “Me,” all three of them said in unison.
    She laughed. “Alrighty then, I’ll be right
back.”
    Graham scooped some salad onto the extra
plate, and not daring to look up to meet either of their gazes,
placed it in front of Odessa. He dug into his salad, grateful to be
chewing on lettuce instead of trying to explain his confusing
relationship status. Dess rolled a cherry tomato around her plate,
acting like a morose teenager instead of a twenty something new
mother. His mother expertly balanced Amalie in one arm and dug into
her salad with equal dismissive vigor.
    Despite the tension he knew it was all worth
it to have his mom accept his child so wholeheartedly. He really
shouldn’t have been surprised considering how she’d tackled every
other obstacle she’d faced in a life that had been anything other
than easy until he’d started making enough money to ensure she was
well taken care of. She’d been a teenager when she’d had him and
then two more boys before she turned twenty, scraping by the best
she could without much help from a not quite as resourceful
husband. Thinking of his dad made him drain what was left of his
drink.
    His mother gave him a disapproving scowl. “I
hope you didn’t get anything more than your good looks from your
father.”
    He took a not so calming sip of water before
saying, “I didn’t take one drink the whole time Dess was pregnant.”
At least not in front of her anyway. “You don’t have to worry about
me having a