The Trouble with Tomboys (Tommy Creek #1)(6)

Then again, he really didn’t want to get into any of the reasons why he’d been off the grid in the past few years. “I’ve been around,” he finally supplied with a lame attempt not to sound rude.

“Well, I don’t know how long it’s been since I last saw you,” Weatherly mused more to himself,

scratching his chin and frowning a second before his face cleared. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed at Grady. “Now I remember. Your wife was expecting her first last time we met up.” He grinned.

“Was it a boy or girl?”

For a second, Grady couldn’t talk… couldn’t

breathe. Agony clogged his chest, and he forgot about the hammering in his temples. His vision 16



The Trouble with Tomboys



blurred, going foggy and slanted. He concentrated on sucking oxygen back into his lungs and blinking until the world veered back into focus.

Weatherly didn’t know. About Amy, or the baby, or any of it.

Grady cleared his throat, lowered his eyes to the floor and mumbled, “It was a boy.” Which wasn’t a lie. It had been a boy. A dead boy, but Grady didn’t particularly want to divulge that detail and make the both of them uncomfortable.

Weatherly chuckled and slugged Grady

companionably on the shoulder. “Guess I owe you a belated congratulations, old son. Had any more since the first?”

Unable to speak, Grady shook his head. He

lifted his face and managed a tight smile. “I need to go.” His voice sounded like shredded gravel, but at least he’d managed to utter understandable words.

“Oh, sure, sure,” Weatherly said, taking a step back to let Grady pass. “You got a long drive ahead of you.”

Grady didn’t mention he’d chartered a plane for the trip. Instead he nodded and said over his shoulder as he moved toward the exit, “I’ll make sure our secretary gets back to you on that tax issue.”

“Thanks, Grady. See you around.”

In the outer office, Grady nodded toward the receptionist and strode straight for the exit, looking neither left nor right. He held his briefcase stiffly down at his side as he pushed his way out the door.

The transportation service he’d made arrangements with before coming to Houston already had a car waiting at the curb. The driver held the back door open for him, and without a word, he slid into his seat. The ride back to his hotel was a silent misery.

He stared out the side window, waiting until he 17



Linda Kage



could close himself alone in his suite. If he could keep it together until he got to his room, he knew he’d be okay. But traffic was a bitch. They had to take two detours before reaching their destination.

Nearly an hour passed before his chauffer pulled to a stop. Grady managed a brief thank you and exited before the man could come around and open his door. He walked through the overly long lobby, feeling as if everyone was staring at him, thinking he must look miserable, like some kind of defeated widower. An urge rose inside him to stop under the jeweled chandelier in the center of the vestibule and shout at the top of his lungs for everyone to look somewhere else. He was fine. But he knew he was merely being paranoid. No one stared. No one here pitied him. And no one paid him any attention as he pressed the elevator button to wait for the doors to open.

Thankfully, no one entered with him, and the mirrored cubicle remained empty as he stepped inside. The doors slid shut, and finally he was alone.

Grady’s shoulders sagged a fraction of an inch, letting out some of their starch. He closed his eyes and leaned to the side to rest his cheek against the cool surface of the elevator walls.

Peace.

Well, mostly peace. After Weatherly’s mention of Amy and the baby, the visions swimming around his brain were filled with blood and death, tears and heartbreak. But at least no one else was around to aggravate the agony any further. By himself, he could deal with the memories. Around others, he always had to be so damn strong and unaffected. He much preferred the private pain.

Images swirled through him until suddenly he could see Amy as a teenager, standing in the Gilmore family kitchen where he often visited when 18



The Trouble with Tomboys



she was babysitting. Her light blonde hair was pulled up into one of her impossibly neat ponytails.

She looked so young, it made his chest hurt. When she grinned, a dimple dipped the right side of her cheek.

“I tried to bake Jeb a cake yesterday,” she told him before throwing back her head and laughing.

Grady sucked in a breath; his eyes snapped open only to find himself alone in the elevator. He could remember her telling him about burning Leroy Gilmore’s porn as if it’d only happened yesterday.

She’d laughed so hard as she recounted the story, he’d barely understood a word she said.

She’d been young and happy then.

Grady closed his eyes again and tried to

recapture the image. It’d been over two years since he’d envisioned her smile. But in his desperate attempt to grasp a happy memory, the only scene imprinting itself on the inside of his eyelids was of her panting and crying as yet another deadly labor pain struck.

Sweat trickled down the side of his face. He opened his eyes and wiped the perspiration away with the back of his hand as the elevator doors opened. Grady took a step forward but jerked to a stop when he spotted the woman standing in front of his room door.