Overruled (The Legal Briefs, #1)(38)

As his mother cracks and scrambles eggs, Stanton asks about his father.

“Up in the north field,” she explains. “For the rest of the day and then some. Mendin’ the fence that was taken out in the last storm.”

Within fifteen minutes there are plates of eggs, bacon, and warm biscuits with butter. “This is delicious, Mrs.— Momma,” I correct myself with an awkward chuckle.

“Thank you, Sofia.”

“Now you’ve done it.” Stanton grins, his mouth full of biscuit. “She’s gonna be stuffin’ your face the whole time we’re here. You’ve heard the freshmen fifteen? Be prepared for the Shaw twenty.”

“Oh my word!” From down the back stairs, into the kitchen skips Stanton’s sister, Mary, Marshall’s twin. With shoulder length blond hair, and her mother’s sherry colored eyes, there’s no doubt she’s part of the Shaw clan.

Being the youngest with three brothers myself, I feel an immediate kinship with her.

She leans down and kisses Stanton’s cheek, teasing, “I’m gonna start callin’ you the Grey Ghost, ’cause you played football, and you’re never here jus’ like a ghost, and ’cause you’re gettin’ gray in your whiskers.”

Stanton pinches her chin sweetly, then rubs his jaw. “There’s no gray in my whiskers.”

“Not yet,” Mary agrees. “You just wait until Presley’s my age—she’ll have you grayer than Daddy.”

Mary introduces herself, then immediately professes her love for my nail polish. And my lipstick. And my silver sleeveless top and black slacks.

“Momma,” she whines. “Can we go shoppin’? Please?”

Stanton’s mother starts to clear the table. “Do you still have last week’s allowance?”

“No, I spent it at the movies.”

She gives Mary a shrug. “There’s your answer, then.”

“I’m goin’ to Haddie’s,” she announces with a pout.

“Not until you feed those calves in the weanin’ paddock, you’re not.”

Mary opens her mouth to complain . . . then bites her lip hopefully. “Unless . . . the best big brother in the whole world would do it for me?”

“Your brother just got home,” Mrs. Shaw admonishes. “He’s barely eaten; give the man a minute to rest.”

She folds her hands and gives him the Sherman eyes.

His mouth twitches. And he cocks his head toward the door. “Go on, then, I’ll feed the calves for you.”

Mary throws herself at Stanton with a squeal. “Thank you!” Then in a blur she’s out the door. “Bye, Sofia!”

After the table is cleared and the dishes are drying, Stanton, his mother, and I finish our coffees.

“After I set Sofia up in my room,” Stanton says, “I’m going to drive over Jenn’s.”

His mother stiffens slightly. Then she nods and sips from her cup. Stanton worries his bottom lip with his teeth. “It would’ve been nice to have a heads-up about this weddin’ situation. A phone call . . .”

Mrs. Shaw looks her son in the eyes. “That’s between you and Jenny, wasn’t my place to tell you. Unless it has to do with Presley, her business is her business.”

Stanton seems satisfied with that. A few minutes later, we grab our bags from the car and head out to Stanton’s old room. “Out” because his room is in one of the outbuildings, the top floor of the barn. Heated, sharing a bathroom with the identical bedroom on the other side, wood paneling, hardwood floor, posters and trophies galore—it’s a teenage boy’s dream.

“My brother Carter and I built these rooms one summer,” Stanton tells me, eyes dancing around the room. “My father told us if we finished them right, we could move out here—so we did.”

It’s then that I notice the pictures on the nightstand—a dashingly young Stanton in a football uniform, with his arm around a tiny Jenny in a cheerleader uniform, and a school portrait of his daughter, wearing a red sweater over a white-collared blouse, her two front teeth endearingly missing.

“Why didn’t Marshall and Mary move out here when you and your brother moved out?”

He nods, anticipating the question. “After Jenny got pregnant, my mother wouldn’t let either of them. She thought Presley was conceived here and she didn’t want any more early grandkids.”

With a chuckle, I ask, “Was she conceived here?”

“Nope.”

? ? ?

About a half hour later, I’m unpacked and ready to get some work done on Stanton’s queen-sized bed. Since we crossed the Mississippi state line and entered the “friends without benefits” zone, Stanton offered to stay in his brother’s old room. He walks out of the bathroom and he’s changed his clothes. He’s now wearing a pair of jeans, leather boots, a white T-shirt, and a brown cowboy hat. The shirt hugs his arms perfectly, accenting the tight ridges of his biceps. And his jeans mold his ass, his flat stomach, and best of all those strong thighs, in a way that has my mouth watering.

I close my mouth, but he catches me staring. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

I smirk. “Don’t need to, I can just tear an advertisement with the Marlboro Man out of a magazine—you look just like him.”