Sweet Sinful Nights(41)

“I don’t even want to ask why you’re buying that,” her grandmother said with a laugh, pointing to Shannon’s purchase as the cashier at the party store rang them up.

“It’s a surprise for someone,” Shannon answered with a wink and snatched the little gift and tucked it into her purse.

“That’ll be fifty-seven twenty-one,” the cashier said, bagging up the balloons, streamers, cups and party favors that Victoria had picked up for the birthday party she was throwing for her great-granddaughter’s third birthday—the granddaughter of Shannon’s aunt.

Before her grandma could stop her, Shannon slid her credit card through the machine to pay.

“You didn’t have to do that,” the older woman said.

Shannon flashed her a smile as she tucked her card into her purse. “I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to.” She scooped up the bag and headed to her car. They’d attended a sunrise yoga class, then stopped at the store on the way home, and now Shannon needed to return to the studio for a few hours before her lunch date.

It was definitely a date.

“Might that someone you’re surprising be your old beau?”

“Beau. Boy. You’re so old-fashioned, Nana,” Shannon said as she backed out of the lot and turned onto the main drag.

“Well?” she asked pointedly. “Is he?”

Shannon shrugged, but her lips curved into a grin. “Maybe.”

Victoria patted her knee as they slowed to a stop at a red light a few blocks from her home. “Excellent. So what are we going to do about your brothers then?”

“What about them? The fact that all three are total pains in the ass?” Shannon teased.

“Not that. The fact that they’re all single. Maybe we need to set up a matchmaking service for those boys.”

“Good luck getting the three cavemen married off,” Shannon joked as the light changed, and she turned left onto Victoria’s street.

Her grandmother gestured grandly, as if she were putting their names in lights. “Matchmakers for the Paige Men.”

Shannon startled for a moment at hearing that name. They were all so used to being Sloans now.

“I meant the Sloan men,” her grandmother quickly corrected.

Just like that, Shannon’s mind latched onto another Paige man. The one who was long gone. Try as she might, the past was never far away. Little things slammed her back in time. Like her old name. Like driving, of all things.

Her father’s final moments had been in a car, driving home from work late one night, pulling into the driveway of his home. The one place where he should always have been safe from harm.

She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, holding her emotions in as she turned into her grandmother’s driveway.

It was only a driveway. A mundane, ordinary slick of concrete. Her grandmother didn’t even live anywhere near the home where her dad had been shot. But as she cut the engine and looked at her father’s mother, she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Victoria was thinking the same thing. That she, too, had been jolted out of a festive moment of party planning and pretend matchmaking and hurtled back in time to eighteen years ago. She saw it in her grandma’s eyes—the same sadness she felt was reflected back at her.

“Sometimes it’s hard just turning in the driveway,” Shannon said softly. “Makes me think of my dad.”

Her grandmother clasped her hand. “I know. Every day, I think about him.”

Shannon looked down at their hands. “I miss him.”

“I do too, sweetie.”

After she walked her grandmother inside and said goodbye, she returned to her car. She scanned the surrounding area, as always, alert for anything amiss. Listening for that footstep crunching on the grass. Seeking the shadow of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.

The hair on her neck stood on end, and for a second, she wished she carried her gun with her. But that weapon was locked away at her home.

Shannon’s eyes roamed the sidewalk, the house, and the garage before she unlocked the car door. This hyper-alertness fried her nerves. No one was there. It was morning. She was safe, and Victoria was fine, and she had to refuse to live in fear. She had to kick the damn specter of hidden guns, and gangs, and shooters, and plots for murder far out of her daily agenda.

She took a deep breath, letting it spread through her body, coaxing it to ease away the stranglehold of the past. Good thing she was seeing Brent that afternoon. He was her antidote. He’d wash away the cruel memories.

But by the time lunch rolled around, she no longer wanted to rely on her old habits with Brent. He’d always been her magic bullet to extradite the pain. Maybe to truly change, she needed to give instead of to take.

Over salad and pasta at an Italian restaurant inside Caesars Shops, she asked him more about work, peppering him with questions about his clubs, the expansion, his vision for Edge, reminding herself the whole time not to be jealous. She listened intently, because she didn’t want to feel an ounce of resentment for his choices, including the one to ditch the very industry that had once been so important to him.

“And Edge will keep on growing,” she said.

“That’s the goal,” he said with a wide smile. He truly seemed happy with his new path. That was his special talent. He knew how to find the happiness in everything. Someone like him never seemed to need much, while she often felt she required far too much. That was exactly why she’d picked up the gift at the party store. He loved the little things in life.