The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(87)

I did not like not being able to be free to be there for him the next day if he needed me.

But I had the sense he needed normalcy.

So I agreed.

“Okay, honey.”

“Now let’s go to bed.”

“I need to run out to the truck and get my purse. I left it there.”

He shook his head then tipped his beard to the stairs. “Go up. Get ready for bed. I need to pull the truck in anyway. I’ll grab it.”

“Okay.”

He bent his head to touch his mouth to mine before he let me go and walked to the door to the garage.

I did not go up and get ready for bed.

That woman was out there, and I’d seen her drive away.

But I was not taking any chances.

I put the bourbon away, rinsed his glass and put it in the dishwasher, then walked to the door he’d disappeared through, opened it, stood in it and watched him pull his truck in.

I hit the garage door button when he cut the ignition.

He got out with my purse and moved to me.

I didn’t get out of his way when he stopped before he made it to me.

“Forrester Girl. All in for the ones you love, you just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asked.

I shook my head.

His expression changed.

I held my breath.

“Love the fuck out of you, Addie.”

“Love the fuck out of you too, Toby,” I replied, then reached a hand his way. “Now let’s go to bed.”

He came forward.

He took my hand.

And we went to bed.



I had head bowed to my phone and was hoofing it to my car the next evening when it happened.

“Adeline?”

My head came up, it was filled with the fact that I’d had four phone calls, one leaving a voicemail, all from Izzy starting at around eleven that morning, the last one coming in at five.

As I’d worried, the day had been insane. One of the temp cashiers didn’t show so we were a lane down and it didn’t slow all day.

I was exhausted. Toby slept fitfully, and because he did, I did the same.

I’d managed to get a twenty-minute break for lunch, and saw Izzy’s calls and got her message of, “Addie, as soon as you can, call me.”

I’d phoned her, but she didn’t pick up. I left my own message, but she didn’t call back before Michael was begging me to get back to my register, bribing me to take a short lunch and no breaks, and doing this with a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bonus.

I had to leave my phone in my locker.

Though I’d done that only after calling Toby, and him not picking up, so I left him a voicemail too, and a text, telling him he was on my mind and I hoped he was okay.

Toby had not called or texted back.

I’d only had a smidge of time with Toby that morning seeing as he was taking a shower and I was making spinach filling.

Though, in accordance with his wish not to let Sierra mess with our plans, he’d reminded me to call Perry and he stuck close when I did that.

It took approximately thirty seconds, considering Perry’s cell was no longer in service.

This kind of worried me, since he didn’t have an address the last I’d known of him, considering the fact I was no longer paying his rent, and now I had no number to contact him, and he was a dick, but he still was my son’s father.

But I had other, more pressing things on my mind.

I’d deal with that later.

Toby had kissed me quickly before he took off to meet Johnny and I’d wished him good luck.

His mind was somewhere else, and that was understandable.

Seeing as his mind was on the woman that was right then standing, blocking my driver’s side door, calling my name.

“I have fifteen people at my house right now, Sierra, I don’t have time for this,” I told her.

She completely ignored me.

“I need to speak with you. I need you to convince Tobias and Johnathan to talk to me,” she pleaded.

I stopped, phone in hand, two feet from her, and glared at her. “It’s Christmas Eve. I’ve been working all day. I’ve had people at my house for an hour eating hors d’oeuvres. If I’m lucky, they’ll stay another hour before we’re off for dinner. I need to get home, shower, slap on makeup, change, be with my kid, my man and my family. In other words, again, I don’t have time for this. Please move.”

“I didn’t have a happy home. I didn’t have good parents,” she said hurriedly, again totally freaking ignoring me. “And not your normal, run-of-the-mill, they-don’t-get-me bad parents. It was awful at home. Terrible.”

In the lights in the parking lot of Matlock Mart, I could see confirmed what I suspected last night.

She was a beauty.

An enduring beauty.

She probably was seriously something in her heyday.

But even now she was spectacular.

Gallingly, this reminded me of my mother.

Daphne had died in her forties. She’d gotten nowhere near this woman’s age.

But she passed looking fifteen years younger.

Of course, that was, she looked that way before the cancer ate her away. She just looked fifteen years younger than another woman in her forties would look after being ravaged by that dread disease.

“Sierra—” I snapped.