More Than She Expected. Karen TempletonЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Chapter Three

      Seated at her kitchen table, Laurel grinned over her cup of tea as she watched her grandmother contort her eighty-five-year-old body to look out the kitchen window while she washed up the lunch dishes. At, it wasn’t hard to guess, Tyler digging a trench for the wall.

      “You do know I have a dishwasher, Gran, right?”

      “And you do know he’s taken his shirt off, right?”

      “I do now.”

      Marian McKinney twisted to frown at Laurel over her shoulder. “And you don’t want to come see?”

      “Not particularly,” Laurel said with the most nonchalant shrug she could manage. Tyler in a muscle-hugging T-shirt already left nothing to the imagination. Tyler without the T-shirt...

      Yes, she—and her bouncing baby hormones—had gotten over whatever had sent her into a tizzy a few days ago. But still. Some things were best left unseen.

      Or thought about.

      “And you, Gran, are a dirty old lady.”

      Her grandmother swatted in her general direction, flinging water and Palmolive suds across the floor. She had a hot date later, apparently, so was all decked out in a bright purple pantsuit and the diamond studs Grampa had given her for her fiftieth birthday, her glistening white hair appropriately poufed for the occasion.

      “I’ll take dirty over dead any day, believe me.”

      “Does what’s-his-name know this?”

      “Thomas. And if he doesn’t—” she turned, her pale blue eyes twinkling behind her trifocal lenses as she dried her hands on a dish towel “—he’ll soon find out.”

      “You hussy.”

      “Damn straight,” Gran said, neatly folding the towel before hanging it back up, then carrying her own tea over to sit for a few minutes before she left. Every Saturday, come hell or hurricane, they had lunch—a tradition they’d started when Lauren was in kindergarten, only broken during those years she lived in New York. This time was theirs...and Laurel wasn’t sure which one enjoyed it more.

      Despite Gran’s oft-verbalized discomfort with Laurel’s decision to be a single mother. Not because her grandmother was a prude—obviously—but because—

      “What did you say his name was again?”

      “Tyler. Noble.”

      Gran’s forehead crinkled. “Noble, Noble...” She snapped her fingers. “One of Preston and Jeanne Noble’s kids?”

      “I have no idea. Who are Preston and Jeanne Noble?”

      “He’d just retired from the air force when I met them, oh, way back. Before you came to live with me, when Harold was still alive. Jeanne and I were both working on some fund-raiser or other, Harold and I had dinner with her and the Colonel one evening.” She laughed. “They spent the whole night talking about ‘their’ kids—they’d been fostering for a while by that point, but had adopted two or three as well, as I recall. Not as babies, either, as little kids. Wonderful people,” Gran said on a sigh. “Especially her. I would have loved to have kept up with them, but then Harold got sick and...” She shrugged. “So wouldn’t that be funny, if Tyler was one of theirs? I mean, he’s such a nice young man....”

      “Which you could tell after, what, twenty seconds when you took him a sandwich?”

      “You’d be surprised how much you can tell in twenty seconds,” she said, and what could Laurel say to that? “Especially when you get to be my age and can spot the BS within ten. And if he is one of the Colonel and Jeanne’s brood—”

      “Gran. Honestly.”

      “You could have at least invited him in to eat with us—”

      “And I already told you, Ty said he only had a few hours to work. He has to go see a client later—”

      “Oooh...Ty, is it?”

      “For the love of Pete, Gran,” Laurel said, laughing. “Give it a rest.”

      “But honey...it’s so hard, raising a child on your own—”

      “You managed.”

      “You weren’t a newborn. That would’ve killed me.”

      “I somehow doubt that.” Laurel got up to rinse out her cup, taking care to avert her eyes from the glorious, slightly sweaty sight twenty feet past the window. After stealing the quickest peek. Long enough to see him bopping his head as he measured, she presumed in time to whatever music was coming through his earbuds. Inwardly sighing, she turned back to her grandmother. “But it’s not as if I’m a teenager, or penniless. Or homeless—”

      “No. Just stubborn.”

      “Gee. Can’t imagine who I got that from.”

      Gran’s grimace bit into a face already deeply lined from too many summers spent on the shore when she was younger, and Laurel smiled. “Besides,” she said gently, “Tyler’s obviously younger than I am, and—”

      “Oh, pish. Harold was six years younger than I was. No big deal.”

      Laurel’s brows crashed. “I never knew that.”

      “Yeah, well, neither did he. Because I lied about my age,” she said with a little “no biggee” flick of her hand. “It was easier to get away with back then. Nobody checked. And since I handled all the household stuff, he had no reason to ever find out. So thank God he went before I did, or that could have been really embarrassing. But anyway,” she said on a huff of air, “Harold could keep up with me, if you get my drift. Until he got sick, anyway. Until then, however—” she did a coy little shoulder wiggle “—ooh-là-là.”

      “Except I’m not looking for ooh-là-là.”

      “Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart,” Gran said, getting to her feet and collecting the pink quilted Kate Spade bag Laurel’d given her for her eightieth birthday and which she was now never seen without. Thing was getting a little dingy, truth be told. “Everyone’s looking for ooh-là-là.” She nodded pointedly at Laurel’s belly, the pooch still barely visible underneath her roomy—and fortuitously fashionable—top. “Even you, at one point. Obviously.”

      “And look how late it is!” Laurel said, ushering her grandmother toward the door. “If you don’t leave now, you won’t make your movie!”

      Fully aware of Laurel’s diversionary tactic, Gran chuckled. But at the front door, the older woman turned and grabbed Laurel’s hand. “I can’t help it...I worry about you, baby.” Behind her silver-framed glasses, her eyes filled. “I always have.”

      “Then you need to stop,” Laurel said gently. “I’m not that eleven-year-old girl anymore. And believe it or not—” she cupped a hand over The Bump “—I’m happy. Really.”

      “But not as happy as you could be.”

      Laurel leaned over to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “I’m fine. Really. Now go have fun with your gentleman friend and I’ll talk to you later.”

      “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

      “I learned from the best.”

      On another air-swat, Gran turned and descended the porch steps, still on her own steam but definitely more carefully these days. But there was nothing cautious about her sure handling of her brand-new Prius as she smartly steered away from the curb