Page 14 of Damaged Protector
Patting my dad’s hand, I shook my head. “No, not one of my friends. Just a story I heard recently.”
He chuckled. “In one of those romance books you read?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, good. Because it would concern me that she’s being taken advantage of. Fiction is different from reality, and anyone that old can’t have good intentions with a woman that young.”
I could feel the heat emanating from my mother as I focused on my father’s pretty blue eyes. “Dad, I couldn’t agree more.”
Chapter 4
“Good lord, my nerves are shot. Why can’t my grandmother be into knitting or something normal?” Tank asked, his huge fingers making white marks where they were digging into my forearm.
“First of all, ow. I’d like to retain some nerve function in that arm, thank you very much.” My six-foot-eight friend loosened his grip infinitesimally as we watched his seventy-six-year-old grandma hoot and holler while she rode atop a camel.
“Look at me, Dwayne! Yeehaw!” She waved wildly, making her pink curls bounce.
“Gram, can you please hold on with both hands?” Tank yelled. The woman stared him down while defiantly lifting both hands in the air like she was riding a roller coaster.
I fucking love old people.
“She’s fine, Tank, but why does she keep calling her boyfriend Dwayne? I thought his name was Jorge.”
He glared, his bright blue irises barely visible between his lids. “First of all, he’s her friend, not her boyfriend. And second, she calls him that because she thinks he looks like Dwayne Johnson.”
My gaze shifted to the pale wisp of a man standing outside the paddock, and I squinted to try and find any resemblance whatsoever to the professional wrestler-turned-actor.
“You, uh, think Gram has cataracts or something?”
“She already had them removed, remember? I had to drive her to her appointments.”
“That’s right.” I looked back at the man wearing brown corduroy pants and a matching jacket, despite the weather being in the eighties today. “Huh. I’m not seeing it. The Rock is humongous, and this little dude only weighs about a buck-oh-five. I mean, they’re both bald, but…”
“Gram made him shave his head because she said his combover was ridiculous. That’s when she started calling him Dwayne. I was confused for two weeks, thinking she had a new friend until Bristol clued me in that Jorge is Dwayne.”
We were at Bode and Landree’s drive-through safari for Mia and Mason’s eighth birthday party, and they were giving camel rides to the kids. And apparently to frisky septuagenarians.
“Gram, you about done?” Tank called, and the older lady nodded.
“I suppose I should let the kids have another turn,” she yelled back, and he hightailed it over to help her down from the large beast.
“Hold on to my shoulders, and I’ll lift you off.”
“Now, be careful, honey. Don’t let my dress ride up,” Gram said in a loud voice. “Don’t want anyone seeing my thong.”
Tank’s face turned the approximate shade of a ripe beet… and it wasn’t from the effort of lifting his tiny grandma from the back of a camel.
“Hi, Hawk.” I looked down to see Bode’s mother standing beside me, a knowing smirk on her magenta lips.
“Hey, India.”
“Anything new in your life?” she sang.
“Not a thing,” I said firmly. We’d seen each other at family functions, but I’d managed to avoid being alone with her since our disagreement at the wedding five months ago. I wasn’t sure why her… proclamation got under my skin, but I had to admit it did.
“In time,” she said over her shoulder as she strode away. Goosebumps prickled the skin of my arms, despite the warm May sun beating down.
Swiping my hands up and down my forearms to wipe them away, I turned my attention back to Tank.