I did and came face to face with the biggest goddamn dog that I’d ever seen.
“Ummmm, Mr. Rector,” I said, halting. “Your horse has blocked my access.”
“You can call me Loki.” Loki snorted. “And this is Jo-Jo. My wife’s newest addition. He’s a two-year-old English Mastiff who will straight up eat the food off of your plate if you’re not careful.”
I brought my free hand up and touched the dog’s head, giving him a good scratch as I did.
His face was in line with my sternum.
“Big boy,” I found myself saying.
“Stupid, big boy,” Justice corrected me as he pushed his way inside. “Move, asshole.”
Jo-Jo moved, barely, to allow us to pass.
“That’s not nice,” I found myself saying.
“He’s an asshole that likes to eat food off your plate when you’re not looking.” Justice repeated the words that had literally just come out of his father’s mouth. “Last time I was here, he ate my steak.”
I barely kept a smile from overtaking my mouth.
“Where do you want all this beer, Dad?” Justice asked.
“Put it in his playroom,” came a woman’s reply deeper in the house. “He can’t fit all of it into the fridge right now, anyway.”
“It’s not a playroom!” Loki shouted. “It’s a game room.”
“Playroom, game room. Same thing,” the woman’s voice was closer now.
Then she was appearing on the other side of the island that separated the kitchen from the living room, and my breath caught.
She was gorgeous. Hell, I couldn’t tell what she looked like from the waist down, but if the waist up was anything to go by, she was a knockout.
She was like one of those people that didn’t age, I was guessing. Kind of like Jennifer Aniston who hadn’t changed a bit in twenty years since she played on the TV show Friends—which was one of my most favorite of shows, so I would know.
“Mom,” Justice said, setting all of his beer down in the middle of the living room and rounding the cabinet. “You look good.”
Channing didn’t waste a second wrapping her son up in her arms, and I had a pang of loneliness hit me like a battering ram.
I wanted that type of relationship. I also wanted a mom.
I couldn’t remember mine.
Didn’t know anything about the lady she’d once been.
Hell, the only picture that I was able to get was of her and me when I was first born. She was in the hospital, her hair all matted and wet from pushing me out, and I was lying naked on her chest.
And I barely even had that.
I’d managed to snag it from my father who’d had it locked up in the desk in his office.
Except, he’d left it unlocked once and I’d been able to sneak in there and find it.
How the hell I’d been able to do that was still a mystery to me.
“And you must be Royal.”
I whipped my head up and smiled at the woman that was now staring at me with open affection.
If Justice didn’t have his mom under one arm, I knew that she’d likely be in front of me, wrapping me up in her arms just like her son had done to her moments before.
“That’s me,” I replied teasingly.
I felt sadness deep in the pit of my belly and wondered what it would feel like to never be sad.
Would that ever be possible?
I wasn’t sure that it would be.
“I’m glad that you came,” she said. “I so wanted my son to bring the woman that’s been driving him crazy for months.”
My eyes turned to stare at Justice.
“I’ve only been around for the last couple weeks,” I said, sounding just as confused as I felt.
“We’ve been hearing about ‘that girl in the greasy coveralls’ for a while now.” She shook her son who had a blank mask on his face. “You’ve been driving him nuts for a while now. A ‘girl like you’ shouldn’t be on Eleventh Street. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that. Though, we’ve just recently learned your actual name.”
My cheeks heated.
“A girl like me?” I asked, hoping that it wasn’t a bad thing to be ‘a girl like me.’
“A girl that clearly is as beautiful as you shouldn’t be ‘rubbing shoulders with the trash of Eleventh Street.’” Loki’s deep, calm voice came from behind me. “Not that my son would ever say that to your face or anything. Getting him to show any kind of emotion is like pulling teeth.”
My lips twitched at seeing Justice’s cheeks flush.
“It’s no fuckin’ secret.” Justice pulled away from his mom. “Dad, come help us get the rest of this beer.”
And then he was gone, leaving his mother and me alone.
“I’m Channing,” she said, holding out her hand to shake across the counter that separated us.
I grinned and shook her proffered hand.
“Royal St. James,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. Justice has said nothing but great things about you, which in turn makes me jealous.”