Something that was so much more than just relief filled up every cavity in my body, and I had to steel myself against it, just so I could handle it.
“So you left New Zealand just to make more money?” I blurted out, trying to sound casual but not feeling anything close to it.
That might have been the only time I would ever witness Jonah stumble as he looked at me over his shoulder and seemed to hesitate for a second before scratching at the back of his head. “Ah….”
“I’m not judging. I’m just asking.” Because it was the truth. “They pay you more overseas?”
He flashed me an uncertain smile. “A bit more, yeah.”
“Why do you sound embarrassed about that?”
He went back to scratching at his head. “I’m not, but not everyone is supportive of it.” He grimaced. “My mum wasn’t. My brother wasn’t. Most of Auckland wasn’t either.”
Ohhhhh. God, I was dense. “They’re mad at you for leaving?”
The sigh that came out of him said everything. “I can’t play for the New Zealand national team if I don’t play there. They take it like I’ve been unfaithful to them by going, but….” He sighed again, and I watched his eyes drift forward in the direction of his mom and Mo. “If I could still play for the All Blacks and play in France or Japan, I would, but it’s a sacrifice. I’m not getting any younger.” He glanced at me again before adding, “You understand.”
I did understand. “It’s the same thing with professional fighters,” I told him. “Or I guess most professional athletes in general. You don’t have to be ashamed of that. Anybody would have done the same thing. You work your ass off for yourself. You have to do what’s best for you.” Something he had told me in the past clicked in my head. “Wait. So if everyone is mad at you, and I’m sure you can’t exactly go walk around without anyone recognizing you, where the hell did you go for those months while you were recovering? I thought you said you were at your grandma’s farm.”
“I was.” He nudged me with the back of his hand. “I, ah, didn’t leave the house much in those days. If I did leave, I stayed out of the way. By the time I did head into town with my granddad or nan, they had warned everyone off. That or risk facing the wrath of my nan. She even went to the physio with me every week.”
That had me perking up. “She’s scary?”
“Firm. Everyone knows better than to go up against her. She’s something, even now.”
“Your dad’s mom?”
He nodded. “Small town. No one said a word to me, and I wasn’t in the mood for it.”
I grabbed his arm. “Your mood was that bad? You?”
He laughed and shook my hand off, his palm sliding against my lower back. “I have bad moods from time to time, Lenny. You’ve seen it.”
If bad moods consisted of him being silent and broody for a little while… well… “I can deal with you being pouty.”
“Pouty?”
“Whiny?”
The hand on the small of my back slid up along my spine until his palm cupped the shoulder furthest away from him and he tugged me toward him a couple of inches, his laugh the soundtrack to the movement. “I don’t whine,” he hissed but chuckled at the same time.
I snickered and soaked up the wall of muscle alongside me.
And it was in the middle of me coming down from that, that I glanced toward my car and spotted the figure standing right by the hood.
The figure that even at this distance looked a whole hell of a lot like a woman. A woman who looked a lot like Grandpa Gus’s ex-wife. What the hell?
I must have made a noise that had Jonah looking in the same direction as me because he asked, “Is that…?”
“I think so.” Fuck. Digging into my back pocket, I pulled out my phone and dialed Grandpa’s number. “I don’t know what she’s doing here, but I’m about to find out.”
“Are you calling your granddad?”
I nodded as the ringtone came on.
“Why would he tell her where you are?”
I slid him a look as the phone kept on ringing. “I don’t know. He hadn’t wanted me to meet her in the first place. Goddamn it, he’s not answering.” He wasn’t going to answer. Ending the call, I dialed Peter’s number next. “Let me go talk to her and see what she wants—hold on.”
The “Lenny” came at me really quickly. Then, “I told him not to tell her where you were, but she insisted she wanted to talk to you.” He paused. “I’m sorry. You know we would never have wanted to put you into the middle of this.”
Fuck.
“Sorry, Len,” he said gently. “Good luck.”
“Love you. Bye,” I muttered into the receiver. What the fuck?
I got a “Love you” back a second before I hung up.
Jonah raised those thick eyebrows at me. “Bad news?”
I just shook my head.
That big hand went back to the base of my spine, and it stayed there. “I’ll come with you, make sure to pull you back before you say something you’ll regret.”
I made a face. “Good luck with that.” What the hell did this lady want? Why was she here? “Are your grandparents nice?”
“The best.”
The best. He was going to make me vomit.
“Do you think they’ll want to meet Mo?” I asked, more to kill the time while we got closer and closer to the woman who had spotted us and stood up straight.
“More than anything,” he responded. The hand on my lower back moved slowly over to my hip, and I let it, eating it up. “I was planning on giving her a call today to tell her the news now that I’ve talked to my brothers. She’ll have me promising to bring her over as soon as we can.”
“We? You want me to go too?”
Jonah leaned in. “There’s no place I wouldn’t want you to go with me.”
This fucking asshole had magic in him. That had to be it. Sorcery. Witchcraft.
Because this wasn’t right. My heart shouldn’t be doing this. My whole body shouldn’t be reacting like he was fucking crack.
Why? Why did I have to like him out of millions so much?
“Good morning,” the woman said before I could formulate a response to what the hell he’d just dropped on me.
“Morning,” I told her distractedly with all of the five manners that Grandpa had instilled in me,.
“Good morning,” Jonah threw in, with his immaculate manners.
Grandpa’s ex flashed him a hesitant smile a second before her eyes flicked in the direction of where I knew Mo and Sarah were. They moved back to me in the blink of an eye, and I could see her straighten, see her grasp for maybe strength, and then say, “Gus said I could find you here.”
“I know,” I replied. “Something I can help you with?”
She glanced back to the spot behind me, and I ate up the fact that I didn’t feel even a tiny bit guilty for not rushing Sarah over. “I didn’t know you were with your family,” she said, still looking away. “I wanted to see if you were interested in having lunch with me.”
Of course he’d left that part out.