Page 29 of Summer Heat
Lexie smiled. “I’m enjoying it.”
“Barnes isn’t making you crazy? I admit when Derek said he was the one who needed an assistant, I was worried. The boy’s got his quirks.”
“Really, Dad? Glass houses and all that. Who are we to judge anyone else?” she asked, immediately jumping to Kade’s defense.
“Whoa. I didn’t mean anything except facts. He’s difficult…”
“Demanding with good reason.”
“Obstinate—”
“Stubborn.”
“Peculiar.”
“He has idiosyncrasies.” Like anxiety and ADHD he tried to keep hidden.
From how he aligned the pens on his desk any time they got out of order to his fresh coffee, to the precise way his shirts were lined up in his closet—this she knew because she’d brought his dry cleaning to his apartment and had to hang them up. She’d taken the time to undo the plastic and put the clean shirts at exactly the same width apart like the others before leaving things just as she’d found them.
“Quirks,” she added. Adorable quirks, Lexie thought.
“Protective much?” Kendall asked, putting down her fork and staring at her sister. “Someone has a thing for her boss!”
Her father’s fork clattered to the table. “You do?”
“Would you both cool it?” Lexie said, her face flaming.
“She needs to pick up a dress for a formal event Saturday night. With her boss.” Kendall waggled her eyebrows.
Lexie shot her sister an annoyed glare. “It’s a business affair.”
“At least she admits it’s an affair.” Kendall laughed, the sound musical to Lexie’s ears. Especially when they were in this house, where laughter and true happiness were rare.
Ignoring the innuendo, Lexie decided to address the elephant in the room. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s under the weather,” Wade said, using his old fallback excuse.
“You mean she’s upstairs in your bedroom, shades drawn, hiding under the covers,” Kendall muttered.
“Actually she’s sitting in the rocker,” he said, picking up his plate and heading for the sink.
The rocker was worse than the bed. If Lexie closed her eyes, she could hear the creak of the old chair as her mother pushed back and forth in an endless cycle.
“God, why can’t the doctors do something for her?
” Kendall asked. Frustrated, she shoved back her chair and began cleaning the table with her father.
Although Lexie knew she should help, she quietly left the room and made her way upstairs, her stomach in knots. She walked slowly down the hall and pushed open the double doors to her parents’ bedroom, hearing the creak of the chair before she set foot inside.
“Mom?” Lexie asked into the dark room.
No reply.
She walked farther in and sat on the edge of the bed, on her father’s side, while her mother rocked in the chair. “Mom, it’s Lexie.”
More creaking noises from the chair.
Lexie curled her legs beneath her and sighed, as frustrated as Kendall that they no longer had their mother around. Over the years, they’d had less and less of Addy and more of … this.
