“Oh my God,” Paige whispered, staring at the screen. Bethelda Grimshaw, along with Mrs. Pie, otherwise known as Mrs. Forns, and her anonymous source, most likely Verna, had just called Paige an immoral corrupter. They’d said she wasn’t wanted here.
If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay far, far away from her.
She’d known this might happen. Brendan had warned her that it wasn’t going to be pretty, but this was beyond anything she’d imagined. Her eyes burned and she blinked a few times trying to get past it. But she couldn’t. The words kept repeating in her head. Words that she’d heard for so long now, since before she’d even come down to Mirabelle.
She didn’t belong.
* * *
Brendan was still in a daze that afternoon. He’d slept the entire night with Paige in his arms and every time he thought about it he couldn’t help but smile. Yeah, she’d run out of his house like a bat out of hell that morning, but that wasn’t because she’d wanted to get away from him. No, she’d even kissed him before she’d sprinted out the door.
Two weeks. He’d met Paige exactly two weeks ago to the day and it blew his mind how quickly things had changed for him. It was incredible.
She
was incredible. He’d pretty much been hooked the moment she’d opened that pretty little mouth of hers, and when he’d kissed that same pretty little mouth, there’d been no way he was going to walk away.
When Brendan came into the office, Oliver was firmly located behind his newspaper. Brendan had been under a car all morning, so they hadn’t talked yet.
“Hey,” Oliver said as he flipped a page and peaked over at Brendan. “Have a good weekend?”
“Yup,” Brendan said, throwing his baseball cap on his desk. “I spent all day yesterday with Paige out on the water.”
“You guys fish?” Oliver asked, putting his paper down on the desk.
“Yeah, caught some flounder and redfish,” Brendan said, sitting down in his chair and switching on his computer.
“And she liked it?” Oliver asked, surprised. “I wouldn’t have pegged her as much of a fisher.”
“I didn’t either, but you know what, Pops,” Brendan said, putting his hands behind his head and grinning, “when it comes to Paige, you can’t peg her for anything. She shocks the hell out of me half the time.”
“So she keeps you on your toes?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “She does.”
“Good, you need to be with someone like that. Your grandmother has kept me on my toes for over fifty years,” Oliver said, folding up his newspaper and switching over to his computer to check his e-mail.
Despite everything, Brendan considered himself lucky. He might not have had his father in his life, and he’d had his mom for only sixteen years, but he’d had his grandparents. Oliver had been Brendan and Grace’s father in every sense of the word, and they’d had two mothers with Claire and Lula Mae. He’d seen what a loving relationship was through his grandparents. It would have been nice to see that with his real parents, but if his parents had stayed together, Grace wouldn’t be here now, and nothing would ever make him want to give up Grace.
“Son of a bitch,” Oliver said from behind his computer.
“What?” Brendan asked, coming back to the present.
Unlike Brendan, Oliver rarely lost his temper, and the fact that he was looking at the screen and cursing made Brendan worried. Oliver looked up, his brow furrowed and a frown firmly in place.
“Now, Brendan, don’t fly off the handle.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing good,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “Phil Launders sent me an e-mail to warn me. Bethelda has a new article up today.”
Brendan pulled up Bethelda’s Web site and his blood started to boil immediately. It was about Paige.
Outrageous. Scandalous. Immoral. Temptress. Trashy…
and the list went on and on. None of those things were true. Those words didn’t describe Paige in any way.
Brendan slammed down his fist and stood up, his chair rolling back so hard that it bounced against the wall.
“Brendan,” Oliver said, standing up. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? I can’t
calm down
,” he yelled. “Everything in there is bullshit,” he said, pointing to the computer. “I’m so sick and tired of all of these lies that that
woman
comes up with.”
“And what are you going to do? Go down there and set the place on fire?”
“She shouldn’t be allowed to do this,” Brendan raged. “She talked about mom and Grace too. Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“Of course it does,” Oliver said, losing some of his calm. “You think it’s easy for me to see my family slandered? You think it’s easy for me to have
anyone
speak ill of your mother? I know what this does to you and Grace and your grandmother. It has
never
been easy for me, not for twenty-eight years. She got fired from the newspaper because of this garbage, but she just found another outlet. She does it to get a reaction; she used to get one out of me every time and she thrived on it. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve stormed down there? I would rant and rave and she would just smile in my face like the damn Cheshire cat.”
“So that’s your answer? Do nothing?”
“What do you think is going to happen if you go down there? You think Bethelda’s going to feel bad? Suddenly grow a conscience and post a retraction? She isn’t.”
Brendan didn’t say anything. He just grabbed his keys and walked out of the office.
He’d never been able to stop people from talking about his mother. He’d never been able to protect Grace from all of the gossip that had followed her around. And he apparently couldn’t protect Paige either. He was completely useless.
When Brendan pulled into Adams and Family he was fuming. He remembered the first day he’d met Paige and the dejected look on her face that she’d tried to cover up. If she’d been upset before about the people in this town not accepting her, there was no telling how she was going to feel when she found out about this. When she read those words.
He bolted up the steps to the funeral home and walked inside. Tara was behind her desk, tapping on her keyboard. He must have looked as angry as he felt, because Tara’s smile faltered when she saw him.
“Brendan,” she said as her fingers stilled. “You okay?”
“No. Is Paige in her office?”
“Yeah.” Tara nodded.
“She with a client?”
“No.”
Brendan turned and ran up the stairs two at a time trying to calm himself before he talked to Paige. He paused in her doorway and watched her for a second. She was sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen. Her shoulders were slumped, her mouth pulled down, and sadness surrounded her eyes. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t even notice him standing in the doorway.
She knew. She’d seen it. She’d seen those horrible words.
“Paige,” Brendan said, walking toward her.
She looked up at him and gave him a sad smile.
“Hey,” she said, standing up. “What are you doing here?” she asked as he pulled her into his arms.
“I needed to see you,” he said, burying his face in her neck and pressing his lips to her throat. “Make sure you were okay.”
“You saw the article,” she said softly, her hands gripping his sides.
“Yeah,” he said, running his hands up and down her back. “I’m sorry, baby. What she said, it’s not true. People don’t think that.
I
don’t think that. Neither do Grace or Grams or Pops, or any of the people who actually matter.”
“I know. I’m fine.”
“Hmm,” he said, moving his hands to her arms and pulling her back so that he could look into her face. “Paige, I grew up with enough women to know that
fine
is never a good thing. Talk to me.”
“They said you should stay away from me,” she said, sadly.
At this point, it would be easier to stop breathing than to live in the same town as Paige and never see her. “Not going to happen,” he said, leaning in and kissing her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
Brendan watched Paige through his grandparents’ kitchen window. She and Grace were sitting on the back porch playing fetch with Sydney.
“Your grandfather told me you yelled at him today,” Lula Mae said as she chopped carrots for dinner.
Brendan leaned back against the counter and looked over at his grandmother. “Did he tell you why?” Brendan asked, taking a sip of his beer.
“Oh, he didn’t need to tell me why. I know what that woman wrote.”
“Everyone in this whole freaking town knows what that woman wrote. It’s complete bullshit,” Brendan said, feeling his temper start to flare up again. Every time he thought about that damn column he wanted to punch something.
“Brendan Oliver King,” Lula Mae said, looking up as she put down her knife and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you use that language in front of me and especially in that tone.” When Lula Mae got upset, her southern accent tended to get real thick, and right now it was about as thick as her homemade vanilla custard.
“Sorry, Grams,” Brendan said, bowing his head and rubbing the peeling label on the beer bottle with his thumb. It didn’t matter that he was twenty-eight years old, because when his grandmother got that tone with him he still got sheepish. And she’d used his full name, which was an immediate sign of danger. “I just can’t have a clear head at all when it comes to this.”
“Bethelda or Paige?”
Brendan looked up to find Lula Mae watching him with a frown and raised eyebrows.
“Both,” Brendan said honestly. He’d never done well with his family being trash talked, and he hadn’t been prepared for the reaction he’d had when it had been Paige. “And there’s nothing I can do to fix this, or stop it from happening again. I just wish she didn’t have to go through this. Didn’t have yet another thing to make her life difficult. I wish I could stop people from hurting her. Stop her from hurting.”
“Brendan, you can’t protect her from everything. You’re not Superman.”
“Yeah, but for her, I want to be. And I feel useless, like there’s nothing I can do to fix this. Nothing I can do stop Bethelda from doing this.”
“So you didn’t go down and give her what for?” Lula Mae asked as she went over to the fridge and grabbed a stick of butter.
“No,” Brendan mumbled and took another swig of beer.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that. You did what your grandfather told you to do?” Lula Mae asked, grabbing a frying pan from a cabinet.
“No, I didn’t go,” Brendan said clearly. There was no way that he would’ve been able to go down to where Bethelda worked and not destroy something, especially after he’d seen Paige so sad.
“Good boy,” Lula Mae said as she dropped the butter into the frying pan. “You know,” she said as she stirred the butter around with her spatula as it began to melt, “I’ve never seen you like this before, not this quickly at least. You’re very protective of her, as protective as you are of Grace.”
“Yeah.” Brendan nodded. “I can’t really explain it,” he said, pretty baffled himself.
“I can. You’re falling for her, Brendan.”
Brendan just stared at his grandmother, dumbfounded, because she was one hundred percent right. He was absolutely falling for Paige.
How the hell had that happened so fast?
* * *
“Are you kidding me?” Abby asked, incredulous as she read the blog post.
“I know,” Paige said miserably.
“This is bullshit. What did your hot mechanic do?”
“Brendan,”
Paige emphasized his name. Abby refused to call him Brendan. Paige wondered what would happen if Abby ever met him face-to-face. Would she call him
hot mechanic
the whole time? Not that Paige focused on a lot of possible future scenarios. She didn’t like to think about a future with Brendan too much in case it didn’t happen. “He came down to the funeral home to make sure I was okay. He just held me for a little while. Until I felt better.”
“Okay, I’m calling it now.”
“Calling what now?”
“This guy is going to marry you.”
“What?” Paige laughed into the phone. “You can’t know that. He can’t even know that; how can you know that?”
“Look, I’m calling it anyway. If I’m wrong, I’ll pay you a hundred dollars. If I’m right, you owe me a hundred dollars.”
“I’m not betting on that.”
“Why, because you know you’re wrong?”
“No,” Paige said quietly.
“Then why?”
“Because I’m not betting against us.”
“Us? Yeah, I give it less than a year before you two are walking down the aisle.”
* * *
The rest of Paige’s week went by fairly uneventfully until Friday when she got her first paycheck. It was one day short of pay.