“You do want kids?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“At least four.”
“Four!”
“I love kids. Grandma used to volunteer at a foster place before she died. When I was with her I’d go, and some of the kids just broke my heart. Some of them were there because they had to be, their home life being awful. Then there was a kid who’d been taken by the state under false accusations, and her parents were fighting to get her back.”
“Damn, baby, don’t cry.”
Tears had filled her eyes. “It’s okay. It broke my heart, and at the time when I talked to my grandma, she did everything to help the parents.”
“False accusations?”
“Yes, a disgruntled neighbor or something had said she witnessed them beating the kid. They’d gone and taken her, and she’d been in care ever since.” Addison smiled. “The story has a happy ending. Grandma got the woman who accused them to come clean, and the girl went back. We also made sure the family was compensated.”
“Your grandmother sounds amazing.”
“She really was. She wouldn’t take any crap from anyone, and I just loved her. My mom wasn’t a big fan.”
“She’d have been your father’s mother, right?”
“Yes. It used to annoy my mom with how often my father saw his parents. They didn’t like her, and they tried to hide it when I was around. I loved my grandmother. When I was with her, she’d make sure my mother stayed away. A lot of my summers were spent with her.” Addison laughed. “There was this one time that my grandmother was visiting my dad, and Mom didn’t have a clue she was there. I’d been put on a diet because she’d caught onto the bullies calling me fat and all that. I was weighed every single week to see if the strict diet was working. I’d put on a couple of pounds, and she was ranting, raving at me. Grandma came out of the kitchen, and she tore a strip off Mom.”
“What did she say?”
“Dorothy, if you say one bad word against that girl, I will make sure the entire world knows where you come from. You can take the trash out of the gutter, but you can’t take the gutter out of the trash.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Mom came from the streets.”
****
Holy shit, Shaun hadn’t known that.
“Seriously, your mother came from the streets?”
“Yep. Dad did some kind of charity work when he met her. One thing led to another, and before they knew what was happening, he’d taken her off the streets. Grandmother said Mom found a meal ticket and worked with it.”
“I bet. It’s something we could use to get her off our backs.”
“You’re thinking of blackmailing my mother?” she asked.
“After the shit she pulled in that interview, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get her off our backs.”
“Good luck with that. I doubt Mom would even be bothered by it now. It was so long ago.”
Shaun didn’t agree. “She’s a woman who deals with image. It’ll bother her.”
Running his hands up and down her back, he cupped her ass.
“I wished I’d met your grandmother.”
“She’d have liked you, and she’d have made you think you were always doing something wrong, and watch you try to beg for forgiveness.”