“Woooo!” Granny squeals. “Why are you keeping it in your pocket then? Don’t you realize that thing could burn your nuts clean off?”
“Helen? Helen, a little help up here!” A deep male voice is calling Granny from inside her house and up the winding staircase made of wrought iron and marble that looks like it should belong in a palace.
“Hold that thought,” Granny lifts a hand and commands. “I’ll be right back.”
It’s not unusual for Granny to have male company. As much as I wish I could burn those thoughts and images, I’d probably have to order an exorcism to get them out of my mind. Granny is a bit of a flirt, even at her age. After my grandpa passed, she’s been wild, though not to disrespect his memory or because she wasn’t happy with him. They were very much in love. I just think she embraced the freedom she didn’t want and decided to make the most of it since it happened. She hasn’t exactly slowed down on the male attention front.
Which is just nasty, so I try to block it out of my mind.
It’s kind of hard to do any sort of blocking when Granny, who is wearing tight, hot pink pants and a black shirt, goes racing up the stairs like she’s twenty, shaking her booty and swaying to a song she sings under her breath. I step in and shut the door, trying to erase Granny’s ass waggling from my mind but failing miserably. It’s stamped across my brain for life now.
I feel awkward about waiting since what I had to tell Granny was monumental and life-changing. Now I’m standing down here at the foot of the stairs, wondering if she’s going to come back, who’s up there, and what she’s helping him with. It all creates a series of bad images that are also burned in my brain. God, even imagining it gives me the creeps. Or maybe it’s worse since my imagination is nearly as boundless as Granny herself.
Just then, the deep male voice floats down the stairs. “That’s it. Hold it right there. Helen, you’re a marvel. Beautiful, baby, beautiful.”
It makes me want to throw up in my mouth just a little, but what follows is worse because Granny’s voice responds, “That’s right, chuck. You’ve got it. Just a little bit tighter. Hold ‘er there! Now! Screw me!”
Oh, hell fucking no. Not on my watch. This isn’t going down. I’m not letting some pervert have his way with my granny while I’m right downstairs. Literally. I’m right at the bottom of the stairs, they clearly have the door open, and I can very obviously hear them.
This just isn’t right.
I leap up the stairs, my long legs taking them easily two at a time. I take a hard right, my shoes skidding on the marble tile. The door to the first room is wide open. Perhaps barging up here wasn’t the smartest idea if I didn’t want to scar myself for life, but now that I’m here and ready to save my granny like a white knight bent on delivering my granny from destruction by sex, saving her honor, and maybe her hips—because naughty talk like that is certainly too much for someone her age—I can’t just stop.
When I turn the corner into the room, which is a spare room where Granny has a sewing machine and a desk for crafting, I find her and an older man bent in the middle of the woven rug, putting together a piece of furniture. It looks like another desk.
“Granny! You literally have billions of dollars! Why are you putting together a cheap desk out of a box when you can buy a good one and have it delivered?”
Granny turns and gives me the granny stink eye, which has the effect of withering me where I stand. Granny stink eyes are powerful things. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Toren?”
This is too much. All of this is too much. “You were always asking us to give you great-grandchildren. Well, now you have one!” I spit it out in a rush. Granny just looks at me blandly as she blinks. And then I know she knows. She knows all about Luna and Milo. That’s why she planned the bracelet thing. “How long?” I croak. I feel like I’m going to barf for real now. “How long have you known?”
“Relax, Toren, before you put yourself at risk of health complications. If anyone’s going to go out that way, it should be me, not you.” Granny shifts her hold on a piece of the desk—I think it’s a desk?—and the guy beside her starts screwing in a cheap-looking screw.
Lord help me, my family is crazy.
“Granny, you can’t…you can’t just find out something like that and keep it a secret!”
“I’ve only known for a week. Mildred had a ring that’s been in her family for generations, and she wanted it cleaned. She told me about this great place off the French Quarter, so being a naturally curious and open-minded person, I looked it up and found out it was Luna who owned it. That tickled me right pink, so I got your cousin to look into—”