Kristen Ashley - Raid

I’d seen that grin. It was beautiful. I’d seen him smile. That was even more beautiful. Way back in the day, I’d heard his lush, rumbling laughter. Sublime.

But he’d obviously never grinned at me.

I was right. It was beautiful.

Beyond beautiful.

Life altering.

I froze.

Entirely.

Every inch of me.

And I stared.

“Everything okay here?” Krista asked, coming curiously late to this harrowing incident I knew I’d play over and over in my head, wanting to do every second differently and kicking myself that I didn’t.

I forced myself to speak, and this time it wasn’t high. It was squeaky.

“Me first?” I asked Raiden.

His grin got bigger. My insides melted and he jerked up his chin.

I straightened to standing.

“Here’s another can, Hanna,” Mrs. Bartholomew said as Raiden rose to his full height. In other words, towering over all of us.

I turned to her and took the can she was offering. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”

She gave me a smile then looked up at Raiden. “Raid, tell your Mom I said hi.”

“Will do,” he mumbled.

She grinned at him and took off.

Raiden opened the plastic bag, indicating to me I should divest myself of my pile of cat food tins, and I had to lean forward to dump in all the cans I had clutched to my chest. This I did, excruciatingly aware that he could see right down my shirt.

That was when I thanked God I’d tossed all my crappy underwear five months ago and loaded up on the good stuff during my now-not-infrequent trips to Denver.

“I think you got them all,” Krista shared, and I looked to her, lifting a hand, tucking my hair behind my ear and wishing I was anywhere but there.

And I meant anywhere.

A sweatshop in China. At a phone making marketing calls to people who hated marketing calls and thus would abuse me before they hung up on me.

Anywhere.

Krista was scanning the floor for cans then she looked between Raiden and me. “You guys conked noggins pretty hard. You good?”

“I am, but Hanna seems a bit dazed,” Raiden answered and I stopped breathing.

He said my name.

He said my name!

I looked up at him, my lips parted.

Then I realized he thought I’d been dazed by our head knock and that was not good.

I had to get myself together.

I pulled in a breath, and on the exhale I reached out and gently took the bag from him, then assured them both in my normal voice (thank God), “I’m fine. Just… I have a lot on my mind. But I’m okay.” I looked up at Raiden. “I’m also klutzy. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, honey. You didn’t run into me, I wouldn’t have a chance to smell your perfume. Made my day,” he replied, and I blinked.

Oh cripes. He called me honey in that rumbling voice.

And he was being (could it be?) kind of flirty.

God!

I had to keep it together.

I did this (just barely), then I ran through my morning again, seeing as I was a perfume whore. I had at least twenty bottles of it. It could be anything.

I settled on a morning memory, realizing it was Agent Provocateur, and deciding the minute I got home I was ordering another bottle (or seven).

“I best get back to work,” Krista mumbled.

I tore my eyes from Raiden to look at her and saw she was looking at the floor, grinning like an idiot.

She took off.

Raiden spoke again.

“You Miss Mildred’s grandkid?” he asked.

“Sorry?” I asked back.

“Krista said she was goin’ to Miss Mildred’s this weekend. Heard her grandkid was takin’ care of her. You her?”

He didn’t know who I was.

I’d lived for twenty-three years convinced I was in love with him, no matter how totally crazy that was, and he didn’t know who I was.

He heard Krista say my name.

He had no clue.

“Great-grandkid,” I told him.

“You lookin’ after her?” he asked.

I nodded, still coping with the devastation that we’d played tug of war together at Grams’s picnic and he’d been on my team three years running, and he didn’t know me.

“How’s she doin’?” Raiden went on.

“Great. Ninety-eight going on twenty,” I replied, and he awarded me another smile.

I must have been getting better with practice seeing as that one only made my scalp and kneecaps tingle.

“Least that doesn’t change,” he murmured.

He was right about that. Mildred Boudreaux never changed. Even acts of God couldn’t change her. I knew this because, when Grams was sixteen she got struck by lightning, wandered home, clothes still smoking (or that was how the story was told, incidentally, by Grams) and asked her mother what was for dinner.

“Listen, I need to go,” I stated and his head tipped slightly to the side, which I wished he hadn’t done. Because it was just a head tip, but being his handsome head, his fabulous hair, his amazing eyes, his attention on me, it seemed both cool and hot and I wanted to ask him to do it over and over again just so I could watch.

I pulled myself together (again) and kept talking.

“I’m really sorry about bumping into you and, well… then banging heads.”

“I’m good, long’s you’re okay,” he replied.

“Peachy,” I muttered then forced a smile. “Sorry again and… later.”

Then I took off, hoofing it by him and walking fast to my bike.

I dumped the cat food bag in my cutesie, girlie basket, mounted the saddle, put my feet to the pedals and took off, heading straight to Grams’s and not looking back at the pet store.

This was good, seeing as if I did I would have seen Raiden Miller, arms crossed on his chest, sexy smile playing at his mouth, watching me go.

One week, one day later…

I opened the door to Grams’s place and shouted, “Hey, Grams! I’m here!”

To this I got shouted back, “I’m on the back porch, precious. Soakin’ in sun and drinkin’ sweet tea. Bring the pitcher, I’m low!”

I grinned at the hardwood floors and lugged in the bags of groceries, stopping when Spot came into my vision.

He sat on his ample booty in the hall and stared up at me.

He was white with big splotches of gray. He was one of the prettiest cats I’d ever seen. He was also the orneriest. And the fattest.

He wasn’t just fat, he was solid. Twenty-two pounds of compacted cat held in by soft white and gray fur.

It was good he was beautiful because he was a pain in the patoot.

Like when he got in a lovable mood no matter how infrequent that was and you were lying on your back on the couch and he jumped up on you and settled in, there was a good possibility he could crush you.

You didn’t move him, though.

There were two reasons for this.

One, he could turn at any time. I’d had to have his front claws lasered since he kept clawing Grams and breaking skin.

Two, he was so pretty that when he was lovey you took advantage.

“Meow,” he said.

“Meow right back at ‘cha, buddy,” I replied.

Luckily, that worked for him, and instead of complaining, hissing and attacking my ankles, he turned and waddled toward the backdoor.

I went to the kitchen, dumped the groceries, grabbed the pitcher of sweet tea out of the fridge and headed out back.

Grams used to be my height, but she’d shrunk. And on top of that, she was stooped so now she seemed tiny. She was also wrinkles from head-to-toe. This was partly because she was old as dirt. This was mostly because she was a sun fiend. I’d had to buy her one of those outdoor heaters, because, even in the winter, if it was sunny she’d grab afghans, put on slippers, sit outside and stare at the sun glinting off the snow, wrapped up in wool.

Mildred Boudreaux loved everything, everyone and every moment of her life (except when her husband died, of course, and when her son, my Granddad, died, and when her three other children died, obviously).

She was just that kind of person.

But she loved some things and some moments better.

And any moment that included sun, she was all for.

I pushed open the back screen door and turned, mouth open to tell her I had more groceries in the car to bring in, when I stopped dead.

This was because Gram was sitting in her cute Grandma dress, her blue hair newly set, because Sharon from Betsy’s came out every Thursday morning to give her a wash and set, and it was Thursday. Her feet were up, red painted toenails wriggling in the afternoon sun that was peeking under the roof of the porch. And Raiden Ulysses Miller was sitting in the loveseat kitty-corner to her. His arm wide, resting on the back of the seat, long, strong, masculine fingers wrapped around a glass of sweet tea.

What on earth?

“Look here, precious girl, I got a gentleman caller,” Grams announced, and Raiden’s eyes, already on me, smiled.

My stomach dropped.

“Well, chère, you gonna say hey?” Grams prompted.

“Uh… hey,” I mumbled to Raiden.

“Hey,” he didn’t mumble back.

“You didn’t bring yourself a glass,” Grams noted, staring at the pitcher.

I tore my eyes from Raiden’s gorgeousness lounged on Grams’s back porch loveseat and looked at my beloved great-grandmother.

“I don’t like sweet tea, Grams,” I reminded her.

“I didn’t say you had to fill it with tea, precious. But you gotta have a cold one, you sit in the sun,” she replied.