“Good morning, darlings. How’d we all sleep? Good?”
“So good.” Luke bounced over to give her a hug. “You?”
“Excellent.” She smiled fondly, making even my black rock of a heart soften.
When Audrey had walked out on me, leaving me with a fledgling business and a newborn baby, he and I had moved in with my mother. After the company had taken off, I had bought this big luxurious penthouse in a new development in downtown Sydney.
She’d been worried about us moving out at first. Until I’d told her I’d chosen this particular place as our home because it had a separate bedroom, bathroom, and lounge that could be hers if she wanted it. She hadn’t taken more than a second to accept.
Once that had been settled, Mom helped me pick out the finishing touches for the place and especially for her space. It had seemed like a fun process, but she’d complained about the prices of things far too often.
Eventually, I’d asked the developer to send me a list of the available options without prices on it, and our joint effort had gone much better from there.
Once the renovation had been completed, Mom moved in with us. She still had her house in the suburbs, but she only went there sometimes when Luke went to Audrey’s. For the rest of her time, she helped me raise him.
Without her, I’d have been lost and I knew it. Brushing a kiss against her cheek as I hugged her good morning, I snagged one of the fresh muffins off the tray.
“Ouch.” I came very close to cursing but caught myself just in time. “Wow. That’s hot.”
“Imagine that.” Mom chuckled, patting me on the arm as she balanced the tray in her mitt and placed it on the kitchen table. “You’d have sworn they just came out of the oven.”
“Ha ha,” I replied, dropping the muffin on a plate. “Yeah, imagine that.”
“You did see me pull them out of the oven, didn’t you?” Amusement shone from her eyes even as she tried to keep a straight face. “Or maybe that’s just because you don’t know what an oven does. See, it’s this device that—”
I chucked a paper napkin in her direction, but she neatly sidestepped the harmless thing and grinned at me. “That’s enough of that, young man.”
“Stop calling me that,” I grumbled, but even Luke laughed at me.
My son and my mother shared the same green color of my eyes. Luke’s hair was brown but a lighter shade than mine. Mom’s was graying now, and she kept it short but spiky.
Mom was what people called “funky” for an older woman. She had an affinity for wearing bright colors, had a few purple bits streaking through her silver hair, and lived for flavored coffee.
“She’ll stop calling you that if you stop calling her Grammy,” Luke said, a gentle smile on his lips. “She says it every morning.”
“Oh, she does, does she?” I locked his head in a grip in the crook of my elbow and messed up his slightly longer on top hair.
Luke squealed with laughter and wriggled out of my loose grip. “Yes, she does.”
“At least one of you has ears,” Mom teased. “Tea, honey?”
“Please,” he said.
I nodded. “I’m on it. More of that awful stuff you insist is coffee, Mom?”
I dodged her when she tried to smack me upside the head, chuckling as I danced across the kitchen. Mom planted her hands on her hips and fixed me with a mock glare. “It is coffee. For the refined palate.”
“Cotton-candy flavor is refined?” I arched a brow at her, grinning when I saw her shaking her head. “Now see, I could understand any of the nutty flavors. Cotton candy is really just taking it a step too far.”
“Snob,” she retorted, sinking down in her chair at the kitchen table. It was an antique we’d ordered off the internet. She’d have kicked me in the shin if she knew how much it cost, but luckily, she didn’t know.
She ran her fingers along the top of the smooth wooden surface lovingly. “Good coffee, good food, and good friends is what makes the world go ‘round, darling. It hasn’t got anything to do with the expense associated with it.”
“Sure.” I knew better than to argue with her.
Grabbing our mugs out of the sleek stainless-steel-fronted dishwasher, I fixed myself and Mom our coffee and made Luke his tea. After carrying the drinks to the table, I got the condiments out of the fridge and had to go back when I’d forgotten the peanut butter.
“Are you excited for your visit with your mother, honey?” Mom was asking him when I joined them at the table.
Luke flashed her a grin and nodded enthusiastically. “We’re going to the museum. Jett might take us to a game, too. He said he had tickets for them, but he was going to try to get an extra one for me.”
“That’s great, Luke,” I said, biting back the retort at the tip of my tongue. Jett and Audrey would have known they were going to have Luke for the weekend when they’d bought the tickets, which meant he’d gone ahead and gotten them without even thinking about my son.
Unfortunately, stuff like that happened all the time. Thankfully, Luke wasn’t at a stage where he was putting it all together yet. He was still really excited whenever he went over there, and I pretended to be excited right along with him.
“We haven’t watched rugby for a while,” Mom said to me, widening her eyes and shaking her head. She knew where my mind had gone to, and she was silently warning me not to say anything about it.
She didn’t have to, but both of us needed a reminder at times. I shrugged my shoulders and wrapped my fingers around my mug. “Yeah, I know. Maybe we should look into catching a match later this month, too.”
Just in case Jett hadn’t managed to get Luke a ticket and he ended up being left behind with a babysitter again, at least he’d have a game with us to look forward to. He perked up, shooting me a smile as he slathered peanut butter all over his muffin.
“That would be great. I love rugby.” He beamed at me. “Just like you used to, Dad.”
“I still love it,” I said.
“He’s just not in shape enough to play anymore,” Mom joked, winking at me as she sipped her cotton-candy coffee crap.
I took a muffin off the tray and arched a brow at her. “I’m not in shape enough to play anymore? If I remember correctly, you used to take Shane and me to the park and play with us. Think you’d still be able to keep up?”
“I’ll keep up with you all right. All I’d have to do is pick a park near a high-end, open-air parking lot or near the beach. You and Shane would both be too busy ogling to pay much attention to little old me. Luke and I could be a team. We’d win for sure.”
“Really?” I scoffed. “You think it’d be that easy to distract us? When we’re on the field, we’re like robots, Mom. We have single-minded focus and we play like machines.”
She pursed her lips to keep from laughing. “I distinctly remember a game where Shane tripped over the poor water boy because he was too busy trying to catch the attention of a certain cheerleader.”
I groaned, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Fine. You got me there. Maybe I’ll just play against both of you by myself.”
“You could try.” She smiled sweetly, taking another sip of her drink.