Her mother, Mercedes, sat at the round café table next to an open window and sipped coffee as her guest and new friend Carmina spoke in soft, sweet tones.
Mercedes’s head turned as Lyrica came into the room, her eyes widening as she hurriedly set down the coffee.
“Excuse me,” she told Carmina distractedly. “I’ll be right back.”
Anger was churning so hard, so hot inside Lyrica that it was all she could do to hold it back as her mother gripped her arm and steered her quickly from the common room and across the foyer to the dining room, then into the kitchen.
“What in the world is wrong?” Mercedes demanded, her voice low as her gaze swept over her daughter. “Are you okay? Is Zoey well?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she bit out roughly. “But Natches Mackay is another story, Momma, because I’m going to brain him.”
Mercedes stepped back, staring at her daughter in shock. One hand propped on a still-shapely hip, she lifted the other to her face, her fingers covering her lips and chin thoughtfully for a few long seconds.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “What has Natches done now?”
“What has he done?” Lyrica all but snarled. “Not only can I not attend any party that goes on in this stupid county without being carded, having my brother called, or being asked politely to leave, but I guess whenever one of their know-it-all friends decides to pull me out of one, instead of waiting on permission, Natches thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to plow his fist into the man’s face. My best friend’s brother’s face, actually, and now Kyleene isn’t speaking to me at all.” Fists clenched, she lifted her hands and pressed them to her temples as a vicious groan rasped from her throat. “He’s insane.”
Mercedes was still staring at her in shock. Her mother evidently couldn’t believe Natches would stoop so low, either.
“Oh, dear.” She breathed out softly. “So Kye is angry with you?”
Lyrica breathed out roughly, shaking her head at the futility of what she seemed to be facing before answering. “Kye’s furious. And I can’t even blame her.”
“How can she blame you for what transpired between her brother and your cousin?” Her mother sounded confused now. “Dear, it wasn’t your fault. It seems a misunderstanding, nothing more. You know how they get when they believe the wrong sort of man is paying attention to you and your sisters. He likely simply misconstrued the situation . . .”
Lyrica flushed heatedly. She couldn’t help it.
The moment her mother even hinted that Graham was attempting to seduce her, she flushed so brilliantly there was no hiding the truth from her too-perceptive mother.
“Oh.” Her mother drew out the word slowly. “So, exactly what did Natches see, Lyrica, that made him so irate that his fist and Graham’s face became so well acquainted?”
Oh, didn’t her mother have a way with words? And tones. She was speaking to Lyrica as though her daughter was five and had been caught attempting to distract attention from her own actions.
“Momma, whatever Natches may have seen, he saw because he invaded the privacy of a room that was off limits. I am over twenty-one. I am not mentally deficient, and neither am I in any way unable to decide for myself who to take for a lover,” Lyrica stated, calmer now, but no less furious. “And I won’t lose my friendship with Kye because Natches got a little pissy over the fact that I kissed Graham. Not the other way around.”
Mercedes breathed in deeply, a frown forming at her brow as she slowly straightened the hem of her blouse over her jeans. “Lyrica, you know how very protective he and the others can be. Perhaps Natches didn’t see you initiate the kiss . . .”
Lyrica gave her head a hard shake as she turned from her mother and paced to the window looking out on the backyard. “He knew. He knew and it didn’t matter to him, Momma.”
Of course, there had been the way Graham had been holding her, his hips so obviously wedged between her thighs. The scene her cousin walked in on had been incredibly intimate. Incriminating.
“It’s not as though either of us is married or breaking any sort of rule.” She turned back and glared at her mother. “I’m a grown woman, not a teenager with no understanding of the word ‘sex.’”
Her mother winced. She couldn’t imagine any of her daughters having sex yet, Lyrica knew. As far as her mother was concerned, they were all still virgins.
“Lyrica, you know how the Mackay men can be. If Kye is truly your friend, then she will forgive you. She will understand the ways of men such as these.”
“Momma, that is not good enough.” Lyrica dismissed the idea that this could be fixed by simply understanding how her brother and cousins worked. “I won’t live like this. I warned Dawg I won’t. I want Natches to stop this now.”
“Lyrica, you cannot control Natches . . .”
?
?Where’s Tim?” She was tired of discussing it.
“How is Tim supposed to fix this?” Mercedes asked, surprised.
How the hell was Lyrica supposed to know?