Of course, now that she was an adult she knew it took more than that to set the world back on course. If she’d learned anything, it was that sometimes nothing could make things right no matter how hard anyone tried.
That’s what her head knew, anyway. Her heart still believed that Grandpa Serge could fix anything and at that moment she wasn’t in the mood to argue the point.
“So,” her grandfather said, a twinkle in his eye. “Have you seen any old friends since you’ve been back, honey?”
She shrugged. “I went by Gen’s this morning.”
Damn. Her carefully constructed plan of playing it cool was, she could tell, being totally dismantled by the telltale blush spreading its way up her cheeks.
Grandpa Serge chuckled. “And did anybody happen to be there when you dropped by? Say, one of Gavin’s buddies?”
She rolled her eyes, abandoning the facade. “All right, we can stop dancing around it. Connor was there.”
“I’ve always liked that young man.”
“Oh, believe me. I’m aware.”
“He’d make a good husband.”
“Oh, Lord. Within two sentences we’ve gone from asking if he was at Gen’s house to marrying me off to the man?”
His eyes grew solemn. “I just want to know that there’s someone taking care of you, hon. I’m not going to be around forever. And that boy loves you.”
Her heart beat so hard in her chest that she thought she might be joining him in the cardiac ward if she couldn’t get it under control. “Wow. There are so many things in that statement that are just wrong. First of all, you will be around forever. I don’t care how crazy that sounds. It’s true and I’m not going to debate it. Secondly, I don’t know what makes you think he loves me but I can tell you pretty definitively that he’s angry as hell with me.”
He glossed right over the “be around forever” portion of her diatribe and skipped right to the “love” part. “Well, honey, I’ll tell you what. I know he loves you because it’s been written on his face every time he looked your way, ever since the first day he set eyes on you. And he still gets that hangdog look when he asks about you.
“But, as far as him being mad at you or loving you– well, those aren’t what you’d call mutually exclusive. Just ask your grandma. She’s loved me every day of the last fifty-four years we’ve been married and she’s spent at least half of them spitting mad at something I’ve done or said.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He was right about that. She didn’t know what it meant for her situation, but he was definitely right about that.