“Yeah. I just dropped my cup of coffee.” Which she hadn’t even had a sip of. Typical. She’d downed her first cup almost as soon as Ed had left the house. He’d never know that she hadn’t eaten first. And she’d needed that cup. Desperately. Then as she’d glanced through her messages from her brothers, each one more demanding and bossier than the next, she’d decided that she needed another cup before answering them. Then calling her mother.
There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world to help her with that.
“Crap. Stay where you are. You’ve got bare feet. If you step on a piece of that, you could get hurt. Did you burn yourself?”
“I’m fine. Just clumsy.”
“Yeah? You don’t really strike me as the clumsy type.”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
Kiesha grimaced. “Sorry, bestie. I would have texted, but Ed won’t give me your number.” As she spoke, she was grabbing a broom and pan from a cupboard. Obviously, she knew her way around Ed’s house.
“Here, hand it to me,” she said. “I’ll clean it up. I made the mess.”
“Uh-uh. You have bare feet. Here, I’ll lift you out of the way.”
“Kiesha!” She stepped back as the other woman reached for her. Like she could lift her?
Unfortunately, she stepped right onto a piece of ceramic. Sharp pain sliced at the sole of her foot.
“Fudge!”
“What? You want fudge?” Kiesha asked, staring at her strangely. “I haven’t made any in years, but I think I could try.”
“No, I say fudge instead of swearing,” she explained as she limped her way over to the counter and sat on one of the kitchen stools.
“Oh. That’s weird.”
Really? That was weird. This whole town was insane and her using fudge instead of fuck was weird?
“My mother doesn’t believe that women should swear,” she explained. Then she thought about that for a minute. Here she was at thirty-four, using ridiculous words like fudge instead of fuck because of her mommy. Maybe Kiesha was right the first time. She was weird.
“Shit! Are you bleeding?” Kiesha asked.
Georgina glanced over at the kitchen floor. There were spots of blood across the white tiles.
“Shoot! Is there something I can use to clean that up?”
“Who cares about cleaning it up? Let me look at your foot. Ed is gonna kill me if I let you get injured.”
She stiffened. “Did Ed send you to babysit me?”
“No. He has no idea I’m here. I waited until he was definitely gone until I snuck in. I’ll get the first aid kit, we need to stop that bleeding. Shit, did you burn yourself?”
She looked at where Kiesha was pointing to the top of her feet where there were splotches of pink. “That’s nothing. I can barely feel it.”
Unlike the cut which stung like a bitch.
“Stay there.” Kiesha wiggled a finger at her then raced off.
With a sigh, she glanced over at the mess. How was she going to explain the broken mug and the cut on her foot?
Kiesha returned, practically skidding along the floor in her fluffy socks. They went up over her knees and were striped black and white with a panda’s face at the top of them.
They were freaking adorable.
“I love your socks,” she blurted out before slamming a hand over her mouth. Darn it. She really needed to stop blurting out what she was thinking.