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“Yes, sir,” Cal said.
I shut off the tap, my eyes going wide at the easy, utterly un-submissive way Cal had said sir. I couldn’t imagine saying it that way myself—asserting my own independence and even my own mastery over my life and my destiny even as I acknowledged another person’s authority. I felt my brow furrow hard, and I couldn’t help it, then: despite how red I knew my face had become, I had to turn around to see Cal, as he followed Jake out of the kitchen into the little office that lay just next to it.
He had his eyes on me, and I swallowed hard when I saw his lips curve into a smile. When our eyes met, he winked, very quickly—almost too fast for me to catch. My mouth opened, as if I wanted to say something like, Promise to tell me everything Jake says? But of course I stayed completely silent, once again frozen into place, this time with his wildflowers safely in the too-full jar.
“Grace, honey,” Shelly said, “that’s much too much water. Haven’t you ever gotten flowers before?”
My eyes were still locked on Cal’s. I saw him notice my immobility and the once-again-increasing red in my cheeks. His smile got a bit wider, and then he turned away to go into the office. Jake closed the door behind them.
“Grace!” Shelly said.
With yet another hard swallow I turned toward the table.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, looking at her. “I’ll… I’ll pour some out?”
Shelly nodded and then shook her head, a bemused smile on her face.
“Do that. Sometimes I can’t figure out whether you’re really a handful, honey, or just a girl with her head in the clouds.”
I bit my lip as I turned back to the sink and poured out half of the water in the jar.
“Ma’am,” I asked, summoning the courage because my back was to my foster mother, “what’s Jake telling Cal?”
I turned again, but I kept my eyes lowered, looking at the table as if I needed to find exactly the right spot to put the jar with the beautiful wildflowers my suitor had brought me.
“Wouldn’t you like them in your room, honey?” Shelly asked.
My mind had focused so intently on the question of what Jake’s almost audible voice had started saying, just through the office door, that I thought at first she meant the men, rather than the flowers. I looked up at her, startled, feeling a deep crease come onto my forehead.
Would I like them in my room? The heat surged in my face, and much worse, down between my legs as well. I raised my eyes to look into Shelly’s face. Her smile had given way to puzzlement.
“What?” I asked, and then, with a little shiver of anxiety, “I mean, what, ma’am?”
“The flowers, Grace,” she said, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like them in your room, on your dresser?”
“Oh,” I said, and my lips stayed in the ‘o’ shape as I tried to gather courage to repeat my question.
But Shelly had remembered.
“I expect some of it is what any father tells an older man who’s come to take his foster daughter out.”
Again, I had to swallow. The answer had led to too many additional questions that began to race in my mind: What’s that? and If that’s some of it, what’s the rest? led the pack, but Why the emphasis on older man? trailed by only a hair.
“But the New Modesty program you’re in has those reporting requirements, like you heard about at the meeting today, and they want to make sure that your foster daddy and your suitors stay on the same page when it comes to training you.”
My eyes went wide, and my jaw fell.
“So I expect Jake is telling Cal about what we did last night, and maybe making sure he knows you’re in training panties.”
My breath went raggedly in and out of my parted lips.
“I know it’s embarrassing, hon,” Shelly said, with a kind smile on her face, “but it’s for the best. It’s going to help Cal give you what you need, if he’s as good a match as the New Modesty folks say he is.”
“But…” I whispered, my brain whirling so quickly I had no idea which of the gazillion possible objections I could make. Shelly’s brow furrowed a little, and my hands tightened on the jar with the flowers as I twitched my hips, instinctively and embarrassingly trying to move my backside as far away from the office door as I possibly could.
I rushed the word out, the one that seemed like it could save me, at that moment.
“Ma’am… I… please?”
