Page 18 of Enticing Her Love

“It is a great name. Why does he go by his middle name?”

“Because when he was young, a bully found out what his middle name was, and I guess he thought it was funny and made fun of him, so my grandfather told everyone to call him Bradshaw to show the little jerk that he didn’t care what he said, and it stuck.”

“Good for him. That takes guts.”

“He’s still a tough old bird. I can’t imagine what he was like as a kid.”

“Are you close with him?”

“Very. When I was a teenager, after we settled in at Ridgeport and stopped traveling so much, all I wanted was to get back out there and see more of the world, so my parents let me travel with my grandparents. It was awesome. My grandmother is amazing. She takes everything in stride, and my grandfather never treated me like a kid. He taught me about everything he was doing. He believes kids are never too young to learn how to do things right.”

“That explains how you knew so much when we did the story on the archaeological site last year.”

“Yes, it does. I could ask him anything as a kid. Still can. Nothing is off-limits.”

“He sounds like my grandmother. She’s always been my confidante.”

“Yeah?” His intrigued blue eyes found hers, and that new familiarity took hold, momentarily stealing her thoughts.

“Mm-hm.”

“It’s nice, having someone older who you trust and can be completely honest with. We talked about everything from girls to staying on a solid path and not getting lost in drugs and drinking. He’s always been big on life lessons. He used to say, Boy, stay grounded in the things that matter, and you’ll never be lonely. Family, helping others, and doing what you can to help keep this beautiful earth we’ve been gifted from being destroyed.”

“My grandmother’s like, Honey, you only live once. Go out there and have some fun.”

He laughed. “Sounds like she and my grandparents would get along well.”

“Your grandparents sound really special. Are they still active?”

“Very. My grandfather’s always cooking up some scheme, driving my grandmother crazy with trips and ideas for archaeological excursions. He’s made some incredible discoveries over the years, like a thousand-year-old mummy at a site in Peru and the skeleton of a theropod dinosaur.”

“Wow, exploring really is in your blood.”

“Yeah. When we were young, we traveled all over the globe. South America, Asia, you name it, we’ve probably been there. We’ve lived in homes and tents and huts. We spent a lot of time in the Torricelli Mountains of New Guinea, where my father discovered the northern glider back in the eighties, and the year before I was born, he and my mother spotted a new species of tree kangaroo in the same mountains. The golden-mantled tree kangaroo.”

“That’s wild. Is that kangaroo related to the golden-mantled monkeys we saw?”

“No. Golden-mantled just refers to the coloring across their shoulders.”

“I can’t imagine growing up on the move like that. Was it hard to make friends when you traveled? How did you go to school?”

“Are you doing a story on me, Steele?” he teased.

“Sorry. It’s just that on the island, community was as much a part of my life as my own family was. We went to school with the same kids every year and hung out with their families. I can’t imagine not having that.”

“It was all I knew, and I loved it, so I didn’t see it as hard or feel like I was missing out. My mom homeschooled us when we traveled remotely, and there were kids in some of the places we went, but even when there weren’t, I was never bored. I had my brothers and sister, and I was a curious kid. I wanted to know the whys and hows of everything. According to my mom, I came out of her womb asking how I got here. I’m pretty sure I drove my older siblings nuts. I was so fascinated by the places we went and the things we saw and did, I assumed everyone was. I didn’t want them to miss out on anything, so I was always rambling about it.”

She wondered if that was part of the reason he pushed her so hard, to make sure she didn’t miss out on anything. But she wasn’t about to ask and open up that can of worms when they were finally getting along, so she asked about his family, which she was curious about. Leni had told her a little about Seth, and she knew his brother Clay played for the New York Giants, but she’d never been interested enough to go looking for more information. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“One sister and three brothers. Big families are kind of a Braden thing.”

“When I interviewed your cousin Zev, he said something similar.” One of her early assignments had been to interview Zev Braden, a treasure hunter who had discovered a sunken pirate ship off the coast of Silver Island. Flynn had come down with the flu and hadn’t gone to Silver Island with her.

“That’s right. You interviewed Zev when I was on my deathbed. He’s my second cousin, by the way.”

“You weren’t dying. You had the flu.”

He chuckled. “What about you? Are you from a big family? You’ve mentioned a couple of siblings.”