Page 27
Today had been one of the hottest days of the year, and the heat had made work especially exhausting. He had not only battled the heat and worked hard, but his brain kept taking him back to his time with Mimi the night before.
Had he gotten through to her at all? Had he made her understand all the forces that had been at play when he decided to leave? Had he made at least a dent in the armor she obviously had wrapped around her heart where he was concerned? He used to be able to read her every mood, her every emotion, but she was far more difficult to read now.
The few women he had seen in Texas hadn’t held a candle to Mimi. He’d taken then to dinner mostly out of boredom and then never called them again. His heart had always been with the woman he had foolishly left.
Maybe he was pushing her too hard, expecting too much too soon. He’d spent the last five years loving her, and she had probably spent the last five years hating him.
He needed to prove himself to her, and that would take time. All he could do was keep showing up for her and Danny. In fact, he was eager now to get home, take a shower, grab something to eat and then head to her shanty.
He definitely wanted to get there earlier than any of the other men who might show up so he would have a little time alone with just her and Danny and Gramps.
He got into his work pickup, his stomach tightening as he thought of those other men.
It was easy to see that they were all crazy for her. And they had been there for her when she was pregnant and immediately after Danny’s birth. They had a real history with her that he didn’t have.
Damn, he wished he had been there. He wished he would have been there to rub her back and feel the movement of the baby in her belly. He would have supported her through the pregnancy. He definitely wished he would have been there to see the birth of his son. He’d missed out on the whole miracle of his son being born.
Even though she had told him several times that Danny wasn’t his, he knew with a certainty that Danny was his. The little boy looked just like him and was the right age. There was no way in hell that he would ever believe that when he’d left Black Bog, Mimi had gone through a bout of promiscuity. The very idea was absolutely ludicrous.
He pulled up in front of the garage door of his big house, parked and then went inside. He headed straight to the main bedroom, eager to shower off the sweat and grime of the day.
This house had never felt like a home, not since his mother had left. She’d not only cut ties with his father, but with Johnny as well. His last memory of her had been her kissing him on the cheek and telling him how much she loved him. She’d smelled of lilacs and vanilla, and her hands had been warm and soft. Then she’d told him a boy needed a father, and she’d left and he’d never seen or heard from her again.
Johnny had seen old photos of his mother. She’d been a beautiful woman with black hair and bright blue eyes. There were times when Johnny had wondered if his father’s hatred toward him was because Johnny looked just like her. Of course, none of that mattered now.
As he got into the shower, thoughts of his mother were stuffed to the back of his mind. He was eager to see how Mimi would react to him tonight after their date last night.
Once he was out of the shower he pulled on a pair of clean jeans, sprayed on his deodorant and then put on a light blue polo. The very last thing he did was liberally spray on the cologne that Mimi had once told him she loved.
He left the bedroom and headed into the kitchen. He’d worked up a good appetite since lunch and was grateful he had leftover chicken and rice to warm up. As he sat at the kitchen table with dinner, his mind filled with thoughts of Mimi.
Almost six years ago, he first saw her in the café where she and three other young women were having dinner. He was immediately captivated by her beauty and the warmth she exuded from clear across the room.
He’d been with a couple of his buddies, also there to have dinner. Throughout the meal, Johnny hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her. There was just something about her that drew him in. It was beyond her physical beauty. He was drawn to her energy.
When she and her friends were getting up to leave, Johnny approached her. He introduced himself and asked for her phone number, surprised when she actually gave it to him.
That had been the beginning of a beautiful relationship of love and passion. And he’d allowed his father’s last words to him to destroy it all.
He’d been such a damned fool. At least now Mimi knew why he left Black Bog. Hopefully she understood the demons that had driven him out of town and away from her. However, understanding and forgiving were two very different things. He was eager to see her this evening to find out if she had softened at all toward him.
With this thought in mind, he finished eating, cleaned up the kitchen, grabbed his car keys and took off. It was early, but as always, he wanted to arrive before the other men did. He wondered if the three men had shown up last night at the shanty expecting their usual time with her only to learn she was out with him. What had their reactions been to that news?
It was ridiculously hot, and they still had to get through the month of August. He was looking forward to September, when the temperatures usually cooled off a bit and the humidity wasn’t as bad. That would certainly make it more pleasant for him and his men to finish the work on the gazebo. However, they should be finished with the gazebo long before the nicer weather rolled around.
He parked at the swamp’s entrance and suddenly remembered the very first time he’d walked into the junglelike landscape to get to Mimi’s shanty. As a townie, he had never had reason to be in the swamp before, and he would freely admit he was nervous as hell that first time.
He’d heard all the negative things about the swamp, like the gators and snakes and other dangerous animals. What he hadn’t expected was the absolute beauty of it. It hadn’t taken him long at all to fall completely in love with the swamp that had produced a wonderful young woman like Mimi.
What was even more appealing was Mimi and Gramps’s shanty. It held a warmth and welcome that he’d never felt in his own home, and Gramps had become a loving surrogate father to him.
And fool that he was, he had ruined it all.
Nerves jumped in the pit of his stomach as the shanty came into view. He walked up the bridge and knocked on the door.
She answered, as always looking beautiful. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a light pink short-sleeved, button-down blouse. “Hi, Johnny.” She smiled at him, and he could have sworn there was a little more warmth in her eyes than he’d seen there before. “Come on in.”
“Johnny,” Danny said with delight. “Are you going to play with me tonight?”
