The Davis Years (Indigo) by Nicole Green Read Free Book Online Page A

pancakes.
    When Mary saw what waited for her in the kitchen, she clapped her hands. “Oh. Jemma. You didn’t have to go to all of this trouble.”
    “Just a small way of showing my appreciation of you letting me stay here while I’m in town.”
    Mary crushed Jemma to her chest. “I wouldn’t have you stay anywhere else. You don’t know how happy I am to have you here again, do you?”
    Jemma smiled. “Let’s dig in before it gets cold.”
    Once they had food on their plates, they started talking about the store and how things had changed since Jemma had worked there.
    Mary wiped her mouth on a napkin and then set it aside. “Jemma, there’s one thing I always wanted to ask you, but I never wanted to get in your business. When you went with that boy, when I covered for you with Lynette and told her you were at the store those times, was he part of why you left? I knew where you were going, but I didn’t want to meddle and I certainly never went to Lynette, but I hate the thought of anyone hurting you. But if I thought he hurt you . . .”
    Jemma pushed her plate away. “You know what, Mary, looking back on it, I think we hurt each other. All I know is we were never any good for each other. I don’t know if I could ever be good for anyone. But us two? We could only cause disasters to happen.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    Jemma twisted her right-hand diamond ring around her finger. She’d bought it on the day she’d turned down a marriage proposal from her on-again, off-again college boyfriend. It’d seemed appropriate at the time. “I never really told you what it was like living with Lynette. I don’t like to talk about it.” The only person she’d ever talked about it with was Davis.
    “All I know is it must have been a burden for you. A terrible, terrible burden.” Mary reached across the table for her hand. She gave it.
    “It still is.”
    “You shouldn’t let it be. You owe it to yourself to let go.”
    Tears spilled over Jemma’s cheeks. She could only bear to see it in bits and pieces, so that was how she told Mary about what it was like living with Lynette for the first seventeen years of her life. Starting small was better than not starting at all.
    “Oh, you poor baby. You never had anybody to love you, did you?” Mary came around the table to stand behind Jemma’s chair.
    “I had Emily Rose and Wendell.”
    “You had good friends, yes. But that can’t take the place of a mother’s warmth, a mother’s comfort—you were robbed of that, Jemma.” Tears stood in Mary’s eyes as she spoke. “I never had a daughter, Jemma. I never had anybody to give those things to.”
    “I never had a mom.” Jemma turned around in her chair and looked up at Mary. “You can have a daughter now. If you want me.”
    “Of course I want you, Jemma.” Mary pulled Jemma up out of her chair and hugged her close.

Chapter 7
    It was one thing to know better and another one altogether to do better. Thursday night, Davis leaned against his car, toying with a pack of cigarettes although he’d quit for what must have been the fortieth time that morning. It was too hot to quit smoking. Derring was in the middle of a heat wave, and if he was going to be that uncomfortable, he at least ought to be able to have a smoke when he wanted it.
    His shift had ended a few minutes earlier. He didn’t want to go home and he didn’t want to stay at the restaurant—they might put him back to work if he hung around. He didn’t know where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do.
    Seth had called again. Left a message that it was urgent for Davis to get back to him. Davis didn’t want to hear anything Seth had to say. He probably wanted to tell Davis to pack his bags—that his brothers had found a way to sell the house out from under him.
    Davis tapped his fingers against the cellophane, thinking about Jemma and how dumb he’d been and how stupid it was to let himself think about something starting between them. Jemma