Raw Rhythm by Cari Quinn & Taryn Elliott

Author:Cari Quinn & Taryn Elliott [Quinn, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rainbow Rage Publishing
Published: 2017-11-24T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Only for his grandparents would he stay up until nearly two am stringing popcorn balls and hanging vintage ornaments on trees and boughs of greenery.

And only for Ricki, who seemed captivated by every new thing they took out of their tower of boxes.

Every ornament came with a story. Every decoration had a past. They were mementoes of a family’s life, and though he wasn’t much for sentiment, he couldn’t help being moved at how excited Ricki was. This wasn’t her blood family—and no, they weren’t his either, but he’d convinced himself they might as well have been years ago. Ricki apparently felt the same, since she behaved as if they were hers too. She absorbed each story with a child-like wonder he would’ve scoffed at with anyone else, but was rapidly becoming addicted to when it came to her.

An ongoing problem, it seemed.

“So Lila made this? Really?” Ricki giggled and held up a little reindeer made out of clothespins with a red pom-pom nose and a shiny green pipe cleaner bow. “It’s so cute. Are there more?”

“Well, of course. Can’t have Rudolph without his reindeer, can you?” His grandmother chuckled and bent to retrieve another bunch of the little clothespin reindeers. They all had different colored pom-poms and different tinsel bows.

“They all have colored noses? How come?” Ricki added her Rudolph to the big tree directly across from the front door of the main house.

A small gift shop was off to the left beyond what they called the parlor where bakery items and beverages were served, and there was also another gift shop in the apple barn. Adding on a winery was their next big project. They were forever expanding the business.

Seemed like a hell of a lot of work to him, but he knew they loved it there. And God knows it was an escape for him, even more so now that he had to deal so much with the public and the press as part of his duties with the band.

The winery might just come in handy too. Shame it wasn’t open yet.

Also a shame he rarely drank.

“Leelee didn’t want any of the reindeer to feel not as special, so she gave them all the little poms. Always had a soft heart, that girl.”

Mal couldn’t help snorting. Everyone ignored him.

His grandparents knew quite well that he and Lila had issues, despite his attempts to not be obvious about it in their presence. His grandmother had chided him gently a few times, but she mostly let them do their own thing. He was sure she figured he’d come around someday all on his own.

The worst part of it was she was probably right.

Not that he now thought Lila was a saint. But neither was he. And it was easier to see with the passage of time that she hadn’t taken advantage of his father so much as the other way around. His father was a predatory dickhead, and Mal could only imagine how quickly he’d moved on a barely legal Lila when he met her.

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