“That’s a shame. Does he travel often for work?”
My mask slipped at the look on her face, the tightening of her lips and the crinkle of her nose, but I forced a smile. You’d think I’d be used to the assumptions by now. Is that your little brother? Are you the babysitter?
“I meant I’m not married at all.”
“Oh. It’s just you?”
“And my son, yes, ma’am.”
“Oh,” she repeated, tightening her hold on her purse and taking a step back like she thought my unmarried status might rub off on her. “He must look older than he is.” Bitch.
“No, he’s as old as he looks. His name is Jamie, and he’s eight.”
“And he’s yours?”
Like a motherfucking shapeshifter, my forced smile disappeared, transforming me into ten shades of pissed off. Of course. How silly of me to assume she’d think the child living with me was actually my own child. Lord knows it was more believable that I’d married an older guy with a kid than the idea I’d had him myself.
I widened my stance, crossing my arms and not even trying to sound polite. “I shoved his big ass head out of my vagina, so yeah, I’m pretty sure that makes him mine.”
Did I need to provide a stranger with that visual? Nope. But the look of horror I glimpsed on her face before she spun back toward her house was worth it in every way.
I’d been shamed more times in the last eight years than I could ever count, and ninety-nine percent of the time it was by women. Sister code only held up if you abided by their rules and views. Step out of line and women could be fucking vultures.
I huffed out of my nose like a bull, mentally calling her a bitch in every way I knew. She had a boy close to Jamie’s age. It was frustrating and disappointing to know she’d probably never allow her son to talk to mine.
I tried to brush the encounter off, squatting back down to pick up the mail for the second time. I’d made a nice pile, largest on bottom, smallest on top, and had begun carefully angling and twisting it Tetris-style to get it into the mailbox when I realized the owner of it was now standing on his porch. Staring at me.
Well, fuck. This looked bad.
Should I continue what I was doing and explain? Or give it a good shove and run? I stared at him, bug-eyed and frozen.
He must have realized I’d developed a gargoyle complex because he stepped off his porch and took several large strides toward me. “Something I can help you with?” His voice rang out across the distance, deep and raspy.
Trying to ignore the instantaneous clench in my gut, I clutched the pile to my chest, making sure to shut his box before walking over, eyes at my feet. “I’m sorry, I was outside, and I noticed your mailbox was open. I was trying to put it all back in so it wouldn’t blow away.”
I stopped a few paces away before I braved glancing up and making eye contact, and boy was it a mistake. The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and he was fan-your-face gorgeous. Easily the most attractive man I’d ever seen.
His espresso brown hair was shaved short on the sides but shaggy and unruly on top, and it stuck up in a few places like he’d just run one of his giant hands through it. It took one hell of a man to pull off messy bed hair. I was blatantly staring at that point, and his brows lowered over a pair of bright hazel eyes framed by long lashes.
Holy balls.
It wasn’t difficult to be taller than my five-and-a-half-feet height, but this man towered over me. He had to have been at least six foot three, six foot four. And if that wasn’t enough, the breadth of his shoulders was practically double mine, and they sloped down to a trim waist.
He was wearing a pair of rugged jeans that showed off tree trunk thighs and a fitted, long-sleeve black Henley that left very little of his biceps to the imagination.