A Tender Touch: A Donnelley Brother's Novel (Logan Point Book 4) by Alannah Carbonneau Page B

you.”
    “Me?” I asked in surprise. “Why me?”
    “Well, I have this tickling suspicion that my only daughter is keeping something from me.”
    I tensed. “I’m not keeping anything from you?”
    She popped a hip. “Really?”
    I nodded innocently, but firmly. “Really.”
    “Then why was I escorted to this cabin by Luke Donnelley?” My mother asked with a tone that suggested I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. This shocked me, because if anyone was caught with her hand in the cookie jar, it had always been my mother. She continued without missing a beat. “The man whose house we’re having dinner at tonight, because apparently he’s making you his mother’s famous lasagna. And since you forgot your mother was coming to visit you, your mother has politely informed that very sexy man, that she’ll be crashing on his very well-thought date.”
    My face heated and I struggled to remain calm, but with every passing second, my steady composure was slipping. “Mom...”
    “Don’t mom, me, Ember.” She raised a brow at me. “Have you been seeing someone - without telling me?”
    “I - no.” I shook my head.
    My mom didn’t seem to hear me. She clapped her hands together loudly, and unlike the forty something woman she was, she started jumping up and down with youthful excitement. My mom wasn’t old - at all - but she didn’t typically act like a blushing teen either.
    “Oh, Ember, you don’t know how happy I am to hear you’re finally dating.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought there would never be hope of grandbabies.”
    “Mom, I’m not dating Luke - wait - grandbabies?” My mother’s mouth closed into a firm line as she regarded me seriously, obviously coming down from her moment of euphoric high. I continued before she could say anything else. “You want grandbabies? Since when?”
    “Ember,” she shook her head.
    When she didn’t say anything more, I prodded. “Well, since when have you wanted grandbabies?”
    “What parent doesn’t want grandbabies?” She huffed. “You’re all grown up now, Ember. I’d say it’s about time you started dating, and I don’t know...” she flailed her hands. “Thinking about marriage and babies.”
    I pressed my fingers to my temples, as though that might keep my swelling brain inside my skull. I mean, this was just too much.
    “I’m confused.” I admitted breathlessly. “I don’t - I don’t think I’m hearing you right.”
    She sighed. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, honey, you know that. Your life is for you to live, but since you’ve been gone, I’ve been praying you would maybe have a chance to live your life for you - rather than always trying to live it for me.”
    “I don’t...”
    “You’ve spent the last four years in University and never once did you go out on a date. I know for a fact that you’ve been asked, sweetie. You’re a beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful woman and any man would be considered lucky to have you - so I know you’ve been asked out.” She sighed. “So if you’re not denying the men because of me, then why?”
    “Mom, I can’t talk about this.” I pleaded with her, with both my eyes and words. If she made me tell her the reason I’d never took a chance and dated, it would break her. My mother was a kind-hearted woman who buried herself in the animals she rescued. She loved with her entire heart and when she gave her love, she never reclaimed it. My mother was all these wonderful, amazing things, but she was also weak.
    Actually, my mother was the weakest person I had ever known - and I knew deep in the marrow of my bones - that if I were honest in this moment - I would break everything that was left of my mother. I knew if I told her I was afraid of becoming her, that I was terrified of loving so completely and losing so unfairly, that I would become the weak woman she was.
    I didn’t want to be my mother.
    If she knew this, the little that my father had