FML.
“Mom,” Jas called out as they went inside the house. “Where are you?”
A woman came bustling out of the kitchen, Doodle happily padding along at her side.
Jas’s mother didn’t look anything like Katrina had imagined. She’d had a vague picture of a woman as tall and imposing as her father and sons were.
Jas’s mom was ethereal, petite and slender. Her henna-red hair was braided and hung over her shoulder. Her skin was a light, honey-kissed brown, her eyes big and lined with kohl in her smooth and youthful face. Despite the fall weather, she wore a long gauzy skirt and off-the-shoulder top, round blue designer sunglasses perched on top of her head. “Right here, my love,” she said. Her voice was breathy.
Jas accepted her hug and looked down at Doodle. The big canine thumped her tail and gazed adoringly at Tara. “Some guard dog you are, Doodle.”
Though Katrina would have given anything to hide shyly behind Jas and escape his mother’s notice, she moved forward. “Doodle’s not a guard dog. I don’t want her to ever feel like she has to earn her keep.” Katrina patted her thigh and Doodle obediently moved over to her side. “Hi, I’m Katrina. You’ve met my dog.” She wiped her hand on her jeans and held it out. She hadn’t been so nervous to meet Bikram and Andrés. They were far more imposing physically, and had been slow to warm up to her.
But this was Jas’s mother. She’d never met the mother of the man she lov—was sleeping with, and she’d hoped to do it when she wasn’t a mess.
“Doodle is a beauty, and greeted me so sweetly. Call me Tara.” The woman beamed at her and spread her arms out. “I feel like I know you. I don’t want to attack you with a hug, but would love to give you one.”
Bemused, Katrina scratched her head. “Oh, well. I like hugs, but I’m afraid I’m a little messy right now. We were, um . . .”
“Working outside,” Jas supplied.
“Yes, working.”
“You put a guest to work on the farm, Jasvinder?”
“I love working,” Katrina hurriedly said. Which wasn’t a total lie. She did like to be industrious.
“Well, I’m a farm girl.” Tara’s sharp brown gaze tracked over her. “A little sweat never hurt me. Come on over here.”
Tara’s hug was lovely, and gave Katrina the same sense of homecoming Daisy’s had given her. Katrina took a step back and smiled, her anxiety melting away. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”
“And you. I always liked Hardeep. He was a good friend. I know he passed a while ago, but my condolences.”
She relaxed. She’d tried not to take Andrés’s annoyance with Hardeep to heart, but it was nice to have this, too. “Thank you. He was a great man.”
“The nicest. So generous too. Whenever he visited, it was like Christmas in whatever month of the year it was.”
Jas cleared his throat. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
“I came by to see if you were home. The door was open, and I wanted to ensure your kitchen and toiletries were stocked.”
“I mean, what are you doing here, on the farm, in Yuba City?”
“Oh, I thought, my whole family’s here, I should take a couple days off and stop in, too.” Tara turned to Katrina. “I’m a teacher, so is Jas’s stepfather. Unfortunately, he couldn’t arrange the time off, or he’d be here to meet you as well.”
Jas grunted. “What a coincidence that you decided to drive up after last night’s—”
“What’s all that hay doing outside?”
Jas rocked back on his heels. “It’s . . . being stored here.”
“That’s weird.” Tara moved closer to Jas and reached way up. They all stared at the tiny piece of hay she retrieved from behind his ear. “What kind of work were you doing out there?”
Katrina scratched her nose. FML indeed. “Jas, um, I mean, we had a mishap.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We were . . . making hay.” Was that the right word? Or phrase? Damn it, why had she never read any articles about farming.
“Interesting.”
“Katrina, why don’t you go shower?”
She grasped on to Jas’s suggestion like a lifeline. “Yes, let me do that. I’ll be quick.” She gave them both a wave and escaped, Doodle panting at her side as she accompanied her upstairs.
JAS WAITED UNTIL he heard Katrina close her bedroom door before he yanked the piece of hay out of his mother’s fingers and tossed it aside. “Damn it, Mom.”
Another woman might have scolded her son for cursing, but his free spirit mother had never been a conventional mom. Tara dimpled. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’re so cute when you blush.”
“You embarrassed her.”
“By implying you two were rolling around in the hay together? I don’t see why. Surely she knows I am aware my children might engage in sexual activity.”
“Mom.”
“Stop being so uptight, Jas, sex is a natural act.”
He huffed out a breath. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.” He didn’t particularly want to talk at all, but better to talk there than out here in the foyer, if his mom was going to go on and on about sex. Less of a chance of Katrina hearing them.
Tara rolled her eyes and spun around in a cloud of tiny bells on her anklets and a wave of her cotton skirt. His mother had always embraced the hippie aesthetic. When he was a child, he’d follow along behind her to bonfires and prayer circles, clutching her colorful loose clothes. She’d been so young when she’d had him, and until she’d met Gurjit, it had been her and him and his grandparents against the world. Sometimes Jas felt like they’d raised each other.
She was his number one weakness, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get annoyed as hell with her. “You can’t just barge in here. I thought you were an intruder,” he said, when they were in the kitchen and out of earshot of Katrina. The pipes squealed as the water turned on upstairs, and he relaxed.
Tara leaned against the counter. “Don’t be silly, who would break into the little house? It’s safe.”
Normally, that was true. Beyond the fact that it was a safe community, no one, not even a rebellious teen, would dare cross the Peach Prince of Yuba City. “I protect a rich woman, Mom. This is my job.”
“Oh right.” His mom shrugged, though, which told him she didn’t quite get it. “I was surprised when Bikram told me you were here.”
“He shouldn’t have told you.”
She ignored that. “Why are you here?”
His mom was paranoid and suspicious about the internet, convinced it was a tool used by capitalism to spy on her and sell her stuff she didn’t need. Which, given the ads that were frequently served to Jas, he couldn’t entirely defend against.
Tara grudgingly embraced only the parts of technology and the internet that could help her students. He didn’t want to freak her out by explaining how Katrina had gone viral. “Katrina needed to get away. There were some problems for her at home.”
“Oh no. Are they resolved now?”
Katrina had told him this morning that she and her roommates were plotting a counter campaign. He’d been too busy planning his hay/water/snowball fight to ask her how her talk with the other women had gone. “Soon, perhaps.”