Read Protector #5 (A Navy SEAL Military Romance) for Free Online

remember
the exact words I’d read. It was the spirt of the law that mattered to her, not
the letter of it.
    “Didn’t she see what was going on with your
parents?” Brian asked.
    “Of course she did,” I replied. “That’s why
she spent so much time with me. She knew I was lost and lonely, and that I had
no idea why my parents ignored me.”
    “But couldn’t she have said something to
your father?” he asked.
    “Oh, she did,” I said as I shook my head
recalling all the times my grandmother had confronted my father about his
neglectful parenting. “She was merciless in her critique of his failure as a
parent.”
    Brian nodded as if he understood what I was
explaining. I told him about the frequent fights between my father and my
grandmother, and the way in which she berated him and made him seem small and
weak. I was never sure if he knew I’d heard the abuse, but I was fairly certain
she’d known that I had often been lurking outside the sitting room where they
had their conversations. She was cruel and spiteful, and she said some incredibly
awful things to him and about him.
    “I never quite understood why,” I said
remembering the last time they’d fought. “My grandmother was so incredibly kind
to me and she had the biggest heart in the world. It always seemed so odd that
she could love me so much and hate my father with such intensity. Or at least I
thought she hated him, but then I was fourteen, what did I know?”
    “Yeah, it’s hard to understand that stuff
when you have no frame of reference or history,” he agreed. I stopped and
looked at him carefully. He knew something. What that something was, I didn’t
know, but I was going to find out.
    “The last fight they’d ever had was right
before my grandmother was to take me to Europe,” I recalled. “My father showed
up to bring my passport and be supportive, I think. My grandmother lit into him
before they’d even closed the door. She dressed him down for being inattentive,
and then scolded him for not bringing my mother with him to wish me a good
trip. She knew that my mother wasn’t well and that she’d been hospitalized yet
again, but she couldn’t help but poke at my father’s wound.”
    I explained how my father tried to defend
himself by explaining what had happened to my mother, but my grandmother had
coldly cut him off with a “You’re just like your father; good for nothing,” and
then stormed out of the drawing room. She saw me there listening and for a
moment I saw a look of pain cross her face before she rushed upstairs. She
spent the next two days in her room, and on the third day, she emerged with her
hair and makeup perfectly done and announced that we’d be leaving for New York
that afternoon. We hadn’t been scheduled to travel until the end of the week,
but she had decided it was better to get to the city and wait for our flight.
      I
described how we’d spent several days in New York City shopping and eating and
having a grand time, but that every time I looked at my grandmother, she seemed
sad. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but at fourteen I still had a healthy
respect for adults and she’d been my manners coach, so I didn’t dare ask.
    “I loved my grandmother more than anyone in
the world, but she was…” I trailed off.
    “She sounds like she was troubled,” Brian
interjected.
    “Yeah, troubled is a good word for it,” I
affirmed. I looked over at him, I’d been talking for what felt like hours and
he looked ready to drift off into a comfortable food coma. I laughed. “Do you
need to get to bed?”
    “Who me?” he asked in a sleepy voice. “I’m
not tired at all! I could party all night.”
    “Sure, sure, big man,” I laughed. “Do you
want to share the bed with me? It’s more comfortable than the couch, I think.”
    “Why Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce
me?” he joked.
    “Oh get real, I’m just being nice,” I said
laughing that he was using a line from a 1970s movie