Complete Me (Book Three of The Kirkland Family)

Complete Me: Chapter 32

Rose closed her eyes and propped her head in her hands with her elbows on the coffee table. She couldn't exactly tell her parents to buzz off like she had her brother. "He did."

"You told him no," her father continued with the obvious.

"I can't close the store for a whole weekend," she replied.

"Your mother and I both ran businesses before we retired," he said. "We went away on weekend trips all the time. You should remember that; you went with us on many of them."

"Yes," Rose said. "But you always had someone who could take over while you were gone. I didn't have that luxury this weekend."

"You have us."

Rose sat back against the cushions, slumping with tiredness. "I didn't want to impose. Can we discuss the fact that Cole asked you to take my kittens away?"

Her father pulled at his ear while her mother boiled rice on the stove, her back turned to both father and daughter, seemingly oblivious to their conversation. Rose looked back and forth between them, waiting for an answer.

"Well?" Rose asked. "Why does he have the right to do that?"

"Because he loves you," her mother answered as she cranked the can opener over a can of mushrooms. "He has every right to ask, sweetie. It never hurts to ask."

"We could have told him no," her father said. "But the man was sick to his stomach over you. When a man worries over a woman like that, you take notice. And when a man worries that much about my own baby girl, I tend to not ignore it."

"I can handle this," Rose argued.

"We know you can," Daddy said. "You've always had a strong work ethic, and you're just as stubborn as your mother."

Momma smiled at him over her shoulder and continued cooking dinner. Rose brushed at the wrinkles of her shirt dress, silently wishing she had the time to iron it this morning, but... But she didn't have time. And that was the point her parents and Cole were making. She didn't have time to fold the laundry in the basket or wash the dishes last night. She still had wet clothes in her washing machine, which would need to be rewashed now that they sat there for two days. She didn't have time to change her bed linens this week or vacuum the rugs. She barely had the energy to drag herself from bed every morning after spending half the nights feeding the kittens. She was so tired she didn't bother to shave her legs this morning, and the prickles of hair, though not noticeable — thank God! — had irritated her all day. And last night, while brushing her teeth, she spied a suspiciously white hair sticking up from her scalp. She was only twenty-five. She was too young to go gray!

Right now, she knew that if she got some decent food in her belly, she might close her eyes and not wake up until this time next week.

Yeah...she could handle this. And that was as white of a lie as the hair she plucked out last night.

Rose conceded with a nod. "Okay. Thank you. I really could use a night of uninterrupted sleep."

Her father inclined his head. "You're welcome, Rosebud." He snatched a journal from beside him and flipped it open. The photo of younger Mr. Shaw fell out. "I didn't know Mr. Shaw was in the Navy."

Rose frowned. "I didn't either. Cole and I found a trunk of his personal items at his house, but there isn't much there. That is the only thing that has any information about his past, and there are no completed dates in it, just months and days. I've read through it so many times, I get the feeling that he didn't want anyone to know."

Her father plucked his glasses from his shirt pocket, put them on and glanced through the pages. When he stopped at an entry to read, he frowned. Then he looked up at Rose. "He's not Coleman Shaw?"