I’d been in my home office for hours, trying my best to sort what I could before she headed in for her first day tomorrow - but the email left me with little focus.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not even a little bit,” I inhaled deeply, cracking my knuckles. “But it involves you, so you deserve to know.” Nothing pushed me towards infuriation quicker than my parents and their fucking meddling. They’d been doing it since I was a child. Their incessant need to control my life was as expected as the lengthy silences which followed whenever I dared speak my mind.
You’d think I would know how to manage it by now, only I’d inherited my mother’s stubbornness and my father’s drive and with that came an insurmountable need to rebel. If they wanted something from me, I did the opposite. It was stupid, yes, but it was also instinctual.
And in turn, they did their best to sabotage me, umpiring from afar, until they got their end game – the prodigal son to get married to a nice girl from an approved family, sell Golden Spades and take over Dane’s Real Estate.
Not a fucking chance.
I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than do either of those things.
“Involves me how?” She asked tentatively, those black glasses highlighting the little smattering of freckles across her cheeks.
“My father just emailed to remind me they were coming over in a couple of weeks and asked if they could bring their friends Maxine and Jim.”
“He emailed you?” She asked – her frown an appropriate response to the fucked-up relationship my parents and I shared.
“Yep, andhedoesn’t even send them. His assistant does,” I added. “And it’s a few weeks away, why the fuck is he already riling me up?”
“Right.” She nodded. “Apart from the fourteen obvious things, what’s the issue?” She swept a stray curl from where it had fallen across her face. Her hair was up today, gathered and pinned with what looked like a chopstick. How this woman grew up to be so beautiful - even with chopsticks holding that wild mass of curls atop her head - was beyond me.
“Maxine and Jim are Samantha’s parents, which means they want to bring her too. Even though I’ve told them I’m both fucking seeing someone and that someone is living with me. I said no, of course.” I added as an afterthought, my fingers tapping relentlessly against the woodgrain of the table as the frustration pushed for the surface.
I knew what they were like, and I could barely hold it together when I saw them. I wouldn’t let them tarnish her too, not only because Sebastian had warned me about this very thing either. Evangeline portrayed a brave exterior, and she wore that persona well, but she was all bark no bite. I’d seen that plenty of times overthe years and wasn’t about to unnecessarily throw her into the lion’s den.
She came around to sit on the desk in front of me, her feet swaying under the table as though she hadn't a care in the world, while I was thinking of ways to shield her from the wolves in sheep's clothing.
“Maybe once they see us together, they’ll back off. Although, we’re probably going to need to discuss how that looks.” She grimaced exaggeratedly, reluctantly pulling a grin from me.
She’d done her best to make me think she was entirely unfazed, happy to go along with the proposition as if it would be neither here nor there, but the truth was it would make her uncomfortable because it was a situation she couldn’t prepare for or control.
“How do you think it should look?” I asked, wanting to hear her take onpretendingbut more because I had no fucking idea what to do.
“Full disclosure, I’ve had two boyfriends, both of which lasted less than six months and I didn’t really like either of them.” She frowned, as if the memories genuinely irked her, and I couldn’t help it. Her look of dismay was so dramatic, I barked a laugh.
“Their loss is my gain,” I replied smugly.
“What about you, how many partners have you had? Seb says you’re terrified of commitment,” she said with a shrug, and I leaned back in my chair, my hands joining over my bare stomach.
“Seb says a lot of things,” I deflected, not needing to open that suitcase of bullshit right now, and she laughed. “How doyouthink we should act?” I asked again, catching the ways her eyes quickly glanced down to my chest, and I liked it more than I should. There were going to be benefits to preferring not to wear a shirt if she was going to keep looking at me like that.
“They’reyourparents, Coop. I can’t imagine a real couple would be overly physical in front of their parents. Besides, the only couples I’ve seen recently are my brother and Marlee, Andy and Arna and Jack and Winter and all of them spend more timewith their tongues in each other’s mouths than talking to the people they’re with.”
“Sounds good to me,” I joked easily, finding I’d smiled more in the last week than I had over the previous year.
“I don’t know. I’m not big on the whole PDA so it would be unnatural for me tohave my way with you.” Dragging out the words in a mock-seductive tone, she was as naive as she was cute.
“Well, as you’ve probably been reminded, I’m a hugger. Parents or not. So, I’ll be pretty handsy,” I admitted, enjoying the way she openly rolled her eyes. Hugging her was nothing new, only now, she wasn’t a little kid anymore. Her body made that perfectly clear. And God help me, didn’t I know it.
“Of course your love language is physical touch when mine is to be as far from people as possible.” She whined and a surprised chuckle tumbled out of me.
“I’ll do my best to keep it to a minimum and they won’t stay longer than an hour, trust me. They’re only coming to make sure you’re really here.”
“Let’s do it right the first time then so they don’t come back. Because if they’re rude, I can only bite my tongue for so long.” This came as no surprise. She had the same Micallef fire her brother held and while it came with a lengthy fuse, once that tempered flame ignited, it was an explosion.
“Maybe it’s too soon,” I pondered aloud. She’d only just agreed to the farce. How could we appear convincing when we were still skirting around what would and wouldn’t be okay? I rubbed a hand down my face, groaning into my palm as I thought about how intrusive they both could be. And if they got a whiff that this was a charade, it would be so much worse. Perhaps only seeing them at the charity event would be best. It would be better for my mental health, that’s for sure.
