Even if the meeting tonight fails, I’ve already succeeded in making Eilidh smile, so it’s a win. “What would you like to talk about?”
She takes a deep breath. “I guess I really owe you the full story about me. Because I have to be honest, I’m tempted to ask you later if you’d like to scene with me. It’s also not fair to do that to you before you know everything about me.”
Her violet gaze meets mine, and I read a heady mix of desire and fear there. “You’re not the only one who believes in informed consent. And I couldn’t live with myself if I’m the reason something bad happens to you.”
15
Eilidh
I mean,obviously Dexter’s attracted to me. I got that message loud and clear even before he had to reach down and adjust the boys. The jaw-drop when he saw me standing there in my dress and the Jimmy Choos would’ve been a clue if I hadn’t already spent last night with my head in his lap.
Tonight, he’s got a glass of water and a glass of bourbon. I settled for just water. “I can’t imagine that there’s anything you could say that would shock me or make me not want to take things to a more intimate level with you,” he says. “And I’ve gotten pretty adept at taking care of myself over the years.”
I think about my phone call with Amber today. “Oooh, you might not want to say that until you hear my story.” The lasagna’s fantastic. I make a mental note to send Selene a thank-you gift for giving Dexter great advice. “See, I learned something today I’m still trying to…process.”
“What?”
“Let me tell you the story as it stoodbeforeI woke up.”
His brows knit. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” I snark. “But please, bear with me.”
“Does what I witnessed last night have to do with it?”
“Kind of.”
When he shifts position in his chair, I fight the urge to crawl into his lap. “Where did you pick up your fighting skills?” he asks.
“Mom. She was a stuntwoman and underground cage-fighter.”
I get why his brow furrows again. “That’s…not a very common occupation for a woman.”
“No, it’s not. She was American. Her mom and stepfather were in the Air Force and stationed at a post in Wales when she was in high school. Mom was nineteen when her parents were going to change posts again, and she left home and stayed behind. I guess her stepfather had her enrolled in martial arts classes from when she was little, and her four stepbrothers taught her how to fight dirty.
“She lived outside Cardiff, and, somehow, she got hooked up with the BBC and started working on shows as a stuntwoman. That’s when she first met my father, I guess.”
“Lived with your father?”
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m still trying to…reconcile what Amber told me. “She really didn’t talk about him a lot. I was only eight when he died. I guess when he died, it scared her. That’s when we started moving all over the world. Because I had dual citizenship, we were able to come to the States. They homeschooled me even before he died. She worked a lot of waitressing jobs under the table, got hooked into fights that way. Sometimes as a ringer working with the organizer. Get some guy in the cage with her who looked like he could mop the floor with her, and she’d take him out in under fifteen seconds. Usually a knockout.”
His gaze widens. “Wow.”
“Exactly.” I lift my glass in salute to her. “As I said, Mom was a badass.”
“How did your father die?”
I take a deep breath. “Pin an asterisk in this part of the convo because we’ll double back shortly.” He nods, and I continue. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it. I remember her coming home in tears that day, with her arms and face all bruised up, her hands kind of cut up, like she’d been in a fight, and saying Dad was gone and not coming back.”
I couldn’t forget that day if I tried, even though adult me realizes there is probably more than a little distortion in my memory due to my age and the intense emotions surrounding the events. I remember her coming home wearing my father’s ring on her finger.
A ring he only wore when he was getting ready to leave “for work.” When he’d be gone days at a time. Otherwise, he kept it on a silver chain he wore around his neck.
He’d been wearing the ring the last time I saw him.
She dug the silver chain out of her jewelry box, threaded the ring on it, and never took it off after that, except to shower.
“What happened?” he asks.
