Page 66 of Her Chosen Protector

“Okay, how’d you come to be a translator?”

“Languages came easy to me. Mom was German, with a capital ‘G’. Her maiden name was

Minnewit, and when Grandma and Grandpa Minnewit came to visit from Iowa, they only spoke German. Then we had ranch hands from all over the place. Our foreman was from China, so I learned Mandarin. This was all before I was six years old. I even had Ernie Lai teach me the Mandarin alphabet.”

“That’s impressive,” he tipped his head in her direction, but he kept his eyes on her face. “But back to the bad date.”

“His name was Edwin. Not Eddie, not Ed, nope, Edwin. The third. I tried calling him Trey, that didn’t go over either.”

“You did that to get on his nerves.”

“Well, when he comes out of the gate with all the rules about his name, hell yeah I had to poke the tiger,” she grinned.

“So, this was a blind date, you hadn’t met him before?”

“No,” she sighed. “I told you I was a dumb bunny. This was the son of the senator I was interning for. The senator had set it up.”

Ash put his hand over his face. “And you didn’t find a way to get out of it?”

“Nope,” she said succinctly. “I just blithely went ahead with it. I was rooming with another girl who’d gone to UI, so I wasn’t too freaked when the senator had given my address for his son to pick me up.”

Eden could tell from Asher’s expression he was not happy with that little tidbit. “Yes, it felt a little weird, but it was the senator, and he was nice, so I figured it was okay.”

“Not,” Asher rumbled.

“Yeah, not,” she agreed. “Now, I’m a farm girl, right? So, I don’t have a lot to wear, but luckily my roommate had fixed me up with a nice blue cocktail dress. Good thing too, because he takes me out to the country club for drinks and dinner. But before dinner, there’s cocktail hour with all the hoity-toity Boise. Not to say some of them aren’t really nice, because they were. But Edwin wasn’t.

He referred to me as his father’s typist. When I tried to object, he looked me dead in the eye and said, don’t you get him coffee, Sweetie?”

“What could I say, I had. Everybody in the office had gotten his father coffee at some point in time. Whenever somebody tried to draw me into the conversation, he would say I wouldn’t understand.”

“You let that slide?” Asher asked in amazement.

“I didn’t want to do anything that would ultimately upset the senator,” Eden explained. “Then when we went to sit down for dinner, I found out we were with another couple. It turned out to be one of the partners from the firm where he was working. Edwin was just out of law school, but he was already trying to score points and work his way up the corporate ladder.”

Ash raised his eyebrow. “And then?”

“This guy was with his girlfriend. They weren’t getting along, and he was ready for something new, and apparently, I was it. Edwin was happy to deliver.”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

Eden sucked in her lips and shook her head. “Nope. Wish I was.”

“Somehow after dinner, we all ended up at Doug’s house. It was when Doug was insisting on a midnight dip in his hot tub that I’d had enough. So had his girlfriend. Of course, neither of us had our cars. I called my roommate who came and picked us up.

“I was so upset. Then Edwin started calling me to say it wasn’t what I thought that I had misunderstood things.”

“Don’t tell me you went out with him again?”

“I called Mom first. I needed her opinion. But first I got her to promise not to tell Dad. She gave me good advice, told me he was gaslighting me, trying to tell me what was actually happening wasn’t the truth. She assured me that I was seeing things correctly.” Eden snorted.

“What?”

“I screwed up by getting her to promise not to tell Dad. I should have said and don’t tell my brothers, because within days, my oldest brother Pete was in Boise.”

“The Green Beret?”

Eden nodded.