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“You think he’d really try something with me? Something I couldn’t handle?”
“I think he’d make you extremely uncomfortable and then I’d kick his ass. I should probably avoid that, so please sleep in my room. I’ll put on fresh sheets.
“Where will you sleep?”
“There’s a sofa in my room. I’ll camp out on that. I just want you to stay close to me while he’s here, okay?”
She studied me. “You aren’t actually worried I’d be tempted by anything he has to offer, are you?”
I was horrified. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but what I said was, “Of course not. If you can resist me, you can certainly resist that old reprobate.”
She kept studying my face and finally said, “I’ll sleep on your sofa.”
It took me a beat to realize she was agreeing to sleep in my room and after processing my relief of that I said, “No, I will. Thank you for agreeing.”
She shrugged. “You know your loser dad better than I do.”
With that I grabbed my laptop and took to working in her office, locking us in.
“Are you hiding from them?” she asked archly.
“If only. Listen, will you join us for dinner? The housekeeper is coming over to make Beef Wellington. It will all be especially tedious without you.”
“Fine. But only for the food, not to be supportive or anything like that. Perish the thought.”
We shared a smile.
“Softie,” I told her in a taunt.
“Coward,” she taunted back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DINNER WAS AS unpleasant as I knew it would be, though Ro did go above and beyond to make it more entertaining in general and made sure it finished on the perfect note.
My dad started in right away when he felt we’d been waiting too long between the first and second course.
“Only a part-time housekeeper these days? And no dedicated wait staff for dinner? Books not selling like they used to?”
“Did you go too long between meals, sunshine?” Ro asked him. “Did you miss your snack time?” She spoke to him in just the perfect way. Her tone was wry but light. She made him sound like a petulant child and a malcontent, both.
He just glared at her.
As we dug into the main course, which was fantastic (My housekeeper is a wonder.), my dad just had to pipe in with his negative two cents.
“It’s a decent Wellington,” he said around a mouthful of food, “but my chef’s is far better. That’s what you get for having a housekeeper cook instead getting yourself a real professional.”
“Hopefully you’ll be able to muscle it down,” Ro told him blandly. “Tell me, with a better Wellington, would you just have inhaled it outright?”
Half his serving was already gone, and I could tell by the way he glanced down at it that she’d made him feel foolish.
And look foolish, of course. And like he had poor manners, to boot.
“I haven’t heard much buzz about your upcoming release. Is it even being promoted? Do you suppose your fifteen minutes are up already?” My father took that dig right after he finished the last bite on his plate. He had cleared it and stopped complaining about the food after Ro’s last comment.
“When you reach a certain level you don’t need the same promotional blitz for every release. The books sell themselves for an author like Turner.” Ro smiled unpleasantly at him. “You haven’t learned anything about the industry your son’s been so successful in? I wonder why.”
The ‘I wonder why’ was said in such a way that I thought she was accusing him of something, like perhaps that he was jealous of his only son.
