Page 26 of Make Me Yours

That chair would also work. It’s a big chair, wide and deep enough for even a large man like Weaver to sprawl out on its seat.

He’s sprawled now, watching me as I guide the boat out of the tangle of boats and docks in the harbor and pick up speed, heading north.

Each time I glance his way out of the corner of my eyes, he’s watching me, until I can’t help shooting a pointed glance his way.

His lips curve. “Just enjoying watching a master at work. That was some impressive slow speed maneuvering, especially in this chop.”

I roll my shoulders uncomfortably. “I’ve been steering since I was a kid. Gramps needed me to help out on the boat after his cataract surgery. He started teaching me when I was thirteen. I was good at it, so I stayed at the helm on the days I worked with him before school. It was technically against the law, but everyone knew I was better behind the wheel than Gramps. We were all safer with me in charge.”

“Have you always worked with your grandfather?”

It’s the perfect segue into the conversation I’m actually here to have. I could tell him “yes,” and that I’ve lived with Gramps, too, since my family fell apart.

Sincehehelped it fall apart, that night he was caught with my mother…

But I can’t bring myself to go there just yet. I’m trapped on this boat with him for at least another hour before we reach another town large enough to have restaurants and room to dock a vessel this size.

Then, we’ll be stuck together for lunch and the trip back.

There’s plenty of time to get to the point, preferably once we’re closer to being able to leave each other’s company, so I say, “Yeah. I had the chance to join a bigger operation last year andpotentially make more money, but I like working with Gramps. Maybe it’s weird, but he’s one of my best friends.”

“That’s not weird. It’s nice,” he says in that silky voice of his, the one I really wish was murmuring filthy things in my ear while he runs his hands over every burning inch of me.

Get a grip, Sullivan, I hiss silently to myself.

“Are you close with the rest of your family?” he asks, giving me yet another perfect opening. Still, I plan to avoid going there until he adds, “Your mother, for example?”

I glance sharply his way to find his glacier gaze already studying my face with the focus of a hawk watching an open field for mice.

Well…fuck.

I sigh and turn from the controls, which won’t require as much attention from me now that we’re in familiar open water.

“Did you know?” I ask. “That night? Before we…?”

He shakes his head. “No, but I suppose I should have. There’s definitely a resemblance.” My upper lip curls and his brows lift. “That wasn’t intended as an insult. Your mother is a beautiful woman.”

“She’s a cheater,” I say, trying to keep my tone as cool and level as his. This drama is old news. I’m not going to get upset about it now. I refuse to give my mother that kind of power over me. “And she wasn’t too keen on being a mother, even before she got caught with another man. Afterward, she just…disappeared.”

His mouth tightens. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she left,” I say, waving a hand in the general direction of upstate New York. “After the night my dad caught her out at the bar with you, she never came home. I was alone at the house the next morning, freaking out, thinking my parents were dead or something, until Gramps came by to tell me that my dad was in the hospital.”

I don’t know what I expect his response to be—a wince of guilt, maybe—but it doesn’t happen. His expression grows even more cool, more controlled, and his voice is steely as he asks, “How old were you?”

“Eight.”

“And Tracy never came home?”

I cross my arms and shrug my shoulders. “Well, technically, I guess she did. When we got back from the hospital late that night, one of the big suitcases from the garage and a lot of her stuff was gone, but I didn’t realize that until later. I was too upset. And too tired. A full day at the hospital, watching your battered father wheeze on a ventilator is a lot for a little kid. It wasn’t until I was packing up my things to move in with Gramps a few days later that I realized Mom’s nice gray suitcase was gone.”

His jaw clenches. “How long was it until you saw her again? Until she made contact?”

I huff out a humorless laugh. “Never. When I say never, I mean never. She never called or wrote an email or sent a card on my birthday. For a while, I thought she might be dead, but Elaina tracked her down when we were in junior high. She did a deep Google dive and found Mom in a posh town in upstate New York. She was remarried by then, to a horse breeder, and had a new last name, but somehow Elaina figured it out.” My lips twist. “Thank God for good friends, right?”

“I’m not sure in this case,” he says, his expression still unreadable.

I shake my head. “No, it was a good thing. After that, I could stop kidding myself that she was out there with amnesia or something and would come running home to me as soon as she remembered who she was. I could accept the fact that my mother was an asshole who didn’t love me and move on.”

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