Page 90 of Driven Daddy

“Pretty much. Unless you want to make out.”

I tapped my finger on the pillow. “Make out.”

He laughed. “Is it really that hard to talk to me, Duchess?”

The dark helped the honesty that I rarely let out into conversation. “It is. I’m not used to talking to anyone about my life.”

“Not even?—”

“Jenelle?”

He sighed but squeezed my leg again. “I can’t imagine losing my best friend. Who is also my business partner.”

“But you had history with Larsen, correct?”

He waited a beat, the swing picking up a little speed. “A lot of history. I assume you did with Jenelle too?”

The memory of our first meeting was an old one. “At a convention. I was scared shitless, and she found me throwing up in the bathroom.”

“Well, there’s a first meet.”

I laughed. “Auspicious, to be sure. My whole world changed that day. Jenelle was shopping a book. Back then, we were still thinking that it would be easiest to work with a publisher. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I had an appointment to do my elevator pitch, I guess you’d call it.”

I fell back into the memory. “The heavily lemon-scented air freshener is burned in my brain. You know the kind that smells so fake it makes your stomach twist?”

“Like school.”

“Maybe your school. Mine smelled like piss and shit.” I swore under my breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”

“Rita, it’s okay. It was your memory.” His hand was so warm and sure on my thigh.

Pushing those less than great memories away, I went back to the conference. “I was so nervous about my pitch because the pitch appointments were like seven minutes max. I just knew Iwas going to fuck it up. Jenelle cleaned me up and let me try it out on her. We discovered we had a similar kind of story.”

“You sure it was similar, or did she take your idea?”

I frowned. “No, she wouldn’t. I saw her notes…didn’t I?” Now I couldn’t remember. She was so sweet to me, and I’d had so little kindness in my life.

God, so many years ago. I couldn’t believe every part of it had been a lie.

“She brought me up to her hotel room. A lot of the conference people had rooms because it was a multiple day thing.”

“But you didn’t.”

He didn’t even question it. How did he know?

“No. I scraped all my money together to take the train to Boston for the conference. The rest had been to cover a professional outfit.” One that I’d bought secondhand at a thrift shop that helped people buy clothes for interviews.

It was the biggest interview of my life.

“But the shoes didn’t fit, and Jenelle saw the blisters on my feet, and I’d ruined the blouse in the bathroom. I was a mess. She cleaned me up and we did our pitches together. We didn’t get picked, but we became friends that day. Started writing together a few months later.”

Had she really played me from the start?

How many of the ideas for our books had come from me?

I struggled out of the swing, nearly falling out of it before my boot sunk into the grass.

“Hey!” Penn tried to grab for me.

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