Page 49 of Smooth Sailing

Then something occurred to me, so I blurted, “I’m not that woman.”

He tipped his head to the side. “What woman?”

“The kind who lets daddy pay for everything. I quit school because he and I had a thing. I was fed up with having those kinds of things with my dad, although, that was the worst thing we’d ever had. Since he was paying my tuition, not to mention for everything else, I walked away. In the end, I did it myself. Sure, Gram and Gramps and Mom gave me very generous checks for my birthday and Christmas to help out. But it was mostly me. It’s all mostly me.”

“I wasn’t takin’ a jab at you,” he said.

“Just so you know,” I mumbled. “It’s a point of pride for me.”

“It should be. You told your dad to fuck off and built all that, and you’re not even thirty. Yeah. It should be.”

I suddenly felt warm all over.

“What brought you to the biker life?” I asked.

“My ma wanted it for me.”

I smiled at him. “She a biker babe?”

“No. She was a prostitute.”

I choked on saliva that would clean a good inch of an oil painting.

“Yeah,” he whispered, and now the brown in his eyes that were locked on me was like petrified wood. Dry and impossibly hard.

I pulled myself together and promised, “My reaction was about surprise, nothing else.”

“Right,” he muttered, throwing his head back with the edge of the chip packet to his lips so he could consume the last bits.

And man, he was just him. In my kitchen. At a sandwich joint.

I liked it.

I totally had to be very careful.

Especially now.

“I’m serious. I have no issue with sex workers,” I asserted.

“Let’s move on,” he said on a sigh.

“Let’s not,” I returned sharply. “I don’t know your story, but I can read some of it, considering she wanted the life you’re leading, and you’re leading it. So I can assume you were close and she mattered to you.”

“She mattered to me,” he said low, sharing just how much she did.

And it was so much, a shiver slithered up my spine at the intensity of it.

I adjusted my tone and asked, “Since we’re talking in past tense?—?”

“Dead,” he stated flatly. “Breast cancer that metastasized and totally took her over.”

“God, Hugger,” I whispered, feeling my eyes sting. “I’m so sorry. She had to be young.”

“Too young to die.”

“God,” I pushed out, reaching across the table to wrap my fingers around his wrist. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“She was a good woman,” he stated while gently, but firmly, extricating his wrist from my hold.

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