Page 109 of Knockin' Boats
He glanced at the empty table space before me. “You’re not eating?”
“I ate earlier. This is for you.”
His eyes met mine and held for a long moment. The air grew thick. Was it hard to breathe?
“Thanks,” he said softly.
He finally dropped his gaze to fork up chicken and sauce and slipped the first bite between his lips. He closed his eyes and hummed, savoring it, and I had to look away before the situation in my pants became dire.
He needs a friend, I reminded myself.Just a friend.
“I love what she did with the sauce, and the prosciutto she added really?—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a chef crush on my mom. Don’t make things weird.”
A laugh burst from him. “You’re lucky, you know. Your mom is really great.”
“Your mom is great too.”
“Yeah, but…” He trailed off, biting his bottom lip. It was unlike Ash to go quiet.
“What? Is she not supportive either?”
That seemed unlikely based on what I knew of Ash’s mom. She’d been overworked and stressed when we were kids, maybe, but she adored her baby boy.
“No, she is,” he said. “Within reason.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she’s as supportive as she can be without confronting Rick. He’s not just a dick to me. I know you think I got this great life while you got screwed…”
“I never said that.”
I thought it, but I never said it. Not to him, anyway. I grimaced. “Well, not much.”
His lips quirked. “It’s okay. I can see why you’d think so. At the time, Mom was so happy. Rick swept her off her feet and into a life of luxury. She’d worked so hard to take care of me on her own. She was so tired. I don’t blame her for falling for him.”
Ash paused to take another bite, chasing it with a gulp of beer. He wrinkled his nose. “You really should pair this with a white wine.”
“You’re slumming it, remember?”
“Well, if I get to share the slum with you, I’m in no hurry to leave.”
He ran his gaze over me suggestively, and heat climbed my neck. Part of me wanted to take him up on the distraction. Fuck around like usual. But I resisted, because I really wanted to know the truth about Ash’s circumstances.
All these years, I’d made assumptions about him, about his wonderful life. But I was done with that.
“We were talking about your family,” I prompted.
He scrunched up his face. “There’s not much to tell. The kind of money Rick has? It comes with strings. He wants to control my life. He wants me to work for him, which wouldn’t be so bad, but he doesn’t respect or trust me. He strung me along with promises of one day taking over, but he wouldn’t even give mea promotion to manage in his absence. Hudson trusts you more than Rick trusted me.”
“So, he’s kind of a control freak, then? Hudson is easygoing.”
“He let other people manage things. Just not me.” Ash shrugged. “Then I thought, well maybe if he doesn’t trust me withhisbusiness, he’d trust me with my own. But no, he was adamantly against it from the start.”
“Damn, that sucks.”
“Yeah. I think he wants to keep me close, wants me trying to win his approval, but he doesn’t want to actually give it. Then, how would he get me to bend over backwards for whatever he needed? He’s a manipulator.”
