Page 88 of Stone
A shadow fell across her face. “It was so long ago. So much time has passed. I’ve tried so very hard to find my way, but I can’t lie to you that I’ve suffered.”
“What aren’t you telling me? You can trust me with anything. I don’t like your father any more than I did before, but I’ll never use him against you.” Goddamn it, I could kill the man. He’d stripped her dreams away. I was so damn proud of her strength in pulling away from him.
“I’m just glad he shoved the past aside long enough to ask you to rescue me. I doubt anyone else could have saved me.” She offered a pained look before reaching for her wine. Her hand was shaking and the sense she was hiding something from me only deepened.
Pushing her wasn’t the best course of action. I knew that cold with Dani. Plus, she’d had enough of that with her father. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Everything happens for a reason. Right? And I do trust you, Stone. More than anyone in my life, which is why being here with you has been so incredible, yet a fairytale.”
“Fairytale?”
“You know what I mean. You have your life and I have mine.”
“You’ve decided about the gallery tour.”
“Not yet. I need some time to think about it.”
The ache in my gut increased. “I’ll support you no matter what you want to do.”
“And I love you for that.”
There was as much sadness in her voice as I felt hearing her issue the words. Maybe she was right, but what Kekoa had recommended pushed hard against my psyche. What would happen if I told her how I felt? Would that change the way we obviously felt about each other? Or would our true feelings be challenged enough we wouldn’t grasp what we’d had but for so long?
There were certainly no easy answers.
“Did you ever search for the circumstances around your father’s arrest yourself?” The fact she couldn’t talk about herself pained me as well.
“No. You remember how proud my dad was. I thought doing so or even asking him any questions would be a betrayal and that’s the last thing I wanted.”
“I understand.”
“What are you thinking?”
She backed against the wall, folding her arms. “Why was my father so insistent on asking you to rescue me? No offense, but aren’t there a hundred Navy SEALs good enough to find me?”
Her smile was more playful this time. “I don’t know about that.” I laughed, but she was being serious. “Absolutely. There are several stationed in Paris or close by. He could have saved a lot of time.” I hadn’t thought about it that way. “I have wondered why.”
“And he was apologetic?”
“Yeah, surprisingly.” I continued studying her face. “What is floating through that brain of yours?”
“My father never apologizes. Not to anyone. Not to me and not to my mom. That means he had a reason or a level of guilt that outweighed his typical behavior.”
“Good points.”
“I think we need to find out how close our fathers were all those years ago for one thing. I also think you need to find out why your dad went to prison. What were the circumstances?”
“You think your dad was involved somehow.”
She shook her head as if removing the cobwebs. “You would think if he had been, his involvement would have been discovered through the intense vetting done before he took a single office.”
“That’s very true. Especially with him being governor and now in the White House, your father went under a huge microscope.”
She licked her lips. “But it’s not unheard of to lie and hold secrets. If you pay people enough money, they’ll keep them. Or, if you have something on them that’s even worse, you simply blackmail them into keeping your secret.”
“Dani. You’re seriously suggesting your father is corrupt.”
“Maybe not corrupt, but what if he has everything to lose if what he’s hiding is exposed? What if your father knew what that was?”
