Page 75 of Hooked on a Witch
She put down her fork, careful to avoid clinking it against the plate. “I know this comes from your need to protect me. Mom sent me down here to find help, which I’m pretty sure is Merck. He’s a key part of understanding all of this.”Only, I might’ve messed up any chance of him helping by sleeping with him. “We don’t know if the gods are messing with his life or mine.”
“Why would they mess with his life?”
“He’s Poseidon’s descendant.”
“What? That doesn’t make him any better. The bastard could be in cahoots with Poseidon. What the hell were you thinking?”
She bit her tongue against giggling. Only her dad would say “cahoots.” She touched her father’s hand. “Please, calm down. I know you and he had some sort of fight when he was younger, and you don’t like him. I’m worried having you down here. There’s so much going on. I don’t want you hurt.”
He sandwiched her hand between his. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. You’re all I’ve got left. If you died and I wasn’t here…well, I couldn’t live with that.”
“Then you have to let me do what’s needed to figure this out, even if it involves working with Merck. You have to trust me.”
“All right.” He nodded. “I still don’t like you dealing with him.”
“Did Merck really ask to take me out in high school?” She pulled her hand from between his.
Her father’s gaze dropped. “You were too young for him.”
It’d happened. Merck had marched across the creek, knocked on her front door, and intended something more. So many years lost. If they’d had a bit more time together back then, she might’ve discovered they were destined. Sure they’d been so young, but her life may have gone differently. Her mother might still be here.
She and Merck weren’t over. The horror of both of them on a countdown to death meant figuring all this out had to happen right now. “Why did you call him a criminal? What’d he do?”
“He egged my car. He and his friend Chad. Do you know what egg does to a car’s paint?”
She struggled to keep her face serious. “He threw an egg at your car? What’d you do to the poor guy after this dire incident?”
“Poor guy? He was a menace. I hauled them to the police station.”
“Did you press charges?”
He shook his head. “I asked the police to keep them locked up overnight so they wouldn’t do something worse. It was Halloween, and they were fifteen. I had to save us from the toilet paper and who knows what else was on their agenda.” He waved his fork in the air at her. “He was a bad egg.” A smile broke across his face. “Bad pun. Sorry.”
“Oh my God. He egged your car and you flipped out. You were so psychotic about that BMW.”
“The car was one of a kind.”
“Isn’t that the truth. It was in the shop every other week. Lordy, remember when you turned it on, the exhaust smoked like a rocket at takeoff? A real gem.” She burst into laughter.
“You just don’t get it,” he grumbled.
“It almost exploded that one time when Mom drove me to go shopping.”
“Your mother didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.”
“You’re holding a grudge over a kid prank that happened over fifteen years ago?”
He smiled. “Yep.”
She released a pent-up breath, knowing her father was willing to let it go. He might not like Merck or trust him, but he’d trust her.
Eli breezed in and loaded a pancake onto his plate from the pile of cooked ones. “Pancakes. I love your pancakes, Shannon.”
“Thanks.”
“And your strawberry sauce. Bloody hell, I missed this stuff.” He licked the spoon after drowning his pancakes.
Her father didn’t bark at Eli to leave as Shannon was sure he wanted to do.
