Page 36 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
“My dad left us on my eighth birthday.”
Silence. It made me nervous, so I kept talking.
“He actually didn’t even remember it was my birthday. I had a little party with my friends at our house, ate some cake, opened some presents, but he never showed up. He finally came home late that night, and just started packing his bags. I was already asleep, but my mother said he didn’t say much. He just told her to tell me he was sorry, then he left. I never spoke to him again. He lives in Ireland now.”
My voice was steady. It didn’t waver once. “With his other family. The one he left us for.”
Nico’s silence frightened me. I began to worry I sounded pathetic. Did he think I was trying to get his sympathy? Was I coming off like a whiner?
“Baby.”
That’s all he said, but I knew by his tender tone that he didn’t think I was pathetic, or trying for his sympathy. Emotion swelled over me. I had to swallow a few times before I could talk again.
“Anyway, that’s the deal with my birthday. So me and the girls will be sitting around the living room tonight stuffing our faces with ice cream and drinking too much, and watching Ryan Gosling be the most dreamy man in the world.”
“Is that right? The most dreamy man?” Nico drawled. He was playing along, letting me off the hook, keeping his word that we wouldn’t dwell.
For that, I fell a little harder for him.
“Yep. Definitely the most dreamy man in the world. Maybe in the entire universe. No one could compare to my Ry-Ry.”
“So he’s up there with Bob, the toothless wonder?”
“Whoa! Bob has six teeth, remember?”
“I stand corrected. So Ry-Ry is up there with Bob, the six-toothed wonder? Those are your two main men?”
I laughed. He was teasing, but I also heard the subtext loud and clear.
“Wellll . . . ” I sighed, pretending to concede. “There may be a new contender for the title of main main man, but the jury’s still out on that one. I have another one point five dates to get through before I could give you an accurate idea.”
His low chuckle went all the way through me. “Keep me posted.”
“I will. And . . . I’m free tomorrow night. I mean, if you are.”
“For you, baby, I’m always free. It’s a date.” He paused. The playful tone he adopted made it obvious he was leading me, pretending to try to add. “Date number . . . ”
“Two point five.”
I must have said it a little too quickly, because the low chuckle came again.
“That’s right. Two point five.” His voice lowered. “After tomorrow, there’s only half a date left between me and paradise.”
And the girls around the world collectively swooned.
“And Kat?”
“Yeah?”
Nico’s voice grew soft again. “Happy Birthday, sweetheart.”
He hung up. I stared at the phone.
Maybe birthdays weren’t so bad after all.
At exactly seven that night, Grace rang the doorbell. You could set the world clock to that woman’s timing. I opened the door to find her dressed in a pair of black silk lounging pajamas, a red feather boa, and a pair of sky-high red heels. She held a shopping bag in her arms.
“You drove over here like that?” I was still in my jeans.
