Page 57 of Legal Attraction
However they treated him, he deserved it. And maybe when Muriel saw how her family couldn’t forgive him, she would realize that she and Ronan had no possibility of a future together.
* * *
The silence unnerved Muriel. It was the first that had fallen since she and Ronan had left Papa and Nana’s house. All through dinner conversation had flowed easily. Ronan had charmed. Nana had flirted. Papa had teased.
It was the most fun Muriel had had in such a long time. And she’d thought Ronan had enjoyed himself. He’d eaten. He’d drunk. He’d laughed. He’d grinned.
But he had never looked at her.
Was he furious?
She had kind of ambushed him. But if she’d told him that address was her grandparents’, he never would have showed up. So she’d tricked him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have told you.” She glanced at him across the console that separated the driver and passenger seats.
“You should have asked me,” he corrected her. But he didn’t take his gaze from the road. And his hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“You would have said no,” she replied.
“Yes, I would have,” he said. And now he glanced across at her, and there was sadness and regret in his dark eyes. “I’m not the kind of man women take home to meet their families.”
Heat flushed her face. “I told you that’s not why I invited you,” she said. “I wanted you to see why I was so upset with you.”
“Because of how all that media attention affected them.”
She nodded. “They had reporters camped out on their stoop, asking them horribly intrusive questions about me, about my life and upbringing.”
“Why are they the ones who raised you?” he asked. “You’ve never said how they came to be your legal guardians.”
She’d fallen into their laps just as so much had fallen into hers. She sighed. “My mother was very young when she got pregnant with me. Just a teenager who’d fallen for an older boy. He left for the Marines, and she had me. But he didn’t come back.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and reached across the console for her hand.
But she pulled it back. She didn’t need comforting. “He didn’t die,” she said. “He just didn’t come back to the Bronx. And when my mother realized he wasn’t coming back, she wanted to leave, too. She wanted to go to college, so my grandparents said they would take care of me.”
“But she never came back, either?” he asked.
“No. She moved to the West Coast. She sends cards and letters and calls sometimes. But Papa and Nana, they’re my parents. The people I love the most and who love me most.”
“Why did you want me to see that?” he asked. “So I would apologize again?” He had—to her grandparents—repeatedly. “I already told you I was wrong. What more do you want from me?”
His heart. She wanted his heart. But she knew it wasn’t something he was going to freely offer her. It wasn’t going to just land in her lap like everything else in her life had. She would have to work to earn it.
“I wanted you to see that I’m not a horrible person,” she told him. “I don’t go around slapping people and filing complaints and...”
“Having sex in elevators?” he asked when she trailed off. And she heard the humor in his voice now.
“No,” she said. “Except for you, I’ve never done any of that stuff.”
“I know that,” he said. “Well, not the elevator stuff but the rest of it.”
It hadn’t hurt that her grandparents had gone on and on about what a sweet, down-to-earth person she was. But a man like Ronan wouldn’t want sweet and down-to-earth. He’d want the passionate woman from the elevator.
Maybe having him meet Papa and Nana had been a huge mistake. Maybe he would never look at her the way he had before...with such lust.
She reached over the console and slid her hand over his thigh. The muscles rippled and tensed beneath her touch, and something long and hard swelled against the fly of his jeans.
“Muriel...” His voice held a warning, one she ignored as she slid her hand higher up his thigh and then over his fly. “Do you want me to crash this car?”
