Page 22 of Heart Stopping
"I'm going to need your number so I can text you the address," he said.
I considered refusing, but he already knew where my restaurant was. If he couldn't text me, he'd turn up in person, possibly at the wrong time.
I held out my hand for his phone and put my number into it. Before I handed it back, I called myself so I'd have his too. Otherwise, when he called or texted, it would come up as a unknown number, and I didn't answer those. Did anyone, these days? It's almost as though the 'phone' part of telephones hadbecome redundant. Now we used them for anything but making phone calls.
"Good girl," he said, taking the phone back and tucking it away in his pocket. He cupped my cheek and smiled down at me. "Now, you were going to tell me your origin story."
"Was I?" I asked. "I'm not sure you're ready for mine." I'd never confided any of it to anyone. I wasn't sure how I felt about doing it now. It might help, getting it off my chest, but it might also bring back a world of demons. Demons I thought I'd put behind me. Now I wasn't so sure.
After all, they were the reason why I did everything I did.
"Sweetheart, if you haven't noticed, I'm always ready for anything." One side of his mouth tugged up, along with both of his eyebrows.
"You don't think I could catch you off-guard?” I asked. "That sounds like a challenge to me."
"I always like a challenge," he said. "You can try. Why don't you start at the beginning. See if you can shock me."
"Do you mind if we sit down?" Without waiting for an answer, I lowered myself down to his couch. I waited until he was sitting beside me before I started to tell him the whole, sordid story.
CHAPTER 9
HARLOW
"My father started his working life as a chef." I leaned against the back of the couch. "By the time he was thirty, he owned two restaurants. Those two became a chain. Eventually, he retired from working in the kitchen and concentrated on the back end."
I ignored Boner's smirk.
"Turns out, he was an even better businessman than he was a chef. He expanded into hotels and then real estate. Went from being a regular guy to multimillionaire."
"So your father is Batman?" Boner asked.
I snorted. "Hardly. My father was ambitious. For every dollar he made, he wanted two or three more. It became something of an obsession to him."
"Rumor has it, that's how rich people get rich," Boner said. "They do everything they can to get more money."
"Exactly," I said vaguely, thinking back. "The more money he got, the less time he had to spend with my mother, my sister and me."
"I have a feeling that's not a bad thing." Boner looked at me sidelong.
"Looking back, it wasn't," I agreed. "At the time, it stung. He taught me how to cook. With regular meat," I added quickly before he could ask.
"That you know of." He gave me a sly grin.
"Yeah, well." I shrugged. I couldn't discount the possibility entirely.
"Go on," Boner encouraged. "Daddy turned into an obsessed workaholic, what happened then?"
I grimaced at that description, accurate though it was. "He made some powerful friends," I said slowly. "The kind of people who think they own the world because they have money and influence. People who think they can do anything they want."
"People like Carl," Boner stated. "Bottom feeding assholes."
He looked like he'd happily bring Carl back to life and kill him all over again. I could relate to that. Death seemed too good for some of these people. Which was why some ended up in my party box, with slow dripping water.
"Right," I said softly. I glanced away, seeing nothing, lost in my own thoughts.
"What did he do?" Boner asked gently. Carefully, he placed his hand on my knee, lightly at first as though I might jump at his touch.
Considering what was going around and around in my brain it was a fair bet. One I managed to win by not jumping.
