Page 22 of Tru Blue
“You’ll let me barge into your apartment at the crack of dawn, but you won’t talk to me about your drawings?”
He smiled and glanced at her again. “Pretty much.”
She rolled her eyes. She did that a lot instead of pushing him, which he liked. It gave him time to think. But truth be told, no one ever pushed him, and he kind of liked it when she did. He liked knowing she was interested in him even though he knew when she really got to know him, she’d walk the other way.
“If you won’t talk to me about your drawings, and you won’t share any more details about your mother, then tell me how it is that I’ve lived in Peaceful Harbor for a few years now and I’ve never seen you around.”
She’d peppered him with questions over breakfast, while he did the dishes, and when he’d thrown a load of laundry into the washer. She’d asked the same questions in ten different ways. She was adorably persistent.
“Do you frequent this end of town?” he asked, knowing the answer. There wasn’t much down by the bridge, save for Whiskey Bro’s.
“Well, no, but you must come into town sometimes.”
He concentrated on working the dent from her door. “Sure, when I need something. I pretty much keep to myself, and I only moved here a few months ago.”
“Where did you live before that?”
Behind bars. He wasn’t about to go there. He kept his eyes trained on the interior of the door. “Where did you live before moving here?”
“I grew up two hours from here.”
He chanced a glance. She was winding a lock of hair around her finger, looking so at ease, with a casual and beautiful smile that reached her eyes. Man, she killed him with that smile.
“Was it anything like Peaceful Harbor?”
She shook her head. “No. I grew up in a very different environment. I wasn’t allowed to play in the grass with a doll for hours. I lived a rigid life in a gated community with music lessons, etiquette classes, private language tutors…” She wrinkled her nose.
“Why’d you come here?” Her lifestyle was a world away from his, which was another reason he should keep his pants zipped.
“Let’s see.” She released her hair and met his steady gaze. “Gated community, music lessons, private tutors.”
He laughed softly at her candor. “Most people would give anything to have those things.”
“Most people have no idea how awful those things are. All I ever wanted to do was flit around with fairy wings, dress up in ten-dollar costumes, and build a tent out of sheets. I had this dream of running through meadows without a nanny watching over me, you know? Just being a kid, maybe having a tea party with those plastic little cups and fake tea. Just once it would have been nice to have homemade vanilla cupcakes instead of a three-tiered ganache birthday cake. It would have been so easy for my parents to give me any of those things, too. And time,” she said dreamily. “A few minutes of their time without any sort of agenda would have been the best gift of all. I wouldn’t have cared what we did. We could have sat in an empty room and talked for all I cared.”
She drew in a deep breath and looked away. “According to my parents, I wanted to ‘live the life of a pauper instead of a princess,’ and maybe they were right, because I didn’t care about any of the things they did. I never wanted to play the piano or learn French.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s not a nice word. ‘Pauper,’ was theirs, not mine.”
He glanced at Kennedy and realized pauper was a step up from the conditions in which she’d lived. “It’s not offensive.”
She nodded, her expression relieved. “All I wanted was time. Time with them, my own time to run and play and be a kid. I would rather have had nothing and been loved like I was everything than have everything and feel like a commodity for them to show off.”
At first glance, he didn’t think they’d have anything in common, and he wondered how he could be so attracted to someone who came from such a different world. But the more he learned about her, the more he realized they did have things in common. Important things that he’d never expected.
