“I didn’t really understand that my family was any different from anyone else’s until I started grade school. My father didn’t want us growing up to be what he calls ‘the useless rich,’ so we went to a public school. Other people’s parents would pick them up, but we had a bodyguard who came for us—basically a manny with a gun.”
She told Eric how her mother had divorced her father when they were little and had largely vanished from their lives. “I can remember her complaining to a friend over the phone that she would never have had kids if she’d realized how much work it was to be a mother. I must have been four or five at the time. She had a full-time nanny, but even so, we were too much work.”
What a bitch. “That must have hurt.”
“I felt like a burden, like something she regretted. She and I arenotclose.”
He could understand that.
“My father tried to be there for us, but I don’t think he ever intended to raise us by himself. He worked most of the time, but every summer we went on a month-long vacation somewhere in the world. Those are my best memories.”
She told him about playing on the beach at Nice; visiting the supposed home of Santa Claus in Rovaniemi, Finland, where she’d ridden in a sleigh pulled by reindeer; camping on an island in the middle of Lake George in New York; sleeping overnight in the Tower of London; staying at that inn in Kenya where she and her brother fed giraffes through the window and heard lions roaring nearby.
“We had chores like other kids. If we did our chores, we got paid an allowance. That was all the spending money we had. He demanded that we go to college and not slide by on privilege. He paid our way through college, but we had to have part-time jobs. We also had to maintain good GPAs. I didn’t gain access to my trust fund until I graduated from college. I’m grateful for those lessons. The last thing in the world I would want to be is a brainless socialite.”
Eric kissed her head. “You’re nothing like that. You’re generous with your friends and even with strangers. Everything you do comes from your heart. If you hadn’t told me your family had money, I wouldn’t have known.”
It was true. Every word.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
But Eric didn’t know what to think about her father. It sounded like he’d done his best to be a good dad—until the moment when his daughter had needed him most. Then he’d gotten angry and blamed her.
Well, no one was perfect.
As if she’d read his mind, she went on. “I know my father cares about me. I just wish he hadn’t reacted the way he did when I told him about … what had happened. He acted like I was trying to be the next heiress with a sex tape or something. I hadn’t even known I was being recorded.”
“I’m sorry he wasn’t there for you.” He kissed her hair.
In the other room, her cell phone buzzed.
Her body tensed. “At two in the morning, Abigail? Really?”
He needed to ask the obvious. “Why do you stay in a job you don’t like, working for a boss who treats you like this?”
She seemed to consider it for a moment. “It’s important to me to have a career, to be successful at something. I can’t just quit and sit on the beach all day. I’d feel like a loser. Eventually, I’d run out of money. Besides, what would I do? I don’t want to go back to college.”
“Well, Joe offered you a job.”
She laughed. “Can you imagine me telling my dad that I’d quit Jensen West and was moving here to be a cook at a brewpub?”
Eric didn’t think it sounded nearly as crazy as she did. “Does it matter what he thinks if you’re happy?”
“I suppose not, but I don’t want to feel like a failure.”
“You remember what my mom says about success, right?”
“The path to success is the one that enables people to feel at peace with themselves. Yes, I remember.”
He changed the subject after that, afraid of coming across as pushy or giving the impression he was trying to talk her into moving to Colorado. Which he was.
The conversation moved on—to Eric’s childhood, his memories of high school with Lexi and Austin, why he’d joined the Team—until the water grew cool. They climbed out of the tub and dried each other off.
Then he scooped her up and danced his way to the bed with her in his arms, waltzing in time to the music, dropping her onto the sheets, and stretching out on top of her. “How about we fuck until we break this bed?”
This time, when he made love to her, he took time for tenderness, dallying over all the sweet little details he’d skipped a couple of hours ago.