What the hell?“I had no idea.”
“Most of the money she did earn, she gambled away, hoping to make it big.” Savannah rolled her eyes. “Life with Debby was one big soap opera of men, booze, gambling, and shoplifting.”
“What a cluster fuck,” he said, shaking his head.
Savannah chuckled. “Again, with the dry humor. I love it.” Pausing, she grew pensive. “When she married your dad, and she got her hands on his money, she let up on me. It was a huge relief.”
“Did my dad know?”
She shrugged. “Hard to know. I always wondered if that was the reason he was nice to me. You know…to balance out my mom.” As she fiddled with her ear cuff, her fingers trembled. “After they split, she wanted me to swipe jewelry from a high-end department store while I was home from college. I refused, things got ugly. I bolted and never returned. That was the last time she tried to get me to steal, but the manipulation didn’t stop.”
A server delivered their plates of food.
His chest tightened at the abuse she’d endured. “There’s more?”
“Yeah, but you’ve heard plenty.”
“Please continue.”
After a brief pause, she nodded. “When I started selling my photographs, and I had a little money, she’d call me with one sob story after another. Over the years, I’ve given her a bunch of cash, until I realized she was gambling it away.”
“What a waste.” Zander reached across the table and held her hand. He had to touch her, let her know he cared. “You’re a good daughter, Savannah.”
“Thanks, but Debby wouldn’t see it that way. She was all about ignoring the rules or making up her own.” She trembled and tugged her hand away to hug herself. “K-Dad helped me understand how rules are necessary and relevant. I learned respect rather than taking for personal gain.” A sweet smile replaced her frown. “I’ve never talked about that, but I wanted you to know why your dad meant so much to me.”
My God, she went through a lot.“Wow…that’s…intense. I had no idea.”
“I feel comfortable with you.” She paused, their gazes cemented on each other. Then, as if she hadn’t just bared her soul, she dug into her fish taco.
“Good choice?”
She held out the wrapped food. “Try it. You’ll love it.”
He suspected her devilish grin had nothing to do with the seafood and everything to do with what he shouldn’t be considering—arousing thoughts he couldn’t extinguish. The myriad of ways he could please her. All of them sexy and wrong. Very wrong.
After biting into the soft tortilla, he concluded he wasn’t hungry for food. He was starving…for her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, kiss her hard, and sink inside her. He started to harden.This is going in the wrong direction.He assembled his fajita and started eating.
He wanted to tell her the truth. He didn’t give a damn about his father or their food, or even the alcohol. He didn’t justlikebeing around her—he craved her. From her beautiful smile and sultry voice, to how she shared her love of nature with him, he’d fallen under some kind of Savannah spell.
For the first time in what felt like forever, he would stop pushing to win. He’d savorthisspecial moment withthisamazing woman.
“Go on,” he prodded after a few moments of silence. “Tell me about your relationship with my dad.”
“This isn’t too boring for you?” She scooped rice onto her fork.
He shot her a smile. “Listening to you is just what the doctor ordered,” he said, and bit into his fajita.
He liked how her suntanned cheeks flushed pink. “I mentioned the camera he gave me for Christmas. In addition to encouraging me to take pictures of the other kids, he suggested I get outside and photograph the environment. That’s when I developed my true passion. When you were at college, he took my mom and me to the beach for a week. He bought me several rolls of film, paid for the development, and went through each picture with me. My mom barely noticed. That sweet man framed and hung several photos around the house. He suggested I attend college, even helped pay for it. I got a degree in environmental science.”
“He must’ve loved that.”
Her lips curved. “He did.”
Zander’s father had been too busy chasing women or heaping attention on the ones he caught to offer his son the guidance and attention he’d craved. “You’re more his child than I am.”
“I don’t know about that.” Pausing, she drank some water. “I heard him talking to my mom about us. He told her he wasn’t going to make the same mistake with me that he’d made with you. He wanted to do better with me.”
The resentment that Zander wore as a protective suit of armor cracked. A small, tiny, fissure near his heart opened up a world of possibilities. His father had failed him, but he’d done better with his stepsister.