by Lois Greiman
He didn’t even bother to glance at me.
The shrimp were already turning pink, filling the air with the scent of ambrosia. He added a sprinkling of salt and a dab of what looked to be garlic butter. The man was clearly plagued with a buttload of disorders—dissocial, schizoaffective, derealization—but he was no idiot in the kitchen department.
“No father,” he said, and tilting his cutting board, added freshly sliced veggies to the shellfish.
“Ever?”
He stirred, ignoring me.
“I don’t think that’s biologically possible,” I said. “I mean, theoretically you must have had—”
“Go home,” he said, and retrieving a bottle from the cupboard, swished sake into the mix. Steamy happiness swirled in the air. It’s stupid how much I love food. But I focused on the dialogue at hand.
“Do you want to talk about them?” I asked.
He glanced up, as if vaguely surprised to find me still there.
“Your abandonment issues,” I explained.
Reaching to the hook above his head, he retrieved a cast-iron kettle, filled it with water, and set it on the stove. In a minute, he was emptying the stir-fry onto a plate. There was only one. The shrimp were little curls of joy, the snow peas, inebriated happiness.
“Your family was poor,” I said, and glanced at his left ear. Although I’m more familiar with Walmart than Tiffany and Co., I had a strong suspicion the rock there was worth a fair amount. Once, while supposedly studying for my midterm exams, I’d read an article on precious stones. The chunk in his earlobe kind of looked like a ridiculously rare stone called painite to me. Why wear such a treasure in this setting except to remind himself how far he had come? “Your mother…” I canted my head, warming to the task. If I couldn’t enjoy his stir-fry I might as well make sure he didn’t either. “She was forced to work overtime to make ends meet. She loved you. I’m sure she did, Hiro.” If he was moved by this proclamation, he was an excellent actor. “But she had so little time.” I nodded at my own stupendous reasoning. I could see it all so clearly in my mind. Him, young and small and needy. Her, frazzled but heroic, trying to make a home but barely able to pay the bills. Thus, the care he took with his own surroundings. “It was a challenge for her to secure daycare. And her boyfriends—” I paused.
His face was set as if it had been cast in stone, but then his face was always set, so that didn’t tell me much. But maybe his eyes had narrowed a little.
“It wasn’t a boyfriend,” I said, and something warmed in the pit of my stomach. “It was someone else. A woman, perhaps. Someone entrusted with the task of keeping you safe. She…” I searched my mental files, reviewing a dozen similar cases…cases where men had shut down, cases where they had turned to violence. “She compromised you. Allowed you to become—”
He slammed his palm against the tabletop.
I jerked back, heart pounding, but he only stared at me.
“It is time for you to leave,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
“I do not get angry.”
I’ll never figure out why he would say such a thing. It wasn’t as if I needed the challenge. I would probably have tried to make him mad even without being goaded into it. It was the McMullen way. “It’s okay to vent your emotions,” I said. “You’re only human.”
An eyebrow rose a hair’s breadth. “Do people truly pay you for this tripe?”
Again I resisted the urge to whack him across the head, but maybe my current self-restraint was caused more by the fact that he could kill me with a glance than by an excess of human kindness. Whatever the case, I continued on.
“Did that influence your sexual orientation, do you think?”
He said nothing.
“The fact that a woman failed you in your formative years…do you believe that determined your sexuality, or was it ordained from the start?” Pulling out a chair, I sat down and leaned forward, intent on his answer.
His gaze skimmed from my face to my boobs, marginally exposed between the buttons of my borrowed shirt. I almost straightened, but I was desperate and maybe…just maybe…a little bit insane.
He raised his eyes with slow regard to mine. “Men often find it difficult to embrace their emotions,” he said. “You should not blame yourself.”
“What?”
“Sometimes their own insecurities prohibit them from nurturing another’s self-esteem…even if she is his daughter.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” I said, and laughed. “But believe me, I came to grips with familial disappointments long ago.”
“I am sorry he failed you.”
He was trying to turn the subject to me, to thrust a poker into my insecurities, but it wasn’t going to work. I was far past caring about the fact that Dad had opted to refer to me as “the other white meat.” “I somehow managed to survive.”
“And move two thousand miles away so as not to be reminded of his disregard.”
I smiled at his sloppy attempt to get inside my head. “Who are you supposed to be now? Montel Williams? My apologies, but I’m not going to break down and weep like an Oscar hopeful.”
“He should have protected you.”
I smirked and volleyed his raised brow back at him.
“From the barbarism of your brothers,” he said. “He should have nurtured you instead of belittling you.”
I smiled benevolently. “No one belittled—”
“He wished to help you. To shape you into the strong-minded woman he knew you could become. But he lacked the necessary tools. Hence his heartfelt but perhaps…” He shook his head with mournful understanding. “Misguided means of trying to point out your shortcomings while—”
“Pork Chop?” Perhaps I had snarled the word.
He paused. Silence dropped like a rock.
I felt a pulsing need to regale him with my father’s casual disregard, but I reined myself in, cleared my throat, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from my shirt. “I believe we were discussing your need to—”
“He referred to you as Pork Chop?”
“What?” Embarrassment flooded me. “No! Pfffft. That would be asinine. What kind of barbaric—”
“Such callous insensitivity must have wounded your fledgling self-esteem.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” My face felt warm. What the hell was wrong with me? “I was simply going to say that Daddy enjoyed a good pork chop now and again.” Daddy? What the fuck was I doing now? I hadn’t called him “Daddy” since I was four and trying to con him out of a second Twinkie. But I couldn’t seem to stop my idiotic ramblings. “Mother tried to control his cholesterol, but some consider pork to be a white meat, and if trimmed properly it can be quite—”
“But perhaps that kind of hurtful jargon has, in the end, been advantageous,” he said, and lifting his hand, brushed his knuckles, soft as breath, down my cheek.
I held myself steady, steady and strong. “You can’t manipulate me, Danshov.”
“And perhaps that, too, is because of your sire. Perhaps it was his hurtful but well-meaning taunts that made you what you are.” He skimmed the flats of his nails down my throat. There was a dark magic to his touch, but I didn’t believe in magic.
I laughed. “And what am I?”
“Resilient.” His ever-clear eyes smiled. He pressed gentle fingertips against the pulse at the base of my throat. It seemed to slow its frantic pace. My head fell back the slightest degree.
“Strong, intuitive, and quite beautiful,” he whispered, and leaned in.
Chapter 20
Follow your heart, but maybe invite your brain along, just to be on the safe side.
—Brainy Laney, once again living up to her sobriquet
Holy crap, this guy was hypnotic, like a cobra charmer or a really big portion of tiramisu. But he was right about one thing: I am strong.
“Only quite?” I asked, and remained exactly as I was, not leaning in, not leaning back, th
ough his allure sucked me in.
A corner of his mouth lifted in unspoken regret. “But wounded.”
“I’m not wounded.”
“Here,” he said, and ever so gently pushed two fingers beneath the neckline of my shirt to stroke my heart.
I stifled a shiver and tried to dredge up another disclaimer, but I felt myself weakening, drawn into the soulful promise of his eyes. His lips beckoned. His touch entranced.
“Perhaps that is why you feel the need to seduce gay men,” he said.
I snapped away from him. “You’re an ass.”
A hint of amusement flickered in his eyes. “But I do not try to prove my allure by attempting to seduce—”
“I don’t try to seduce gay guys!”
He watched me, gaze unflinching, as if he could read my thoughts, could draw them out of my head and dissect them like unfortunate frogs.
“Except…” I fidgeted a little. “Except for Eddie Friar, who…to be fair…didn’t inform me of his sexual orientation until after we had…” I winced.
He raised a brow. “After you had what?”
“None of your business,” I said. It sounded as childish as a nursery rhyme, but at least I hadn’t mentioned beeswax.
His lips, as full as a pair of damn plums, lifted the slightest degree. I watched their upward slant and reminded myself that he had a knife. So I couldn’t kill him. Paradoxically, neither could I kiss him. “After you slept together?” he guessed.
“No,” I said, and shifted my gaze away.
“What of the others?”
“Others!” I snapped my gaze back. “What others? There were no others.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners.
“There were no others,” I repeated. I was haughty now, but he said nothing. Seconds ticked away. Silence, as it turns out, eats haughty for lunch.
“You can’t count Ben,” I said.
Even the damn dog was silent. I gritted my teeth, searching for blessed reticence. But it wasn’t in me.
“We’re still friends,” I said, and pushed a strand of frazzled hair behind my left ear. “Sometimes I watch Rover when he and Sal go out of town.”
An eyebrow twitched. “Shall I assume that appellation is a shortened version of Salvador.”
“Assume whatever you want,” I said. Haughty had returned with a hard-assed vengeance.
“Ah…” He nodded. “Sally, then.”
“She’s just a roommate!” I snapped. Although it had seemed kind of funny that she’d been wearing his shirt and little else when I’d returned their dog’s leash. I waved a dismissive hand to assure him that her scanty ensemble mattered naught. “They have a very nice dog. A boxer. A little hyper sometimes. But you can’t blame him. He’s still a…I didn’t try to seduce him,” I snapped. “And I’m certainly not trying to seduce you.”
He exhaled softly through his nose. It sounded a little like laughter, but maybe he was too smart for that. Bigger guys had been pantsed for lesser offenses.
“So the fact that your father failed to live up to your expectations has nothing to do with your deep-seated need to prove your worth?”
I gave him my best I-know-what-you’re-trying-to-do smile. “Dad doesn’t live up to anyone’s expectations,” I said, and amped up the wattage again. “He’s Irish. But what about—”
“Are you hungry?”
“I…” Was starving.
“Help yourself to a plate,” he said, and nodded toward the cupboard to his right.
Pride almost prevented me from accepting his offer. But pride can’t hold a candle to shrimp in sake sauce. I found a fork neatly aligned in the appropriate drawer. He motioned toward a chair with an open hand. I sat and dished up, but I could feel him watching me.
“Am I wrong?” he asked. “Are fathers not meant to protect?”
I glanced up, having half forgotten our conversation. Food does that to me. Some addicts have their meth. Some their crack. I have stir-fry…and lasagna…and enchiladas…and pastries so sweet they’ll send you into a diabetic coma with one sidelong glance.
“That is how we’ve envisioned them from the dawn of time,” he said. “Fair or not, we expect them to shield us from the hardships of the world.”
I shrugged.
“He did not even protect you from your brothers.”
I shook my head as I took my first crispy bite. It was insanely delicious. “Some theorize that we put too much pressure on fathers. That in a more natural setting, they would be all but superfluous. That women would form bands to care for their young in a more matriarchal society.”
“Was there a band of nurturing women seeing to your care, Christina?”
“This is excellent,” I said, perhaps to justify the fact that I was devouring the food like a hound on a hapless…pork chop.
“If not, it was your father’s duty to do so,” he added.
I tightened my defenses against the memories. It wasn’t as if I had been raised by rabid wolves. But living in the McMullen clan had been a little dog-eat-dog. “I can take care of myself.”
He raised a dubious brow, reminding me of a half-dozen mishaps that had occurred in just the past few days.
“Under normal circumstances,” I added.
“Then why date a police officer?”
I squirmed a little, which I resented because the meal was exquisite, making it almost impossible to multitask. “I’m not looking for a father figure, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“So he doesn’t protect you either?”
Harsh scenarios flashed through my mind. Rivera was saving my ass in each and every one of them. “That’s his job,” I said. “To protect and serve. Says so right in their credo…or something.”
He rose to pour tea, very precisely, into two fragile cups he’d taken from some hidden crevice.
“It’s not just me,” I said. “He’s protecting and serving everyone.” And wasn’t that just the shits!
“And how does that make you feel?” he asked.
“I don’t—” I stopped abruptly. Damn him. Damn him and his sneaky cobra ways. “Teach me to fight,” I said.
“So you do not have to rely on another man who will fail to live up to your expectations?”
“So I don’t end up dead,” I said, but somewhere in the deepest part of me I wondered why men abandoned me.
“We all die sooner or later.”
“I would prefer later.”
He rested his hips against the counter behind him, leaving the remainder of his meal unattended. If I hadn’t already known he was a psychopath that would have convinced me. “Why not return to Chicago?” he asked.
“Let me count the ways.”
“Maybe you could abolish past demons while avoiding more current ones.”
“No.”
He watched me, and in the silence I could feel him cranking up a handful of inane questions with which to torment me.
“Fine!” I snapped. “You want to hear my sordid family history? I’ll tell you. I have nothing to hide.” And I had polished off my meal; I might as well talk. “My father was distant at best. He wanted a daughter about as much as he wanted a steak knife through the heart.”
“Not many survive that,” he said.
I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. “How do you know that?”
“Urban legend,” he assured me.
I shook my head but couldn’t quite ignore the questions that tumbled through my brain. Whose heart? Whose steak knife? I soldiered on. “I had acne, shock-victim hair, and an extra fifty pounds.”
If he laughed, I fully intended to try that steak-knife scenario, but in all honesty, I wasn’t even sure he knew how to laugh…or had a heart.
“I could barely fit inside my tuba.”
No reaction.
“We played during halftime at the high school football games. It was Dad’s job to drive me to the events.”
“Your mother was otherwise occupied?”
I blin
ked in surprise. Thinking back, I wasn’t sure what my mother was doing. Trying to pretend she’d never borne children, probably.
“Continue,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “On one particular occasion, he took me but neglected to retrieve me. I finally called home to ask Mom if they were missing anything.”
“Meaning you.”
I nodded. “She said yeah, she couldn’t find her cigarette lighter anywhere.”
“She smoked?”
“But she was mad as a Scotsman when she discovered I had picked up the habit.”
“One is considerably more likely to die from lung cancer than a punctured heart…statistically speaking.”
“That’s why I quit.” I watched him. He had the kind of even-keeled temperament that would make a decent therapist, a good poker player, or a world-class killer. “Twenty or thirty times.” I winced. Twitchy nerves made nicotine’s siren song practically irresistible. “You wouldn’t happen to have any Virginia Slims lying around, would you?”
His eyes shone as bright as mercury, but his expression never changed. Tough crowd.
“The last time I had a smoke was when Pete stayed with me.”
“The brother who thought it wise to borrow money from one who covets livers?”
I nodded.
“He was living with you?”
I stared at him. The man might have been a murderer, but he didn’t have to be mean; I wasn’t stupid enough to allow my dumb-ass brother to cohabitate. “He was just visiting,” I said.
“Is that why you risked your life to repay D?” he asked. “To remove him from your life?”
“No. I mean, Pete’s a Neanderthal…and a moron…and a fucktard.” I had almost forgotten how much I loved that word during my endless sojourn in Classyville and was thrilled to retrieve it. “Really a fucktard, but he’s still my brother.” I glanced up. “You know?”
He handed me a cup of tea.
I took a sip. It was weirdly tasty. “It’s not as if Dad was much of a father to him either. And you know how mothers tend to favor their sons?”
