She frowned, but he didn’t care. He was keeping the conversation flowing but simple. Not too personal or anything that would cause her spicy temper to make an appearance.
“She does. We aren’t close, before you ask. Well, she wants to be close, but I don’t.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Okay.”
“And you want to know more about that, but you won’t ask,” she said.
“I don’t want to pry or overstep myself. I figure if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”
“You’re right. There are things I’m not ready or willing to share, but when it comes to my mother, I guess I don’t care enough.”
Or she cared more than she wanted to say and this was her way to vent and get things off her chest without telling her father? He almost said that but decided not to. “I’ve got good ears for listening,” he said.
“My mother wants to be best friends. She doesn’t want to be a parent. She wants to look like she’s in her twenties; she wants to act like it too. She wants men that age but hasn’t gotten that lucky. At least I don’t think so. I don’t ask those things because I don’t want to know those details.”
Interesting. “She doesn’t sound much like you.”
“She isn’t. She cheated on my father. That’s unforgivable to me. I don’t care her reasons. I don’t care if she was unhappy. I don’t care that they had marital problems. Those weren’t my concern. What I care about was she was selfish and careless with her actions and words and hurt my father.”
Loyalty. He wasn’t surprised to find she possessed that trait. “I can agree with that. Just so you know, you’ve heard I like to date. That women want to be with me. And I know it sounds conceited when I say that, but it’s the truth too. The Fierce men in my family have all been like this. Good genes,” he said letting out a laugh.
“You do seem pretty blessed in the looks front.”
“Just my face?” he asked. “Not my body?”
He knew he took a risk saying that, but he couldn’t help but notice her eyes roaming over him as much as his were hers. “Well now, I think you know the answer to that too.”
“Anyway,” he said. “I don’t cheat. I don’t date more than one person at a time. I don’t juggle women like many might think. It’s not the way I was raised.”
“Good to know,” she said and then let it drop.
“So if you were close to your father why didn’t you move here sooner?” he asked. “Or is that too personal?”
“No, it’s not. My father moved here when his job had an opening. I was in college and he felt like it was safe to do it. I wasn’t home with my mother much at that point.”
“So he was protective of you?”
“He was. He is. I lived with my mother because he did travel a lot, but when he was home, I was with him. I knew after college I’d move out on my own. I happened to get a job offer and I’d lived there my whole life. I took the job but came to visit often. My father encouraged me to take the boards here. To do what was needed to be licensed here if I ever wanted to move. I thought he was nuts, but I listened to what he said and was glad that I did.”
“Our parents tend to be pretty smart even when we think they aren’t.”
“Exactly. So I stayed and worked and loved my job. I was dating someone and...it ended horribly. I needed to just put it behind me. Some say I ran, but I don’t care. I did what I needed to do. I called my father and he found me an apartment close to him since I wouldn’t live with him. I put my notice in, packed up and made my way here.”
“You had no job?” he asked. That took guts to do. To even stay on her own.
“No. But I had money put aside and knew it wouldn’t be long before I found a job either. It wasn’t. I didn’t want to live with my father and Maggie. I’m a little too old to live with my parents.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” she said. “And you?”
“I’ll be thirty-two soon.”
“Good age,” she said.
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that and didn’t have a chance to ask when the sky opened up and the rain came down in buckets.
“Shit,” he said. “Let’s head back.”
They both turned and ran back. They were a mile in at this point, but both kicked it into gear. He’d kept his long legs to the same pace as hers, faster than a jog but not a sprint. By the time they got to the parking lot, they dove under the roof of the restroom building.
“Well, guess I know why there aren’t that many people out today.”
“I want to say it’s a sun shower, but it’s coming down too hard for that.”
“Might as well hang out here until it lets up. Our cars are still pretty far away. I’d prefer not to jump in as if I climbed out of the shower fully clothed.”
“Not sure I have much of a choice either way,” she said.
They stood under the roof, both of them dripping wet. Her hair was plastered to her head, but she pulled a rubber band off her wrist and tied it back. It was starting to curl even more and he found his hands reaching out to finger the spiral lying across her back.
“I wondered how long this was. It’s pretty unruly. Kind of like you.”
She snorted. “It’s more manageable longer. But I just pull it back all the time. Guess I should have done that today too.”
“No,” he said. “I like it down.”
The rain started to let up a few minutes later to
