The girl nodded and then her eyes shifted from Rush to focus on me. “You must be Blaire.”
“Yes,” I said, glancing up at Rush.
Rush pulled me closer beside him. “Blaire this is Harlow. She’s Kiro’s other daughter. Harlow, this is my fiancée, Blaire.”
“I know all about Blaire. Dean has filled me in. Do you mind if I stay up here with you, Blaire? Nan isn’t a fan of me and I like to stay away from angry people.”
“She needs to get dressed and I’m not sure she—”
“Yes, I’d like that. I’ll just grab something from my suitcase and slip it on. Won’t take but a minute,” I replied, interrupting Rush. I was normally a good judge of character and I liked Harlow. She seemed almost shy. She was soft spoken and there was no malice in her eyes. She also hadn’t ogled Rush when she’d looked at him. That was a major plus for me.
“Are you sure? I was going to have you some food brought up and—”
“The food sounds wonderful. Send some up for Harlow too, please,” I said before he could say anything more.
Harlow’s laugh startled me and I looked over at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just he’s being so not like Rush. It’s fun to watch him like this.”
Yeah. I liked her. “Let me get dressed and you go deal with Nan before she comes looking for you. I don’t want to see her just yet.”
That seemed to snap Rush out of his determination to keep me bundled up in bed like an invalid. He wouldn’t want Nan near me while she was in this mood either. He nodded and headed for the door.
Once he was out the door I motioned for Harlow to come on inside. “I’ll just go put on some clothes. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you. I’ve never been in Rush’s room before. I typically stay in my room and read. But when Dean told me about you I was curious,” she admitted with a shy smile.
“I’m curious about you too. I didn’t know Kiro had another daughter. The one I do know isn’t very nice. You’re nothing like Nan.”
Harlow looked sad for a moment. “I was raised very differently from Nan. My Grandmama would have tanned my hide if I’d ever acted the way Nan does. I wasn’t allowed to be demanding or throw fits growing up. Grandmama made sure I was well behaved. I think that’s why daddy liked to come get me. I didn’t get in the way when I came here. I sat in my room and read my books mostly. When he had time for me he’d come get me and we would go to a movie or an amusement park. But other than that my life was with my Grandmama in South Carolina.”
So that’s why she sounded southern. “I grew up in Alabama. I was wondering about your accent,” I confessed.
She smiled. “Most people do. No one expects Kiro’s daughter to be a country girl.”
I nodded because she was right. They didn’t. With a name like Harlow and a famous father I would imagine her to be spoiled and an elitist. She was neither. I pulled out a sundress from my suitcase. I was wearing dresses more often now since my stomach was too big for my jeans.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her and hurried to the bathroom to get dressed.
RUSH
Kiro was shirtless and swinging his tattooed arms around with a cigarette between his fingers and a bottle of rum in his other hand. “What the ever loving f**k is your problem? Hell, you got momma issues then go bitch at motherfucking Georgianna. Why am I the one being dealt this crazy shit?” Kiro was yelling at Nan when I walked into the game room. A pair of black lace panties were on the pool table but the female I’d left him with a few hours earlier was nowhere to be seen. Small miracles.
“Rush! Do you hear him? He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care that he ignored me most of my life and do you know he has a daughter? Some uptight bitch that won’t even look at me,” Nan was still screaming.
I walked over to her and grabbed both her hands. “Take a couple deep breaths, Nan. You gotta calm down so we can all talk. You yelling isn’t gonna fix shit.”
She glared at me but did as I told her to. I waited until she’d taken two deep breaths before squeezing her hands. “Good. Now, go sit over there on that sofa and don’t talk. Let me talk. Okay?”
She frowned but nodded her head and walked over to the white leather sectional sofa that outlined two of the four walls in this room. Once she was she seated I turned back around to look at Kiro. He was taking another long swig from the rum. The man needed to stop drinking and eat something. You could see his ribs. His fetish with leather went beyond furniture. He wore it too. The leather pants he had on were hanging on his tattooed hipbones.
“Can’t believe you got her to shut up for a whole damn minute,” Kiro muttered and put the cigarette back to his lips.
I looked at Nan and shook my head. They were too much alike. They both liked to have the last word.
“She’s upset. Please just watch your words and try to remember she’s your daughter. The one you abandoned to live with the worst mother a kid could have. Now,” I glanced over at Nan. “You can’t hate Harlow because he chose to take care of her. You hated Blaire for the same reasons. She never did anything to you but you hated her anyway. There are only two people at fault for the way things ended up. Kiro and Mom. You need to keep your hateful malice geared toward them. Not everyone around them.”
“She’s made you hate me. You never used to call me hurtful names. I hate her because she took you from me. I can blame her. She took the only family I had who loved me. All you do now is correct me and talk down to me. You haven’t even called me since I left the hospital,” she spat and bolted up. “I’m done trying to make you all love me. I shouldn’t have to try so hard. I hope you’re all happy!” She ran from the room and her heels clicked down the hall and up the steps. I wasn’t sure if she was actually leaving or going to throw a fit and see who would follow. I’d followed for too long. I’d helped make her this way.
“Fuck. I needed you around here all along. You can get rid of her with no problem. Damn, that was easy,” Kiro said as he sank down onto the sofa and propped his feet up, crossing them at the ankles. His hand still clutched the rum and his cigarette still hung out of his mouth. “Sit down and tell me about that girl I ain’t met yet. You sure ran outta here fast when Princess dropped her shirt.”