Blame It on the Bikini - By Natalie Anderson Page 0,31

fail.

So he switched. ‘But she works really hard at it.’

He encountered a beseeching green gaze just at the moment her mother’s proud tones came from the other side of the table.

‘Mya always works hard.’

Brad worked hard himself then, keeping the conversation light—and away from work. Mya was abnormally quiet and giving him keen looks every so often. It bothered him she was so nervous—what did she think would happen? Did she trust him so little? He wouldn’t let her down and give her away.

‘I hope it wasn’t too bad my staying.’ He finally apologised for butting in when they were back in his car and driving towards town. ‘But I really enjoyed it.’

‘It was hardly your usual restaurant standard,’ she answered brusquely.

‘You couldn’t get fresher than that salad,’ he pointed out.

That drew a small smile. ‘It’s the one thing he likes the most but tending the garden takes him a long time. He has chronic pain and he gets tired.’

‘It was an accident?’

‘In the factory years ago.’ She nodded. ‘He’s been on a sickness benefit since. Mum does the midnight shift at the local supermarket.’ She sighed. ‘So now you know why I want to get the big corporate job.’

He nodded.

‘I want to move them somewhere else. Somewhere much nicer.’

‘I can understand that.’ He paused. ‘You really care about what they think of you, huh?’

‘Don’t you care about what your folks think of you?’

He laughed beneath his breath. ‘It no longer matters to me what either of them think.’

‘No longer? So it used to?’

‘When I was a kid I wanted to please Dad.’ He laughed—the small kind of laugh designed to cover up real feelings.

Mya didn’t want him to cover up. ‘But you don’t any more?’

‘I’m really good at my job and I enjoy it. What he thinks is irrelevant.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He didn’t do anything.’

‘I’m not stupid either, Brad.’ She turned in her seat to study his profile directly.

‘So you know what he does.’ Brad trod harder on the accelerator and gave her the briefest of glances. His warm brown eyes now hard and matte. ‘Buys his way out of anything.’

‘What did he buy his way out of for you?’ Mya asked quietly.

Attention. It was all about attention. For him. For Lauren. He’d once asked his father to come and see him in a debating contest of all things. Sure, not the most exciting of events, but he’d been fifteen years old and still young enough to want his father’s approval. At that time he’d wanted to be his father. A brilliant lawyer, top-earning partner in his firm with the beautiful wife, the yacht, the two kids and the dog.

‘I caught him.’ Brad surprised himself by answering honestly.

‘Doing what?’

‘Betraying us.’ He glanced at Mya. She’d revealed a part of her life that she preferred to keep private and that she wanted to fix. He wanted her to know that he understood that. So he told her. ‘I wanted him to come to see me in the debating final when I was a teen. But he said he had an important meeting he couldn’t get out of. I won and went up to show him the medal.’ He’d gone up to his father’s office, excited with the winning medal in hand, anticipating how he’d quietly hold it up and get the smile, the accolade. Instead he’d discovered that the very important meeting his father hadn’t been able to wriggle out of had been with one of the junior lawyers. Fresh from law school, whether she was overly ambitious or being taken advantage of, Brad didn’t know and no longer cared.

‘The meeting was with a trainee,’ he said. ‘She was on her knees in front of him.’

‘Oh, Brad.’

His father had winked. Winked and put his finger to his lips, as if Brad was old enough—‘man’ enough—to understand and keep his sordid secret. His scheduled screw more important than his own son. And the promises he’d made to his wife.

So many dreams had shattered that day.

The anger had burned like acid as he’d run home and hidden in the damn tree hut that he hadn’t built with his father, but that his father had paid some builder to put in for the look of it.

Brad decided never to be a lawyer like his father. It would never be a father-and-son firm as his father had always envisaged. No insanely high billing rates for Brad. He’d turned to the far poorer-paying child advocacy in direct retaliation to his father. He had the trust