Dirty Talker (Slayers Hockey #4) - Mira Lyn Kelly Page 0,27

off yet another woman’s unwanted advances. Then leaning into his side, I ask, “Sort of a running theme with you, huh?”

He lets out a low laugh, our secret hanging in that look between us. “Too bad you weren’t there to help me out.”

“Too bad.”

And then he turns to his brother, who’s watching us like he’s never seen Wade flirt with a girl in his life. “No big deal. I mean, it all worked out in the end… Harlow helped me wash off all those hard-to-reach places.”

The bounce of his eyebrows suggests he’s talking about something more than me standing with him in the bathroom, and all I can do is laugh.

Janie rolls her eyes, giving her fiancé a shoulder bump. “Oh my God, with these two! Harlow, have you got siblings?”

“A brother, older by five years. Or half-brother. My dad’s been married a few times. But between the age difference and rarely being in the same house, we’re not close like these guys.” Not to mention that we couldn’t be less alike.

“That’s too bad,” Walt says, going after another fry. “He didn’t get along with your mom?”

I take a sip of my iced tea, searching for an easy answer that won’t invite more questions. But short of lying, there isn’t one. “Actually, I don’t know how they got along. My mother was killed in a car accident when I was an infant.”

Wade reaches for my hand as Walt and Janie both tell me how sorry they are for my loss and I try to make them feel better about bringing it up.

“So you never knew your mother?” Janie asks, her eyes misty.

“Not really. I know things about her, of course. She was from Tamil Nadu in India and met my father while she was studying at the London School of Economics. They were married within months.” And she was dead within a year.

I don’t offer that last detail. It gives too much of the math away.

My father married my mother when she was pregnant with me.

I don’t mention that I’m fairly confident he resented her for it. Or that it sometimes makes me sad to think about what that last year of her life might have been like living with a man who can’t be bothered to hide his resentment for the people who inconvenience him. Or that what I just shared with them is the sum total of what I know about my mother.

Janie leaves her seat and, coming over beside mine, pulls me into a hug. It’s so unexpected, so sweet and kind, I’m a little choked up when she pulls back.

“Did your dad marry again? Do you have a stepmom?” she asks, sliding back into her seat and beneath Walt’s waiting arm.

“No. My mother was wife number three. And my father… Honestly, if it’s not business, it doesn’t really make his radar.”

This is the kind of conversation I do anything to avoid. It’s why I’ve always been a good listener and tend to ask more questions about others than I offer information about myself. I don’t want to have to explain about the string of nannies who were as cool and detached as my father or why the only pictures of me from when I was a kid are the ones my teachers took at school.

I don’t like feeling like the freak outcast, and the truth is, I can fake not being one with the best of them. Just so long as people don’t ask me too many questions. Like how we celebrate holidays or what family vacations we’ve taken.

I take another long swallow of my tea and then throw a hand up like some exciting idea just came to me. “Hey, what’s happening tonight? More wedding prep?”

Walt flags our server for the check and then flips Wade off when he tries to pick it up. “Everyone’s heading over to the Den tonight. What do you say?”

Wade turns to me, brow raised in question. “What do you think, Good Girl? You up for some Enderson nightlife?”

I make a show of thinking it over. “I don’t know, is this the kind of place where you’ll be coming home with your shirt in tatters again?”

He gives me a grin-wink combo that’s probably been setting panties on fire since the first time he stumbled on it. “Not unless you’re the one tearing it off.”

Chapter 11

Harlow

That afternoon, Wade takes me to the local bookstore—an actual store dedicated solely to books!—and we spend an hour and a half talking quietly within the