That’s what everyone said out loud, but I had to believe I wasn’t the only one who could still be reduced to childlike status by my parents. I loved my mom and dad. They’d given me a lot of opportunities in life and they loved me. It was in my nature to people-please, especially my parents, so denying them anything was hard. And I’d denied them a lot over the years.
“I’ve disappointed them,” I admitted. “My parents. In different ways.” I flicked Rhys a look and found him watching me, curiosity in his gaze. I glanced away and gave the party a breezy smile. “The least I can do is keep my mouth clean for my mom.” I chuckled but was desperately searching for a passing waiter with a tray of ten champagne flutes I could divest him of.
“If that’s true, why do I need to keep my mouth clean?”
Thinking about it, I had no answer. Perhaps her distaste had become my distaste, but truthfully, I was growing used to Rhys’s cursing. It was just who he was. And it wasn’t as if I was ever going to introduce my cussing fake boyfriend to my mother. I didn’t want my parents to know I’d stooped to lying to make my career happen, and I didn’t want to lie to them and get their hopes up that I’d found someone I was serious about.
“I guess you don’t,” I conceded as I straightened my shoulders. “We should find Fairchild and remind him I exist.”
Rhys decided to give me that, not pushing the subject of my parents, which I appreciated. We moved down to the middle deck where Fairchild conversed with a group of men while women in string bikinis lounged behind them in a hot tub.
It was a clichéd scene that belonged in the 1980s. This yacht was my worst nightmare.
“Ah, there he is!” Fairchild spotted Rhys. “Men, you have to meet Morgan. Morgan, come here.”
Rhys tightened his grip on my hand and led me over.
Whatever he’d been feeling earlier, Rhys let go as he charmed Fairchild and the men around him. They asked about his days as a heavyweight champion, an existence that was such a far cry from their own, and Rhys indulged them. My boss, Jackson, appeared with Camille, along with a few colleagues and their partners. We spoke a little, a light relief at a party that made me uncomfortable, but they soon dispersed among the crowds. Except Jackson who stayed with Fairchild, listening to Rhys.
Other people joined and left the conversation, businessmen and women, members of Boston society, and Rhys handled them all with amazing aplomb. It occurred to me that, during his professional boxing days, he would have been surrounded by wealthy people. He was used to them.
He was better with them than I was, and I grew up in this world.
As the night wore on, I longed to be back in my apartment, curled up on my bed with the fantasy novel I was in the middle of. It was about faeries and war and romance and kick-ass heroines.
Or I’d prefer to be hanging out with the guys. “The guys” were my friends from MIT who hadn’t left Boston. Every second week we found a quiz night to attend and took far too much pleasure in annihilating our competitors.
Rhys was in the middle of convincing Fairchild and a few of his friends to drop by the gym for boxing lessons when I felt a hand on the small of my back. I turned sharply and looked up into a smiling, familiar face.
Stephen Chancer.
An ex.
Ish.
We’d gone on three dates. I’d slept with him on the third and then told him it wasn’t going to work out. Mostly because if I couldn’t stop thinking about electricity markets with high wind penetration during his penetration then I was calling it a fail.
However, my concern wasn’t over bumping into a man I’d rejected. He and I had been set up by his aunt, who knew my mother. For the most part I’d avoided mingling with East Coast society during my time at MIT, much to my mother’s despair. Stephen was the one time I’d let myself slip into that world, and to be honest, it wasn’t just his lack of industry in the bedroom that made me call it quits. He relied too much on his parents’ money and was kind of a snob.