Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,50

‘Then you’d be busy.”

Dyma crossed her arms. “Mom.”

Harlan was still looking cool. Now, he said, “We’ve got a couple choices here. You and Dyma can move to that couch in back of us, have at least a little privacy. Or you can stay here with us and talk this out. Don’t worry about Owen and me. We already heard you were sixteen when you had Dyma, and that sure doesn’t make us think any less of you. Besides, you know my family life wasn’t anywhere close to perfect, because I shared. I’m not real fond of sharing, and I can’t think why I did, but there it is.”

That was true. Harlan had told her his story, at least a piece of it. Why didn’t that make this feel any easier?

“Harlan’s right,” Owen said. “The ink’s not even dry on my divorce. I’ve got no room to talk.”

“You’re divorced?” Dyma asked, and looked a little dismayed. Jennifer had been right, then. Some part of Dyma had been trying to think of Owen as just starting out, as in her league. Instead, he was an All-Pro NFL player, and undoubtedly a multimillionaire. Jennifer knew something about NFL contracts now. An All-Pro center? What was that, many millions of dollars a year? She wasn’t doing that calculation on Harlan, because it would be even more than that, and anyway, it was none of her business and none of her concern, except to say that, yes, he’d have private-jet money. Despite Owen’s teasing, he deferred to Harlan. It was subtle, but it was there. Harlan, she was pretty sure, was the big star.

Owen was not only an NFL player, though, he also owned a ranch. She’d had a chance to learn, working for Blake, about the kind of steady discipline it took to make it to the NFL, and to stay there. Emotionally, Owen was plenty old.

It was just as well that Dyma get set straight. Which was what made this conversation an important one, actually. Maybe Owen didn’t understand that age gap now, but by the time Jennifer was done, he was going to understand it.

“Yep,” the man in question said. “My divorce was final about three months ago. I’ve got good parents, though, and they’ve been married close to thirty-five years now. Can’t throw the fault for my marriage on anybody else.”

Jennifer said, “Right. This is halfway out there anyway, and there’s no stuffing it back in the bag now. It’s not that exciting a story anyway. Happens every day.” She could tell that she was sitting up too straight, her shoulders rigid, but this wasn’t exactly a relaxing topic. She told Dyma, “But you could have talked to me. If you wanted to know more, why didn’t you ask me before this?”

“Because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Dyma said. “And besides, Grandma told me when I first heard about it in third grade, so I didn’t have to ask you. And later on, she explained some more. I’m all clued in.”

“She did?” Jennifer didn’t have much else than that. Why hadn’t her mother told her?

“Did you seriously imagine,” Dyma said, “that, ‘Your dad wasn’t ready to be a father’ was going to be enough for any kid?”

“Well, I hoped,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t really know what else to say.”

“You could’ve told me the truth,” Dyma said. “There’s that option. Of course, Grandma wasn’t a whole lot better. She just said that all kinds of good people come from bad parents, so I shouldn’t worry about it. She was probably right, though. Even things like depression and alcoholism are only about half due to genetics. If I’d inherited sociopathy, it would’ve showed up by now. I think he was just a bad guy.”

“He …” Oh, boy. Here they went. “I don’t think he was a bad guy, not really, or not all the way. I don’t know. I have no idea where he is now, or how his life turned out. He moved away, and so did his folks, as soon as he went to prison. That part was true. He was just … thoughtless, maybe.”

“Thoughtless,” Harlan said flatly.

She could feel herself flushing. “All right, insecure. Inferior. Whatever it is guys get when their life isn’t going the way they expected, and they’re still young and egotistical and entitled. Which you never were, right?”

“Which I was plenty,” he said. “Just not so much that I slept with any fifteen-year-olds.”

“Look,” she said, “he’d graduated from high school and gone from being