It Wasn't Me - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,26

to continue to sit next to him all day long and not want to jump his bones.

Maybe we could go back to the hotel at mid-day or something.

“What are you thinking about?” Jonah suddenly asked. “Because it’s not the pretzel...”

I swallowed and contemplated telling him a lie but thought better of it.

“I was thinking about going to the hotel room at lunch and, errrm, taking care of a few things,” I answered, hoping that he would let it go.

But he didn’t.

He grinned like the devil and gestured to his watch.

“You might miss something at the auction if you go back to the hotel for lunch,” he said. “But I’m down if you are.”

I grimaced. “I don’t want to miss any of the auction. But there is a thirty-minute intermission around noon. We’ll know what’s coming up…”

“The fact that you’re planning out sex with me is a real turn-on, baby,” he rumbled, low and deep. “But we’re not missing any of this auction. You’d kick yourself for it later.”

I would.

It was surprising that he could see how serious I was about the entire thing. I was even more surprised that he would make sure that I went, despite obviously wanting to do the exact opposite.

“What else do we need to talk about before we get home?” Jonah asked suddenly, changing the subject with a quickness that said if he didn’t—and I didn’t—he’d be doing something he didn’t want to do.

I smiled.

“My dog and cat get home next Wednesday,” I said. “You’re sure that it’ll be okay to have them at your house?”

He smiled then.

“Our house.”

Hearing those words come out of his mouth made my heart leap.

“It’s your house, Jonah.” I shook my head. “Even if we don’t make it, it’s always going to be your house. This is all going to be done totally amicable because I’m not a bitch who’ll take a man to the cleaners. The world is complicated enough.”

His shoulders drooped slightly.

“I don’t want to go into this with the idea that we’re not going to make it,” he said. “I want you to actually try. So I don’t want you to think about ‘what ifs’ for now.”

I frowned. “Why do you feel so strongly about this? Most men would be freakin’ the hell out right now.”

He dipped another chunk of pretzel into the cheese sauce before popping it into his mouth and chewing.

I watched a piece of cheese drip into his beard and leaned forward with my napkin and wiped it away.

His lips twitched.

“My parents…shit, this is a long story.” He shook his head. “Okay, so I spent the first fifteen years of my life thinking one thing—that the man that I grew up with was my father.”

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

“Ummm…” I paused. “What?”

His lips formed a small smile.

“Okay, so when I was fifteen, I had a half-brother. Lachlan Downy Senior.” He waited for me to nod before continuing. “My sister, Aspen, and I grew up thinking that the man we grew up with was our father. He was cruel, and an awful all-around person. We highly disliked him, but since he was our father, we tolerated it. What our father did not tolerate was Downy.”

I bobbed my head as I nibbled on another piece of pretzel.

He took a sip of his coffee before continuing.

“But shit hits the fan when Aspen finds her now husband. She finds out that our father wasn’t really our father. Our father is really Downy’s father. Condensed version, before he was shipped off for war, they stored some of his sperm. When my mom and ‘father’ couldn’t have children, my mother instead used my real father’s sperm to get pregnant, making Downy, Aspen, and I full siblings and not half.”

I shook my head.

“That’s complicated and messy,” he admitted. “Anyway, long story short, with my messed-up home life, I’m not really comfortable with not giving this marriage a full shot. I want to go into this thinking that we’re going to make it. I don’t know you well, but what I do know of you, I like. A lot. Do I wish we’d have gone about this a different way? Hell yeah. But we didn’t. And I’m hoping that we can try to make it work. If it ever becomes too much…well, at least we gave it a try, you know?”

I understood exactly.

Was our marriage under the right circumstances? Probably not. But was giving up before we’d even given it a try something I was willing to do? No.

“I do know,” I said