He shook his head. “No, but I love watching it. I always wanted to play, but I was pretty scrawny as a kid. Got knocked down a lot.”
There was something in his expression that made me think there was more to the story, but I wasn’t sure I knew him well enough to press. It was always strange to me, this dance of intimacy. We’d just fucked each other which most people would consider being pretty damned intimate, and yet he was still a stranger to me in so many ways.
To me true intimacy wasn’t just in someone’s body, it was in their mind as well. And if this was supposed to be just sex between us, I didn’t need to go probing too deeply into what made him tick. Even though I wanted to.
“I love it,” I told him. “And it’s kind of like a forced social life now. If I didn’t have my work at the bar and my hockey league, I’d probably never see my friends.”
A look of concern crossed his face. “You work too hard.”
It was a statement, not a question, and he was right. This man who’d only known me two days already knew I was a workaholic.
I shrugged. “Might as well work when I’m young,” I said with a somewhat forced laugh. “If I get the Sea Sprite turned around the way I want it to, I actually think we could expand the brand and renovate other properties similarly. Make it into a retro chain of sorts.”
His eyebrow lifted in surprise. “Really? You’d want to move around and work on other properties?”
“Not sure,” I admitted. “I guess I’d want to wait and see how this one goes.”
James studied me for a minute before reaching for my hand. “Don’t get mad at me for asking this, but what would you do with the money if this deal went through instead?”
I felt my nostrils flare and my jaw tighten. “It doesn’t matter because it’s not going to happen.”
James rolled his eyes and turned to get out of the bed. He paced across the room and then back. “I wasn’t asking as the lawyer on this deal. I was asking as…” He stopped short and shoved his hand into his hair. He pressed his lips together and said, “I was just asking.”
I let out a breath, disappointed he hadn’t finished the statement. I’d wondered what words had been going through his head: as the man who’d just been fucked by me? As a friend? A lover? Someone who cared?
And I realized it was the last option that felt right. Because he clearly did care—I could tell by the way he’d offered to help last night, by the way he’d given up the chance to start working on the due diligence in order to let me nap, by the questions he’d already been asking.
I reached out a hand, patting the spot on the bed he’d just abandoned. “Hold on. Just wait. Give me a minute to think, okay?”
He sat back down, but this time his arms were crossed in front of his chest. I could tell he didn’t think I was taking the question seriously, and I was determined to prove him wrong.
“I like the hospitality industry. Talking to new people, helping them enjoy the short time they get off work… so I guess if this deal happened and Dunning Capital built a big resort in McBride…” I hesitated, the thought of the Sea Sprite being razed and replaced leaving my stomach sour. But James was right—I couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t a possibility. I had to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
I shrugged. “I guess I’d try to come up with an idea to take advantage of the increased tourist traffic. A tour company or maybe even try to save up to buy property for an alternative resort like my caravan cluster idea.”
James relaxed as I spoke, and he wound up grinning at me. “I can see it. I think that would be amazing. You know… with your share of the money—”
I held up my hand to cut him off. “Before you get too far down that road, it’s my turn. What about you? What would you do if your entire life plan were upended and you were forced out of your comfort zone?”
13
James
I paused, surprised by how easily he’d turned the question back on me. How had I not seen that coming? To buy myself time to figure out how to answer, I slid back down on the bed, lacing my hands behind my head. I opened my mouth, prepared to give him the easy answer, but then I hesitated. My eyes flicked toward his, and I saw genuine interest and curiosity there. I let out a breath.
“I’ve always told people a version of my truth, but not the full version,” I began tentatively, wondering why the hell I was considering telling him the real story. Maybe because he was safe, a dead end of sorts since he didn’t know anyone else in my life. “I… pretended to be someone I wasn’t for years,” I continued, the air feeling thick in my lungs. “My father taught me this bastardized version of ‘fake it till you make it’ and I took it to heart. He seemed to believe that you could be included in the highest echelons of society if you simply acted like you belonged and did it with confidence.”
I let my eyes trace an old faded water stain on the pockmarked ceiling. “And he was right, actually. Everyone believed that I was a normal kid from a normal family. They believed my dad was an accountant who commuted to the city, and they thought my mom was a nurse at the hospital.”
Sawyer shifted until he was lying on his side, facing me. “But they weren’t?”
I shook my head. “My mom was a janitor, and my dad was…” I lifted my hands for finger quotes. “Between jobs. The only reason we had a place to live was because a great-aunt had left my mom her house when they died. I didn’t learn that until later, and it took me even longer to figure out that my dad didn’t work because he was a selfish prick rather than someone perennially down on his luck.”
Sawyer frowned. “I thought you graduated from Yale. How the hell did you swing that?”
I lifted a shoulder. “My dad pushed me to become friends with the rich kids, to hang out at the local country club and eventually begin caddying for the wealthy members there. Meanwhile, I studied my ass off in school, mostly so I’d have a ticket out of Coventry as soon as I could manage it. I knew I didn’t want to end up eating rice and beans for the rest of my life, and I figured my only chance at college was a scholarship. Sure enough, when the time came, my grades and the piss-poor state of my parents’ financial situation combined to get me help at state school. I went to the University of Connecticut in Mansfield. It was only a six-mile bike ride from my parents’ house. Took me thirty minutes.”
I could tell by the look on his face, Sawyer was surprised by my story. I reached out a finger to press against the lines on his forehead. “I worked my ass off for that degree, not only academically, but financially,” I told him, letting my hand drop back down to the pillow. “While going to classes full-time, I also worked two jobs and got charged rent by my father. Meanwhile, my mom apparently reached her limit of my dad’s bullshit and took off with a guy she met in a chat room on the internet.”
Despite the effort I’d exerted to erase the frown from Sawyer’s face, it returned all too easily. “Do you keep in touch with her?”
I didn’t look at him when I answered. The ceiling was way safer. “When she found out I’d graduated from law school and landed a job at Lanford and Pratt, she called to congratulate me. Then she asked me for a loan.”