9
“How do you like your steak?” Her dad called to her from the patio, a plume of smoke going up when he opened the grill to turn the rib eyes.
“Medium rare,” Jules called out before bringing her glass of Cabernet to her lips.
They’d spent the past hour walking through his house as he showed her the various memorabilia he’d collected over the years. He had it all framed and catalogued like a prized collection in a museum. In fact, the house itself could’ve been a museum. It was decorated in a sleek, modern style straight from the pages of a magazine, all stone, glass, and dark woods. Impressive, but lacking warmth. There was nothing about it that screamed Craig Darcy. She’d been half expecting to see that tacky green recliner he’d spent a summer recuperating in when he’d blown out his knee. She used to sit in that ratty thing when he was gone because it smelled like his aftershave. She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t have it, but she missed it. It was one of the few good things she remembered from her childhood.
Despite the missing chair and the lack of personality in his décor, Jules was pleasantly surprised at how well the evening was going. Her dad had been charming, cracking jokes about how he’d given his decorator hell by arguing about the difference between harbor gray and smoky gray for weeks. She’d forgotten he could be funny.
“What’s with the apron?” she asked when he closed the grill. He’d slipped it on when he’d been walking outside so she hadn’t gotten a good look until now. Beneath a warning sign were the words: Hot Stuff Coming Through. “Doesn’t seem like your style.”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Allison gave it to me. I should probably throw it out.”
“Allison?” Admittedly they hadn’t talked much, but he’d never mentioned he was dating anyone.
He waved her off, untied the apron, and draped it over a prep table. “It ended awhile back.”
Jules didn’t know why it hurt, but a hollow ache throbbed just beneath her heart. Swallowing her questions, she asked, “Do you need me to toss a salad?”
“Already did it. The bowl’s in the fridge, but I’ll get it. Just sit and enjoy the wine. It’s straight from Napa.” He walked through the open French doors to the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and pulled out a large wooden bowl. “You remember Mike from O’Malley’s in Boston?”
She frowned and shook her head. “O’Malley’s? Wasn’t that your old gym?”
“Yeah, Mike was the guy who was this tall,” he held his hand up to his chest, “and about as wide as a Mack truck.” He retrieved some bowls from a cabinet and doled out salad into each one.
Her mom had never allowed her to hang out at his gym, so she couldn’t understand why he thought she’d know one obscure guy. Why didn’t he remember that she was hardly ever there with him? It was just like the strawberry ice cream all over again. Instead of arguing, she put her glass down and met him at the open doors to take the bowls. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”
“How could you not remember? He was there all the time, had a buzz cut and no eyebrows.” His eyes widened in surprise and he raised the bowls to emphasize his question.
She laughed at his description to cover the sinking feeling in her stomach, and shrugged as she set the salads down on the patio table. “I wasn’t there as much as you seem to think. I only remember going a couple of times.”
He shook his head as if he’d forgotten and pulled their baked potatoes from the oven. “Well, he met some woman after one of my fights. She was older. A wine heiress.” He pulled the foil off each one, wincing as he tried not to burn his fingers, before putting each steaming potato on a small plate. “They got married and he lives in Napa now at her winery. That’s their Cabernet.”
“That’s unbelievable.” She forced a smile. So he didn’t remember her not being around his gym much. It wasn’t a big deal. She wouldn’t let it ruin dinner.
“I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. He’s sworn off Guinness and can tell you which vintage to pair with any cut of meat.” Her father smiled as he delivered the food to the table and then went to retrieve their steaks from the grill. He took his seat across from her, taking a healthy pull from his beer.
“This looks great, Dad. I didn’t know you could cook.” Her childhood had been filled with takeout and cereal.
“I don’t much, but I have a few specialties.” He cut into his rib eye and took a bite, chewing it before he said, “Don’t you remember the special mac and cheese with bacon I made every time you had a friend sleep over? You loved it.”
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath to control the sudden surge of anger flaring inside her at the way he remembered things differently than she did. “But I only remember you making that one time.”
He frowned, his brows drawing together. “No, I made it lots of times. You’d have that friend over, the one with the curly hair. What was her name? Sara . . . Suzy . . .”
“Her name was Jamie. It was third grade and she only came over the one time because you and Mom spent the whole night arguing, and I was too embarrassed to invite her back. I never invited anyone else to sleep over.”
“Shit.” He mumbled the word and took another drink of his beer. “That’s not true.”
“It is true.” She picked up her knife and began sawing her steak into bite-sized pieces to give herself something else to focus on besides her growing frustration with him. “You can’t keep whitewashing my childhood and pretending that everything was normal, because it wasn’t. But I didn’t come over to talk about what happened back then. Let’s just talk about now. Work.”
“We can do that at the office. I want to get to know you.”
“Okay, fine, that’s fair. But let’s stick to the present.” She’d moved on to slathering butter on her baked potato to avoid looking at him. He was staring at her, and she didn’t want to see that confused look on his face. “Last year, I worked on an ad campaign for that new dating app, Plus 1. There’s a funny story about the models we hired. Apparently they’d dated before, and it didn’t go well.” Taking a bite of her potato, she looked up to see that he was still watching her with a bemused expression.
“That’s work. I want to know about you. Are you dating anyone? Break any hearts?”
Nick flashed through her mind. She still couldn’t believe she’d done that last night. There was just something about being near him that made her lose control.
Aware that her dad was still watching her, a flush crept up her neck. What was wrong with her? What was she doing? He could have caught them last night, and he probably would’ve canceled Nick’s contract on the spot. He might’ve even fired her for getting close to a fighter. She couldn’t let him know about her mixed-up feelings for Nick, or their history. “Like I told Gary, I’m not dating anyone.”
Her dad sighed, and she wasn’t sure if he thought she was avoiding the question, but she didn’t look up to find out. Instead she ate her steak, and they fell into an awkward silence.
Finally, he said, “I know we weren’t the Cleavers, but it wasn’t all bad.”
“Dad . . . just . . . let’s not talk about it. Let’s move forward, okay?”
But he didn’t listen. “Don’t you remember the time we went to that beach in New Hampshire? We had fun, just the two of us, swimming while your mom laid out on the sand.”
“Yeah, it was a fun day.” She clenched her fingers around her fork and took a deep breath. Typical. He’d only remember the fun part and not everything that happened afterward.
“We spent the weekend, I thought.”
“We did. You didn’t.” She dropped her fork and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “We spent the afternoon on the beach, and then you and Mom argued that night about some woman who’d hit on you in the restaurant at dinner. You left, and Mom spent the next day in bed. I watched cartoons by myself and ate stale sandwiches.”
He sighed again and rubbed a hand over his face. “Your mom and I were going through a rough patch. We probably should’ve ended things long before we did.”
“I know you were, but you keep pretending that everything was okay when it wasn’t. It sucked, Dad. I never knew where you were or when you were coming home. My memories of family dinners are of you and Mom screaming at each other.” She pushed away her half-eaten steak and looked down at the glass table to rein in her anger.
“What do you want from me? I can’t go back and change anything.”
“You’re right. You can’t and I’m not asking you to. But acting like everything was okay back then isn’t helping us now. Just stop pretending that we had all of these great family moments, because we didn’t.”
“I’m not pretending anything.” His jaw clenched. “You were just a kid. Maybe you’re only remembering the bad things.”
Shaking her head, she said, “You’re not remembering things the way they happened.”
“That’s not fair.” He drained his beer and pushed back from the table. “I was around, Julian. You can’t tell me I wasn’t—I was there for birthdays and Christmases. Give me a little credit. You’re making me sound like a fucking ogre. Jesus Christ.”
She ignored the ogre comment and plowed ahead. “Yeah, you were around . . . until you weren’t. Until you couldn’t be around Mom without arguing, until you started booking more fights and stopped coming home.” The conversation was quickly starting to get out of control, and she was losing her temper. Another family dinner ruined by an argument. “Look, Dad, I didn’t come over to get into this with you. I think I should go and . . .” And what? Act like everything was fine, just like they’d been doing before she’d moved here? She rose to her feet and said, “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
He called after her, but she didn’t stop. Grabbing her purse, she rushed out to her car fighting tears. This had gone almost as badly as she’d feared. They’d be screaming at each other by now if she hadn’t left. Typical Darcy dinner. And she’d been as much a part of the argument as her dad. She’d become just like her parents. Perfect.
Slamming her car door shut, she covered her face with her hands, trying to come to terms with the fact that she’d made a huge mistake moving to Vegas. First Nick and whatever the hell was still going on between them, and now her dad. If she’d stayed in Boston, she wouldn’t be dealing with this. There’d be the occasional visits from her mom to complain about a boyfriend or something, but everything would be fine. Her life wouldn’t be this fucked-up soap opera.
Oh God, Nick. He was going to get the wrong idea from last night and think there was something going on between them, because why wouldn’t he? And fuck if she knew what was going on with them. Even thinking about having her hand around his cock was turning her on all over again. She’d felt so good with him, so alive, so free—both last night and during their time together in Chicago. But she also couldn’t forget who she was, or why she’d run in the first place.
What a mess.