10. Liv #3
Oh, God. “But I don’t see how that changes anything.
You’re still a Dressler. And I haven’t changed my mind about giving my grandmother the shock of a lifetime for what might be no reason at all.
Which leaves us where? Pretending this weekend never happened?
Because from where I’m sitting, that looks like the safest option. ”
Something clinked on the other side of the line—a glass? Maybe he was drinking. “Humor me a minute, Liv. Let’s start over. Imagine we’re not destined to be mortal enemies and tell me why you were so pissed off when you answered the phone.”
Wrapping the blanket around my body, I shivered against the cold. “I’d just hung up on my ex-husband. I thought you were Gray, calling back to make amends.”
“Your ex, huh?” His voice was wary. “Can I ask what you were fighting about?”
Maybe this would be the deal-breaker that would make him decide I wasn’t so irresistible, after all. Nothing killed romance for a certain kind of man like single motherhood, and I had the failed first dates to prove it. “Our daughter, actually.”
“A daughter,” he repeated. “How old is she? And you and this ex, do you have any plans to reconcile?”
I got to my feet, on edge. “She’s eight. And heck no. He’s a liar and a cheater. I’ve had enough of that in my life.”
“So have I,” he said, biting out the words.
“Oh? Do you have an ex-wife lurking in the shadows?”
“Me? Ha.” He laughed, but this time it was bitter. “No wife. No kids. Not even a vengeful ex desperate to get her hands back on me, sorry to say.”
“I have a hard time envisioning that.”
“It’s the truth.”
I drew a deep breath. He’d made an effort, wanting to delve beneath the surface. I could do the same. And he hadn’t run for the hills at the first mention of Chloe, even if that might’ve been for the best. “Tell me about you, then. If you don’t have an ex or a kid, what do you have?”
I could almost see him shrug. “I have my work.”
“The bar?”
“Ah, no.” He sounded sheepish. “The bar’s a side business.
I’m a venture capitalist. I own property in New York, and down here.
I’ve backed a lot of startup gaming and tech companies and done well at it.
So now, I have the freedom to split my time between the city and my beach house.
I enjoy my work. And frankly, I’m good at it. ”
I sank down onto the built-in bench that bordered the deck, trying to integrate this information into the picture I’d formed of Theo.
He wasn’t just a business owner; he had serious dough.
Which meant whatever poverty the Dresslers had come from, he’d worked his butt off to get out of it.
Unlike Gray, he had no interest in or need for my money.
That pleased me, more than it should. What difference did it make in a one-night stand?
“I don’t like to lead with my business interests,” he said. “It can give people the wrong idea. Easier for people to just think I own a bar. I’m sure you understand.”
I got it, all right. My family’s money had been a blessing and an albatross all my life. “I don't understand a bit,” I quipped. “I tell everyone I meet about the gads of money my family has pouring out of every orifice, and it never goes sideways.”
We were both quiet for a long moment, considering Theo’s reaction to that very discovery.
Finally he said, “It’s strange the way I know so much about you and nothing at all.
I know what your great-grandparents did for a living.
I’ve seen pictures of them. Read articles.
But you’re a mystery to me. Beyond certain things, that is. ”
I could hear the smile in his voice, could picture him sitting on his living room couch, cradling a glass of whiskey. Caught off guard, I was silent, and he made a sound of chagrin. “Forget I said that. I’ve had too much to drink. I shouldn’t have called.”
So I’d been right about the whiskey. I imagined the rest—his dark hair tousled like it had been the other morning when he’d run his hands through it a few too many times, his brilliant hazel eyes clouded with concern.
“I’m not sorry you called, Theo,” I admitted.
“But I guess I don’t understand why. Are you drunk-dialing me?
Or are you any less upset that I’m not ready to ask my grandmother for the test? ”
Momentary silence fell, broken by the mournful whistle of the freight train that ran through Forest Hills.
It was a lonesome sound, but part of me loved it, even as it evoked a familiar ache.
When I was younger, I’d imagined that my bio mom lay awake somewhere, hearing the same whistle.
That the train connected us as it sped down the tracks between our cities, never stopping, calling out as it carved its way through the night.
A question with no answer, asked again and again.
I’d always thought of it as a ghost train, a train that had no home. In my darker nights, it reminded me of myself: belonging nowhere, an apparition in my own life.
But it turned out my bio mom was never listening at all. She’d died with a needle in her arm before I was even old enough to vote.
Theo was quiet for a while, long enough that the train’s wail faded into the distance. Just when I was beginning to wonder whether he was still there, he said, “No on both counts.”
“It’s not a good idea for us to date,” I said. “Obviously.” Even though he intrigued me, with his musical talent and his determination to make something of himself, not to mention his mad skills in bed.
His voice scraped bottom. “I don’t think so, either. Besides, dating isn’t my thing.”
“So we’re agreed,” I said, swallowing my misplaced disappointment. “Any suggestions?”
In the background, music—jazz, maybe?—rose and fell. “I do have one. But you’re not going to like it.”
“How do you know, unless you ask?”
He sucked in air, as if for courage. “Invite me to meet your family.”
I almost fell off the chaise. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Hear me out. You don’t have to tell them who I am. Just invite me along as a friend. I’ll give them a fake last name. I just want to meet her. At least once.”
“So, smuggle you into my grandmother’s house like a—an explosive device?
” A note of hysteria crept into my voice.
God, my parents would murder me if they found out.
They’d scatter my ashes under the magnolia on the front lawn, if it wouldn’t make the neighbors talk.
“You’re absolutely right I don’t like it. You’re insane.”
“I prefer to think of it as innovative and resourceful. If slightly deceptive.”
“Slightly deceptive!” I got to my feet, my shoulders rigid. “You want to check out my family and lie to them, so you can get what you’re after…whatever that is.”
I paced the deck. What I wouldn’t give to submerge myself in the hot tub right now and leave all of this behind.
“Have you told your parents about what happened, Theo?”
He coughed, smothering a laugh. “Hell, no. My mother would have a fucking fit.”
At least I wasn’t the only one who cared about my parents’ opinions. “And your father?”
“He’s not in the picture.”
I absorbed this, adding it to the collection of details I’d amassed about his life. “So you haven’t mentioned our…encounter to anyone. But you want to go to brunch with my family as—what? A spy?”
“I told you. I just want to meet her. Lily. Ella. Whatever her name is.” There was a snapping sound, as if he’d clenched his jaw shut on the last word. “Maybe I’ll recognize her. She may look like someone in my family. Or…maybe not. Then, maybe I’ll just walk away.”
On the one hand, this was tempting. He’d have a meal with my family, I’d be proven right, and this would all be over. But on the other, it was an underhanded approach that was bound to blow up in my face…even if it did mean I’d get to see him again. And I wanted that, more than I should.
Was this just my hormones talking? Or was it me putting my grandmother first and, God forbid, myself, for once? So what if my parents found out who Theo really was. What was the worst that could happen? Would they yell? Call the police? Stop talking to me?
No one rocked an ice-cold freeze-out like my mother.
She could give Emily Gilmore a run for her money, no pun intended.
As for my dad, he had a PhD in making me think any disagreements between us were All My Fault.
If I’d been smarter, done better, tried harder…
I could only imagine how he’d spin this.
I was thirty-four years old, long past the time when my parents’ approval had the ability to dictate my decisions. Did it really matter what they thought?
“Please, Olivia,” Theo said, his voice low and intimate. I remembered him begging, God. Please, before the first time we made love. I hadn’t wanted to refuse him then. I didn’t want to do it now.
He’d paid the price for what had happened to Lily Dressler, wherever she was right now.
Dead and buried, lost forever, or in my grandmother’s hundred-year-old brick colonial a few blocks away.
A trauma like that couldn’t help but affect a family for generations.
Just look how it had affected mine, and we were the ones who’d come out on top.
This was the right thing to do. I knew that in my soul.
I leaned over the side of the bench, snapping off a sprig of the rosemary that grew alongside the deck. Bringing it to my nose, I closed my eyes and inhaled, trying to center myself.
“Okay,” I said. “But if you say one word about who you really are—”
“I won’t. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. You’ll see.”
“You’d better be,” I warned him.
And so we made a plan.