Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(22)

She nodded. She didn’t like to think about the year she hadn’t lived in that rundown trailer park. Not ever. “Yes. We couldn’t afford anything else.”

A hand ran over his head as though he couldn’t quite process the information. “You. You and Laurel and Lila and Will came out of a trailer park?”

That made her smile. It wasn’t the first time someone questioned her background. “Hard to believe?”

“Damn near impossible. Those shoes you had on tonight are worth more than a lot of people make in a month.”

She waved that off. “I didn’t buy those. Bridget gets bored with shoes and I get hand-me-downs. Bridget did grow up wealthy, but my side of the family? Hell no. We worked our asses off. My mom was in and out of prison and Will raised us. He was the one who taught us that our grades had to be damn near perfect if we wanted out. He made sure there was food on the table and all our school forms were properly completed. He would do odd jobs after school and that was how he’d buy us stuff. My brother is the single best man I’ve ever met. He’s the reason we’re all alive and successful. Even my mom. She got married to a man she met in AA and they’re doing well. Will made that happen. He paid for her to stay at a house that helps recovering addicts from prison ease back into the real world.”

He stared at her as though seeing her for the first time.

She found herself sitting up straighter. “Does the fact that my mom is an ex-con shock you?”

“In ways you can’t understand, ma crevette.”

She should figure out what that was, but it sounded sweet coming from his mouth. “Well, she is and I’m not ashamed of her. I’m not ashamed of how I grew up.”

“Why would you be? You bloomed without water. You became something more than you should have, according to our society. I thought you were some kind of rich girl who’d breezed through life.”

Holy shit. Was that why he hadn’t been “interested”? Oddly enough, she could forgive that. She wasn’t interested in over-privileged men who couldn’t understand the world she’d grown up in. She might run from that, too. “Because my brother’s a neurosurgeon? Not all surgeons come from wealthy families.”

“Your brother is a neurosurgeon. Your sister-in-law is a best-selling author. Your sisters work in legal and medical professions that require college degrees, and your brother-in-law is Harvard educated. His brother and sister-in-law own a massive corporation. All in all, those family ties don’t scream I grew up in a double wide.”

She shook her head. “No, no, my friend, that beauty was only a single wide. With one bathroom and wood paneling straight out of the seventies.” The wine was starting to work on her, relaxing her and reminding her that she hadn’t had the money to waste on wine in months. Waste? Wine was necessary. Maybe she should take a play from her brother’s handbook and ask if she could do odd jobs in exchange for wine. It would make poverty a ton more fun. “The Daleys are perfect examples of what a family can do when they band together, work hard, and help lift each other up. I’m the only failure.”

He sat back as though considering how to handle her. “You have an MBA. That’s not a failure. The job market isn’t great right now. That’s not your fault.”

Of course, he didn’t know the whole story. “I got a job easily enough. Two weeks out of school and I was making seventy K. Then I blew the whistle on my employer. Apparently that gets around.”

He frowned, the expression doing nothing to make him less gorgeous. “Blew the whistle?”

“I work in accounting. My old boss runs the biggest valet service in DFW. Lots of cash,” she began.

His eyes widened. “Cash? He was laundering money?”

Well, no one could accuse him of not understanding how the world worked. She hadn’t even considered it. She’d walked into that job like fucking Snow White, with birds singing on her shoulders. Everything was happy and shiny in her eyes. “See, that’s what Bridget said the minute I mentioned he offered valet services. She told me I had to be careful because cash intensive businesses are magnets for the mafia and drug dealers and…how did she put it…douche canoes with dirty money. Have you ever met a crazed, paranoid person who turns out to always be right? It’s annoying. Something happens or we meet someone new, Bridget comes up with some crazed theory and we all laugh and bam, a month later the guy who sent Lila flowers for saving his life in the ER is taken away on a seventy-two-hour psych hold after trying to break into her house.”

Remy shook his head. “Your sister had a stalker?”

Lisa sighed. “Yeah. And he seemed super nice.”

“Maybe you should listen to Bridget more often.”

Bridget thought she should be in a safe house. The idea sent a shiver through her. “Anyway, I found the doctored books, went to the cops, and now my old boss got off on a technicality and I’m left without a job or any way to get a job because I have zero references and oddly enough, no one wants to hire the whistle-blower.”

Remy had sat back up, his spine going straight and that hawkish look he got when he was hyper aware coming into his eyes. “Whoa, are you telling me the man you tried to send to jail is out and you were walking around this afternoon without any protection?”

Did everyone think she was an idiot? “Of course not. I have pepper spray.”