Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(47)

“Do you see your parents often?” Kam asked when they were alone again.

“Once a year. They never return here. Maybe there are too many bad memories for my mother.” He gave her thigh a final squeeze and lifted his hand to begin eating. She sensed him studying her in the silence that followed.

“You miss them, don’t you,” he stated, rather than asked, after a moment.

“Yes,” she said quietly, picking up her fork. “To this day, I don’t think my mother understands how affected I was when they left. I don’t wish I’d gone with them necessarily. I love my life here. It’s just that my mom sort of looks at it in black-and-white terms. I’m an American, I live a similar lifestyle to Grandmamma’s, so I must be a clone of Grandmamma. In her mind, I ‘chose’ Grandmamma and everything she represents over her.” Lin sighed. “I didn’t ‘choose’ anything.”

“You were a little kid.”

“Right. But I’m an adult now, and my mother carries on seeing Grandmamma instead of me. She disapproves of my choices and automatically assumes I disapprove of her and my father’s,” she reflected. She forked her salad. “I don’t,” she said, shrugging helplessly. “I just want them to be happy. But I can’t seem to convince them—especially my mother—of that.

“Family, huh?” she said after a pause, feeling embarrassed when she realized how much she’d been going on about herself. It was strange, but even though Kam didn’t talk a lot, he was very easy to talk to. “What about you? You mentioned not going back to your residency when your mother became ill,” she said after she’d swallowed some salad. “You must have been close to her.”

“I was. She was an easy woman to love.”

She set down her salad fork slowly, studying his bold profile as he ate. “That’s a lovely thing for a son to say about his mother.”

He shrugged. “It’s true.”

“You must miss her,” she said quietly.

“We were all each other had in the world.”

“But now you have Lucien and Ian,” she said quietly after a moment.

“There’s no such thing as instant families, but yeah. I guess there’s some truth to that.” He gave her a flashing glance as he chewed.

“What?” she asked, sensing he wanted to say something.

“Ian is more family to you than he is to me,” he said before taking a swig of ice water. “Your work is your life. That’s what everyone says, anyway. Noble Enterprises became your family.”

She blushed, looking away from his gleaming gray eyes, and picked up her fork again. “Ian is my boss,” she stated unequivocally.

“He doesn’t just think of you as just an employee. He told me so.”

She felt his stare on her cheek and resisted an urge to squirm. “Really?” she asked, taking pains to keep her voice level. She took a bite of bread. “When was this?”

“Last night. When he was ever so delicately warning me I’d better tread carefully when it came to you.”

Her fork fell against the bowl. She suddenly felt queasy.

“Please don’t tell me that Ian realized what we were doing in that cloakroom,” she muttered, horrified. “Did you tell him anything?” she asked, realizing too late she’d sounded accusatory.

“Do you think I would?” he demanded, scowling.

“If you didn’t say anything to him, then why was he warning you about me?” Lin asked.

“He’s not stupid,” Kam muttered, holding her stare. “Although he can keep his holier-than-thou attitude to himself, if you ask me. You and I are grown-ups, free to do whatever we damn well please.”

It brought to mind all their recent, extremely grown-up activities. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember the topic of their conversation. His gaze sunk down over her, and as usual, she experienced that swooping sensation in her belly. Kam leaned in, his warm breath brushing across her parted lips. Their mouths touched. “If we want to spend time together, it’s none of Ian’s business.”

Ian. Right, that’s whom they were discussing.

“Spend time together?” she asked, her mouth twitching against his. “Is that a euphemism for having sex?”

“We’re not having sex now. Unless you’re interested?” he murmured, a devil’s glint in his eyes. He nipped at her lower lip, his narrow-eyed, predatory stare on her mouth making her breathless.

They were halted in their flirtation and kissing by the waiter arriving with their entrees. Kam glanced up at the interruption, his expression fierce. The waiter’s eyes widened in alarm. It seemed utterly impossible for Kam to even thinly disguise his wrath. The waiter served their food and escaped as quickly as he could.

“What?” he asked, his expression darkening even further when he saw Lin laughing under her breath.

She gave him an amused glance and patted his thigh. “Kam,” she attempted gently, her palm lingering on jean-covered, dense muscle. “You do realize you scare people half to death the way you glower constantly, don’t you? I get the impression people worry they might be knocked over by the force of your scowl.”

“What?”

“See?” She pointed to his face. “Right there. Hurricane-force glare.”