Somebody to Love (Gideon's Cove #3)(58)

They were quiet for a few minutes. The sky was completely clear, and the stars so brilliant they looked almost like a thin veil of clouds. Taking care not to move too quickly, or to look at her, James reached down and stroked Beauty’s head. The dog allowed it. Taking that as a sign, he decided to go for it.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Parker?”

“How is it that a Harvard grad can’t recognize marijuana?” she said, offering the last bite of toad in the hole to her dog, who took it delicately.

“Why don’t you and Harry get along?”

She didn’t move for a second, just let Beauty lick her fingers. Then she poured herself a little more wine and looked up at the sky. Sighed. He could smell her soap from here.

“I don’t know, Thing One,” she said quietly. “Maybe he wanted a son.”

“Do you think that’s it?”

Another pause. “No.” She cleared her throat. “So I guess I owe you a real answer, huh? Since you bailed me out and chose to spend your summer up here, working like an ox.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“No, I do. I do.” She shifted in her seat and looked at him, then back out at the water. A loon called from past Douglas Point. “Okay, here’s the deal. When I was little, I worshipped Harry. I mean, what little girl doesn’t love her dad?”

“I guess they all do.”

Parker took a sip of wine and petted her dog, her hand very close to James’s, though she didn’t appear to notice. “It was hard not to. He had the whole package—looks, charm, brilliance. If Harry had you in his sights, you felt like the most amazing, interesting person in the world.”

James grunted. True enough.

“And I don’t know, it was a long time ago, but he seemed to adore me, too. I used to—” She broke off for a second, not choked up as much as lost in a memory. “I used to go running into Welles Financial and his whole staff would treat me like a princess. And it didn’t matter if he was on the phone or in a meeting, he’d tell whoever it was that his daughter was here and kick them out, or he’d introduce me, pull me onto his lap and then keep talking, like I was smart enough to understand.”

“So what changed?” he asked.

“The summer I was ten, I caught him in bed with my babysitter.”

James flinched. “Ah, shit.”

“Indeed.” She stroked Beauty’s ear, not looking at him.

“I’m sorry, Parker.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Keep that to yourself, okay? Nobody else knows. Well, my mother. And the babysitter, but she was paid off.” She finished her wine. “It’s been a long day. Thank you for everything, James.” She stood up, and he lurched to his feet, blocking her path.

“Is that it?” he asked.

She tilted her head. “What more should there be?”

“I don’t know, Parker. You drop an announcement like that and then hike off to bed?”

She didn’t answer, just looked at him, her brows drawn together.

“I’ve known you for years,” he heard himself say with a sinking sense of dread. Shut up, idiot. “We slept together once. You could talk to me, Parker. You could…we could be friends.”

Yeah. Chicks loved when you begged. How about if he went ahead and handed her his balls and said, Do what you will. Any second, she was going to smother a laugh or roll her eyes or call him Thing One, and—

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her lips a soft, sweet press, her summery dress swishing against his arm. “Thank you, James,” she said, her voice softer now.

Then she stepped around him, Beauty scuttling past, as well, and went up the stairs to the house.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PARKER LAY AWAKE for a long, long time, Beauty a silky ball of warmth at her side. James didn’t come in for a good hour, and she was glad.

She couldn’t figure him out. He’d spent years attached to her father like a remora attaches to a shark. She knew he was here under Harry’s command and on Harry’s payroll, because while her father might not love her, she was his only child, and he’d damn well keep tabs on her. She didn’t appreciate James’s little digs about Ethan, and she didn’t appreciate that sleepy, hot, knowing look he sometimes got around her. The I slept with you look. He’d ingratiated himself to Harry so that Harry couldn’t even visit his grandson without his sycophant tagalong.

That’s what she used to think, anyway.

But for the past ten days, James had been a prince. No getting over that. When she’d seen him there outside her cell, her heart had leaped. And not only because he was getting her away from the Excrement King, either. It was because she felt something for him. Something beyond garden-variety cougar lust.

Maybe.

As for his offer of friendship, well, hell. She thought for one second that she was going to cry. Because though she was pretty good at sounding cavalier and worldly, the fact remained that one doesn’t tell another person about the day one’s childhood died an abrupt death without feeling it.

She hadn’t thought about Lila for a long, long time.

It was during what would be her last childhood summer at Grayhurst, though she didn’t know that yet. Lila wasn’t a real nanny—Parker was ten, after all. No, Lila was a Mackerly girl who’d just finished college and came every day to keep Parker company, take her to tennis lessons or swimming in the ocean. Parker liked her a lot…Lila didn’t read magazines or talk to her friends on the phone or pump Parker for details on how much money her family had, like most of Parker’s babysitters. She was twenty-two but treated Parker like an equal. Even when they were drawing fairies and unicorns, Lila seemed to think Parker was cool. She was always up for a swim, no matter how cold the water was. And she’d make fun snacks, too, the kind that Althea would’ve never allowed: s’mores and raw cookie dough and orange macaroni and cheese that, fascinatingly, came from a box.