The Gamble (Colorado Mountain #1)(39)

And also not caring what I’d think that he had a predilection for young girls?

Not that he seemed to discriminate since he’d obviously wanted me and Shauna seemed to be about my age. Maybe he slept with anyone. Maybe that was why Sarah, the hostess at the restaurant, gave me that weird, closed down look when I walked in. Maybe he liked buxom, copper-haired, Deadheads with fabulous earrings too.

I was sipping at my coffee and seething when Mindy turned to me. “So, you live in England?”

“Yes.” My reply was short and curt and I didn’t care. She might be okay with this arrangement, seeing as Max was gorgeous and had a fantastic house, but she was young, she’d learn.

“You like it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied again and saw Max rounding the counter in jeans, a navy t-shirt that fit him like the gray one he wore with his pajama bottoms. In other words, it fit him too well.

I had the urge to throw my coffee mug at him and then I squelched this mainly because he meant nothing to me. I barely knew him. This intensity of emotion was because I broke up with my fiancé via e-mail the day before. My emotion had nothing to do with Max.

He hit the range, his hand hit Mindy’s waist and my eyes narrowed on his touch.

“I got it now, babe,” he said softly and I felt that punch in my gut again when he called her “babe”.

Mindy moved away on another skip then she rounded the counter and planted herself on my stool.

“Duchess,” Max called and my eyes cut to him, “get Mindy some coffee, will you?”

He wanted me to get Mindy a coffee?

I was back to wanting to throw my coffee mug at him.

Max was oblivious, I knew this because he turned to Mindy and asked, “You take cream or sugar?”

“Lotsa milk, two sugars,” Mindy ordered and I moved to make her coffee mainly because this would give me something to do, something that had nothing to do with me inflicting bodily harm.

As I was filling her order, Mindy called out to me, “Hey Nina, you ever wanna move home?”

“Home?” I asked, pouring coffee.

“America.”

“No,” I lied because I did, all the time, I missed home constantly. The trouble was I was also home in England and I knew if I came back to The States I’d miss my other home so I couldn’t win either way.

Which was, I realized at that dire moment, the story of my bloody life.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” I answered when I poured in “lotsa milk”.

“She misses grape jelly,” Max muttered and I ignored him and the memory he invoked and gave Mindy her mug of coffee.

“Hey, thanks!” she cried, like it was a surprise I made it for her when she’d watched me the whole time then she continued, “Why do you miss grape jelly?”

“They don’t have it in England,” I replied and went to the fridge.

“What else don’t they have?” Mindy asked with open curiosity.

“Quite a bit,” I answered, not inviting further discourse.

I pulled out my yogurt and berries. Then I grabbed the bunch of bananas on the counter and I yanked one off. Then I pulled a knife out of the block by the range. I was going to eat my breakfast and if Max didn’t give me my keys I was going to throw such a fit that Mick, the nice police officer, would be called to the scene and then I’d damn well get my bloody keys.

“You all right?” Max asked quietly when I got close and I could feel his eyes on me.

“Perfectly fine,” I answered, not looking at him and I reached into a cupboard to pull out a bowl.

There was silence a second then, ever game, Mindy called, “Why’d you move there? To England.”

Not thinking clearly and it didn’t matter anyway, I’d be out of there very, very soon, I answered, “I’ve sort of lived there on and off most of my life.”

“But…” Mindy said to my back as I started to slice bananas into the bowl, “Max said you were American.”

“I was born here,” I told the banana. “My mother is American, my father is English. They got divorced when I was a baby and my father moved back.” I finished with the banana, threw the peel in the bin under the sink and started to rinse the berries.

“So, you’d go back to see your father,” Mindy guessed.

“No, my father forgot I existed until he got remarried and his second wife had a baby, my half-brother.” I turned off the tap and shook the berries in their plastic container, the water leaking out. “She wanted her son to know his sister.”

“So, that’s when you started going?” Mindy surmised.

“Yes, when I was around seven.”

“Cool that you have a brother,” Mindy announced happily from behind me and my eyes closed automatically as I felt that punch in my gut again, this one different but familiar, it had come at me a lot over the last three years but it never hurt any less.

“Yes, cool,” I said and opened my eyes then turned to my bowl, dumping some berries in and setting the rest in the container aside.

I looked at Max who was watching me closely, his face carefully blank but his eyes alert and asked, “Where’s my granola?”

“Cupboard with the oatmeal,” he answered and I turned there.