Valorous(25)

“You’ll fall in love with Jasper’s British accent. We call him the Panty Dropper.”

“Dare I ask?”

“We joke that panties drop every time he opens his mouth.”

“The British accent is extremely sexy.”

“Oh jeez. Spare me. My sisters are positively smitten with him. Last year at Christmas, Ellie asked him to read ‘The Night Before Christmas’ and then made a flaming fool of herself panting and moaning over the accent. The kids thought she was having a stroke or something. It was mortifying.”

I’m laughing so hard, I nearly choke on my wine.

“You know,” he says, swirling the wine around in his glass, “I love talking about my friends and my business, but I’d much rather talk about you and your family.”

Just that quickly, my stomach knots and my body tightens with tension.

“Nat?”

“Yeah?”

“Look at me, sweetheart.”

I force myself to meet his intense gaze.

“I want to know you. I want to understand you. And more than anything, I want to protect you so nothing can ever hurt you again.”

“Not even you are that powerful.”

“You’d be surprised at what I can do when someone I love is hurting.”

“You’ve already shown me what you’re capable of.”

“I’ve only shown you the start of it.”

I can’t put this off any longer, not if I hope to have a meaningful relationship with this amazing man who has repeatedly revealed his heart to me and shared his truth. He deserves nothing less than my truth in return.

“Tell me about who you were as a kid. I want to know everything.”

“My name was April then. They named me that because I was born on the fifteenth of April, and the joke was that I was destined to work for the IRS because I was born on tax day.”

“Ugh, nothing funny about taxes. The joke in my family is I single-handedly support the Pentagon with what I pay in taxes.”

“Aww, poor baby.”

“I know, right?”

“Back then, before everything happened, I was really into dance, gymnastics, cheerleading. All the usual stuff.”

His eyes widen with interest. “You were a cheerleader?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Will you, you know, sometime…”

I hadn’t expected to laugh while talking about my past, but Flynn makes it easy. “If you’re very good.”

“I’m going to be so good.”

“Anyway, growing up, Oren Stone and his family were a big part of our lives. My dad and Oren had been friends since they were kids. According to my mom, who grew up with them, Oren always had an odd influence over my dad. I didn’t realize that when I was a kid, but with hindsight, I can see that their relationship was bizarre. My therapist said Oren was a classic narcissist. It was all about him, and my dad was his chief enabler. Whatever Oren wanted, Oren got… jobs, money, women, power. My dad helped make it all happen. Oren’s wife, Stephanie… She was a really nice lady who had no idea what went on behind the scenes. My parents used to fight about the things my dad did for him. He always said he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to keep his job. My mom would cry and beg him to get another job, but he’d say Oren needed him and he couldn’t desert him.”

“Were they into illegal stuff?” Flynn asked.

“They were into everything. It all came out during the trial. My charges were the tip of the iceberg. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” I take a deep breath. “Even though my mother didn’t think too much of Oren, she loved Stephanie. We kept up the pretense of our families being friends. When Oren became governor, they traveled a lot, and they asked me to travel with them during the summer and on vacations to help with their kids, who were much younger than me. I hadn’t been able to find a summer job, so I took them up on their offer. My parents were thrilled. I remember my mom saying how happy she was that I’d be working for friends, people we knew and trusted.”

When he strokes my face, I realize tears are spilling down my cheeks. Flynn takes my glass and puts it next to his on a nearby table. Then he gathers me close to him, holding me and caressing my back. “Take your time, sweetheart.”

“I’m okay. It was a long time ago now. It’s so long ago that sometimes it’s like it didn’t happen to me, like I saw it all in a movie or something.” I take a deep breath, summoning the fortitude to get this over with so we can move forward together. “I spent a lot of weekends with them, helping with the kids while they attended events and other things he had to do as governor. So it wasn’t unusual for them to call me to set up a weekend babysitting gig. It was unusual, however, for Oren to make the call. But I knew Stephanie had been sick with the flu and had lost her voice, so I didn’t think anything of it.”