Wild and Free (The Three #3)(53)

He tilted his head on the pillow, tightened his arms, and held her gaze before he shared the rest.

“I think they all regretted doing it when Ming died, but that made it worse for some reason. It was like they didn’t want that reminder, the rebellion against the father they loved. Especially since Ming thought their understanding and respect for their heritage was important. I’ve no idea how much they take in now. They never use it.”

“That’s sad,” she noted.

“It is,” Abel agreed.

Since it was sad, and he was learning Delilah wasn’t about sad, she changed the subject.

“So, you speak very, well…contemporary,” she remarked.

He got her, so he explained, “You adapt, Lilah. I don’t talk like I talked when I first learned English, or when we endured the sixties, or that valley girl bullshit, though I never talked like that.” She grinned and he kept going. “You soak in what’s around you. You probably don’t talk like you did ten years ago either.”

“This is true,” she muttered, her eyes dropping to his shoulder.

It was Abel’s turn for questions.

“Where did you live?”

Her gaze shot back to his and she let out a surprised giggle before her question shook with the same. “What?”

“Before we met, where did you live? Where is the life you’re leaving behind?”

Her eyes went huge before she burst out laughing, her head falling so she could bury her face in his chest, her dark hair all around, her mirth vibrating through his skin, his flesh, straight into his heart.

Another dream come true, seriously so much better as the real thing.

Christ.

His arms tightened further.

She jerked her head back. “I can’t…” She choked, giggled again, then made another attempt. “I can’t believe you don’t know that about me.”

He grinned into her laughing face. “Well, I don’t.”

“New Mexico,” she answered, gulped back more laughter, and went on, “Between Santa Fe and Taos, but I work in Santa Fe.”

“What do you do, bao bei?”

“I’m PA to a lady who owns a string of boutiques,” she replied immediately. “Two in Albuquerque, two in Santa Fe, one in Taos. They’re pretty successful. She travels around a lot, dealing with things hands-on, going to buying shows, shit like that. I manage her travel schedules. Make reports of how the shops are doing. Stuff like that.”

She drew in a breath, her face turned pensive, and she kept going.

“She’s nice, but the job isn’t that great. Kinda boring. The same thing over and over again. She pays me okay. I do better than some of my friends.”

Her attention sharpened on him, and when she continued, she did it openly if still somewhat guardedly, as if needing to tell him what she was going to tell him but doing it concerned about his response.

“I didn’t go to college. School just wasn’t for me. Neither my mom nor my dad lived in a great part of town with a good school system. So Dad says it was because I was smarter than the system and I was bored.” Suddenly, she grinned. “I like that he thinks that, but he knows better. So do I. It was mostly me being my father’s daughter, hating authority, schedules, assignments, people telling me what to do.” She shrugged. “That said, it wasn’t a challenge and I got good grades. Just didn’t want to buy into more even though Dad said he’d put me through college if I wanted to go.”

Nothing about this surprised him, but two things about it troubled him.

He started with the hardest.

“You seem okay with leaving your life behind,” he noted carefully.

She shrugged. “I am, but I’m not. I don’t have a job I love, though I dig my apartment and will miss it. But it was just a place to live and I didn’t suspect I’d live there forever. So I guess now’s the time I’ll be saying good-bye to it, though I hope there comes a time when I’ll get my stuff back.”

Abel decided that time would come soon, no matter how he had to manage it.

Her sadness filtered into her features and he braced before she went on.

“I’ll miss my friends. That’ll suck. And I hope we get to a place where they can be back in my life, even from a distance. But I’ve been waiting for you my whole life and I learned early that life is not a tiptoe through the tulips. Shit happens. Life changes. If it’s important, you deal.” Her eyes grew soft on him before she gave it all to him. “You’re important. So I’ll deal.”

Her words meant he gave her another squeeze and he did it lifting his head to touch his mouth to hers, to show her just how much they meant.

Her eyes were softer when he dropped his head back to the pillow.

She knew what her words meant.

“Until just now, you haven’t mentioned your mother,” he remarked.

The grin left her face entirely.

Not a good sign.

He gave her yet another squeeze. “Lilah?”

“Mom and I aren’t tight. She…” She shook her head. “She and Dad didn’t get along and neither of them hid that from me, but she was bitter about it and she really didn’t hide that from me, even knowing I totally adored him.” She bit her lip, pausing before she carried on, “She also knew about the thing, that thing we share, that feeling of missing something. She thought I was crazy.”