I’m taken aback and irritated. “You barely know any of us. Don’t try to tell me how to handle my mother.”
Her lips tighten and her eyes meet mine, and suddenly her expression changes, as if something in mine has softened her. Which is impossible. I’m unreadable. She surprises me by taking my hand in hers. I surprise myself by letting her.
“You’re trying to protect her,” she says. “I get that, but she’s having a double mastectomy, Mark. She wouldn’t even let you say the words. She needs work to keep from thinking about it.”
I stare down into her pale blue eyes, and I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t have control. She has control. Worse, she’s right about my mother.
I trust this woman more than I trust myself right now. And that scares me in a way I haven’t been scared in a very long time.
Three
_
At nine o’clock, a hint from my father to leave them alone sends me on my way, and I head to the lobby. To my surprise I find Crystal, who I thought had left a good hour earlier, sitting in a waiting room chair with her laptop open. She doesn’t notice me and I find myself watching her work. I’m drawn to this woman, who’s the complete opposite of my type, for reasons I don’t understand. Maybe it’s simply that she’s different from everything familiar, and everything familiar feels wrong right now.
Her brow knits adorably as she keys some kind of data into whatever program she has open, long strands of her blonde hair draping her shoulders and cheeks. My groin tightens with an image of that hair draped over my stomach and hips, and guilt twists inside me.
It’s too soon. I only just discovered that Rebecca’s absence hadn’t meant she was traveling the world with the rich businessman she’d met. It meant she was gone forever.
And I remind myself that Rebecca was the one person who saw beneath my mask. She knew what I’ve always known: that sex is a tool for me. It’s how I survive, how I block things out. How I blocked her out. I was always honest with her. I never promised her love. But, damn it to hell, I selfishly convinced her to try to live without it. Maybe with her, I came as close to love as I’m capable of ever coming. I did need her, when I’ve never needed anyone before.
And right now, I need to get out of my own head. I refocus on Crystal. “I thought I sent you home long ago.”
He head lifts and she shuts her computer. “I have your bags. I wasn’t about to make your day worse by not having them.” She shoves her notebook into her oversized purse that clearly doubles as a briefcase. I watch her delicate little hands, wondering why I don’t mind when she touches me. And why I want her to touch me now.
She hikes her bag onto her shoulder, thrusting her chest out in the process, and my gaze drops to the high neckline of her dress, the material hugging her in all the right places as she walks toward me.
She stops in front of me. “How’s your mother?”
“Putting on a show of bravery she doesn’t feel.”
With a grim nod, she agrees. “Yeah. I kind of got that, too.”
For a few moments I just stare down at her, puzzled by this woman in too many ways to count. “You seem rather fond of my family, for someone who’s only known them for three weeks.”
“Actually,” she corrects, “I met your mother at a Riptide auction I attended with my father and brother about a year ago. I’d been working at a small gallery a few blocks from Riptide and we sort of became friends.” She smiles with a memory, and it’s genuine in a way so few are. “When the sales manager’s job came open, your mother all but tied me to the desk and insisted I take it.”
I could think of a lot of places to tie this woman up, and none of them are to a desk, though that holds interesting potential. “I’m surprised it took her a year to hire you.”
“I’m as stubborn as she is, and I thought we’d have issues working together. But it turns out we’re a great team.”