Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 105756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Oh. Yes. That was Ada. She’s a relative—of sorts”
One dark eyebrow rose. “Of sorts?” she chuckled. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’re not blood related, but she’s technically family. Her father and my mother were married.”
“Were? Did they get divorced?”
“No, they’ve passed.” My throat constricted. I hadn’t brought up the fact that I was recently bereaved. Not because I was trying to hide it, I just didn’t want to talk about Mam, and certainly not with the woman I was casually dating. My feelings were still too raw, and Lissa was supposed to be a distraction.
“I’m so sorry,” she reached out to squeeze my arm, and for some reason, I didn’t like it. Her empathy felt forced, or maybe I was just being sensitive. By her tone, she clearly assumed the deaths happened a while ago. It had only been three weeks. By rights I shouldn’t really be dating anyone. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but Lissa and I had gone out twice before Ada came to me with news of what had happened to our parents. And when she’d texted asking to meet up again tonight, I’d impulsively agreed. Despite not wanting to talk about what I was going through, I didn’t want to be alone.
“Thank you,” I said as we reached the ground floor and walked to my car. Ben was there to open the door for us.
“So, you two live next door to one another? How did that happen?”
“I own the apartment she’s staying in. She’s renting it from me for a while.”
Lissa turned to me in her seat, tilting her head in curiosity. “Oh? Why is that?”
“The lease ended on her place, and she needed somewhere to live.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t want to get into the whole story of how I’d effectively made Ada homeless.
“And you offered her a place? That was nice of you.”
I shot her a look. “I’m not nice, and you know it.”
Lissa pressed her lips together, suppressing a shrewd smile. “Yes, which makes me wonder.”
“Makes you wonder what?”
She didn’t respond for a moment, her expression thoughtful as she studied me. Then she stated, “She’s very pretty.”
I resisted a smirk. Was she threatened by Ada? Interesting. “Oh, you noticed, did you?”
Lissa shot me a cynical look. “She seems like one of those women who pretends not to know how she can use her beauty to her advantage.”
I stared at her, narrowing my gaze. “You got all that from a thirty-second encounter?”
“I have a talent for taking the measure of people.”
“Yes, well, you don’t need to worry about her using her beauty on me. I’m doing her a favour because my mother was fond of her. That’s all.”
“Aw, you’re sweet,” Lissa said as we arrived at the restaurant. I sensed from her tone she wasn’t thrilled about my new tenant, which meant she might very well be threatened by her. Should she be? Lissa implied Ada feigned obliviousness about her looks to somehow use them to her advantage. Was that what was happening? Was I being led by my dick, helping her not out of the goodness of my heart but because she was pleasing to look at? No, that wasn’t it. Ada was admittedly beautiful, but she didn’t strike me as using it to get ahead. Besides, that wasn’t why I was helping her.
The woman had been sleeping in her car. Her shame and embarrassment when I’d discovered the fact made me feel at odds with myself. I’d clung to the idea of her being like her father, but after having spent some time with her, I’d known I was wrong. And my guilt at misjudging her had me wrestling with the urge to make it up to her. Letting her live in my apartment was my way of doing that. Her looks had nothing to do with it.
All through dinner I was distracted. I’d planned on taking Lissa home after we ate, but I’d changed my mind. The third or fourth date was typically when I spent the night with a woman, but at the end of our meal, I found myself dropping her off at her place and saying goodnight without so much as a chaste kiss on the lips.
I went back to my apartment alone, polished off a bottle of bourbon and then fell into bed hoping not to dream of the past. It had been happening a lot lately. My dreams were a strange mixture of my childhood and the present.
Case in point, I hadn’t thought about Ronnie in years. He’d been Mam’s boyfriend when I was ten, and he was the worst kind of arsehole. In front of my mother, he’d be perfectly nice, and then when she went out to work, he’d verbally abuse me and threaten to convince Mam to send me away to live in a boarding school. I’d tried telling her about it, but she’d been so infatuated with Ronnie that she hadn’t believed me. He’d had her completely wrapped around his finger, and because he’d been helping pay some of her bills, she’d thought the sun shone out of his backside.