The Derby Girl by Tamara Morgan

Author:Tamara Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“You got a phone call. From your parents.” As she phrased it in neither question nor statement form, Gretchen took a moment of pleasure in watching Jared squirm. “You abandoned me and walked out of a sporting event because your mother called.”

“Everything always sounds worse when you say it.”

“There’s no other way to form the words.” In fact, she was giving him a huge benefit of the doubt here. A crater-sized benefit of the doubt. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“Are you going to start yelling again?”

Gretchen didn’t miss the look of hope in his cocky, gleaming eyes. She was pretty sure no one in the bar missed it. They’d returned to their sticky mess of a table, nothing touched or cleared away, and had been given a wide berth ever since.

In her not-exactly-vast experience, it was considered good form to make a discreet exit after bathroom sex. Bars didn’t particularly care for hangers-on in the afterglow. She didn’t particularly care for hanging on, either, but she also wasn’t about to let Jared walk away without offering her some kind of contrition.

“Believe me—you won’t like it if I start yelling again. Are your parents ill?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“In some kind of trouble?”

“They’re not the type.”

“Blackmailing you with a sex tape from your wayward youth?”

“I didn’t have a wayward youth, though there might be a sex tape or two floating around somewhere.” He paused, a smile wiping the smug look from his face and replacing it with genuine warmth. “And I hope to God my parents have never seen them.”

Gretchen’s lips twitched. “Stop trying to be charming. I’m angry.”

“I know it’s not a very good excuse.” Jared reached out and toyed with Gretchen’s fingers, which drummed an irritated beat on the tabletop. She didn’t snatch them back right away, which filled him with hope that not all was lost. “I overreact to situations—especially ones involving my dad.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like him.”

“Why, Jared?” She snatched her hand back. “If you really want me to forgive you for walking out, you have to give me more than a vague man answer. That’s the deal I’m putting out here. Take it or leave it.”

She was right. Of course she was right. Unfortunately, this whole unburdening of his sins was turning out to be much harder than he’d expected.

He leaned on his elbows, gripping his hair with both hands. “Because I don’t like what he does to people. He’s been unfaithful with my mom three times—that I know of. I can only imagine there are affairs I haven’t even begun to uncover. He cheats at poker with his friends. He manipulates his peers to boost his own career. He ignores everything I want or desire unless it aligns with his own goals.”

He forced himself to look up and meet Gretchen’s softening gaze. “In other words, he’s me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Unfortunately, it is.” His breath moved in and out in a painfully controlled rhythm. “I’ve done some stuff in my life I’m not proud of.

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