He fell into step with me as I walked along the footpath. “You don’t make it through a childhood in a good catholic family without learning some manners along the way.”
“Oh God, you too? The way you say ‘make it through’ leads me to believe you may have only just survived it.”
He chuckled. “I made it through, but I’m not sure you could say I survived it.”
“Same. Ruth Archer is not a woman you survive.”
“That’s your mum?”
“Yeah. She was a stay-at-home mother who excelled in all things wifely. Cooking, cleaning, raising a perfect family. She tried so hard to shape me to become just like her. Unfortunately, she failed, and all I became was one constant disappointment to her.”
“So you’re telling me you’re not good at cooking and cleaning? I’m gonna have to rethink this whole chasing you thing now.” The grin he watched me with almost caused me to trip over my own damn feet.
“If cooking and cleaning are what you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong woman.” I wanted to smack myself for flirting with him. Why the hell was I encouraging him?
“Darlin’, cooking and cleaning can be learnt. The thing you have that I want can’t be. I’m definitely not chasing the wrong woman.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I think my mouth dropped open at that. I wanted to shove it closed, but I was flat-out concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other while remembering to dr
aw breath while I did it.
Finally, my brain caught up with my thoughts, and in an effort to change the subject, I blurted, “Tell me about your parents.”
He didn’t reply straight away. Instead, he took a moment before saying, “I haven’t seen them for fifteen years. My father was ex-navy and strict, and my mother just went along with whatever he said. I loved her, but after a while, you wonder how you can love someone who allows bad shit to happen to their child.”
I could hear the pain in his voice. His tone had turned from fun to hard, and it made me wonder what happened to him in his childhood. Devil had to be just over thirty, so fifteen years away from his parents would mean he left home in his teens.
The nurturer in me took over and I reached for his arm. I was never under the illusion I could fix things for people or take away their hurt, but the need to soothe compelled me to offer my touch. This often caused me trouble; a lot of people weren’t comfortable with it and told me so. Or sometimes they didn’t say anything, but they drew away from me.
Devil was different. He glanced down at my hand on his arm and then met my gaze. He didn’t pull away and he didn’t tell me to remove my hand. Rather, he said, “You wanna keep that up, I might not be able to restrain myself for much longer.”
Although the street we walked along was lit only by the occasional streetlight, I could see the heat in his eyes. Or maybe it was that I could sense it, feel it. Devil didn’t seem to be the kind of man to hide his feelings. They blazed brightly for all to see. I bet that most of the time he didn’t even have to speak—his body language would probably be enough to convey his thoughts and emotions.
“I think you’re lying,” I said.
“How so?”
“Well, I know you’ve got manners and I know you were raised in a strict family, so I’m guessing that for all your talk, you’re actually a man who can restrain himself and who treats women with respect. I don’t think you’d ever make a move on a woman unless she signalled her readiness.”
“And you don’t think you’ve already signalled your readiness?”
I shook my head in mock exasperation. “I knew I shouldn’t encourage you.”
“And yet you did. That tells me everything I want to know, darlin’.”
I didn’t want to encourage him any further, so I shut up and walked the last few metres to my home in silence. Devil seemed to clue on to what I was doing and met my silence with that bloody grin of his that seemed to be permanently painted on his face.
He followed me up the few stairs we had to the front door and then down the hallway into the kitchen where he placed the groceries on the counter before saying, “For the record, you just looking at me encourages me, Hailee. But when you speak, it’s like a whole other world I never knew opens up, and I want in on that world. And I don’t give a fuck if that makes me sound like a fucking pussy. It’s the truth.”
My heart sped up to the point that I thought it would beat its way out of my chest. No man had ever said something like that to me before. My words sat in a big fat mess on my tongue, and I struggled with arranging them in a manner that they’d make sense if I said them.
My grandmother saved me the trouble of having to get my shit together when she entered the kitchen and cut in on our conversation. “It does make you sound like a fucking pussy, but hell if I wouldn’t have fallen for that when I was Hailee’s age. She’d be a damn fool not to give you a chance.”
Oh. God.
Jean Archer had a way with words, that was for damn sure.
Devil chuckled as he glanced at her. “I can see where Hailee gets her sass from.”