That answer must have been good enough for her since she nodded.
He was about to sigh in relief until she flipped the photo of her father, Tigger and Beans around to face him.
“I need to know… The man in the picture, did he have an ol’ lady on the side?”
Oh fuckin’ fuck!
He forced his expression to remain neutral. “You mean your dad?”
She shook her head and tapped Ham with the tip of her finger. “This person wasn’t my dad. This is a man I never knew. A man who kept secrets. Who lived a whole separate life other than the one I thought we were living as a family. He might’ve been my father but it turns out he was also a stranger.”
Ah shit. She had good memories of her father. He didn’t want to destroy any of them. “Plenty of men live double lives, Shay. He ain’t the first.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Did it to protect you.” He was having to defend the motherfucker who killed his mother. He was right, karma was what it was. Fucking goddamn karma.
“How do you know that? Did he ever mention us?”
They needed to end this conversation right this fucking second.
He needed to distract her.
Do something to knock her off this path.
But the question was, where to go from here?
Did he tell Trip and the other officers she was Ham’s daughter? Or just let her go home to Boston without them knowing?
Did he tell Shay the truth about what happened to her father? Did he give her the partial truth? Or just let her go home without her ever knowing?
She would hate him if she found out the truth.
No matter that the man lived a “secret” life to protect his family. She still loved him. Her father had been everything to her.
The same way his mother had been everything to him. Maybe his hadn’t been the best mother in the world, but she was the only one he’d had.
It wasn’t Shay’s fault that her father killed his mother.
But it was her goddamn father’s fault that Ozzy killed him.
Would she understand why?
Would he risk telling her to find out?
“Hiding things tends to hurt the person they’re hiding it from.” She had said those exact words one night at The Barn. For some reason they had stuck with him.
But worse, they were damn true.
His response at the time was, “Or it could protect a person they care about from gettin’ hurt.”
While that could be selfless, it could also be selfish.
He cared about her and wanted to protect her from getting hurt, but right now he was being selfish by keeping the truth to himself.
He also wanted to keep her for himself.
That was all he could think about on the run earlier today. The way his soul suddenly settled simply with her being on the back of his sled. Holding onto him. Like she belonged there.
Because she did.
Never in his life had he felt the need to protect anyone but himself.
Until now.
Until Shay.
During those few hours on his sled, he considered whether he could give up his sexual freedom. He hadn’t done it for Liz because their relationship had been different, and Liz was so opposite of Shay.
But could he do it for Shay?
While Shay wasn’t shy about sex, he couldn’t imagine her allowing another woman to join them in bed. Or more than one.
Or getting fucked on the bar in The Barn.
He already knew he would never share her with another man. Not with his brothers, not with anyone.
The fact that he even considered giving up his sexual freedom to only be with Shay had fucked with his head for the rest of the damn day.
By keeping her, by convincing her to stay, his life would change drastically.
But if he got too restless and wanted to take off, nothing stopped Shay from coming along with him. Not a damn thing except for her willingness to do so.
Would she be willing? And did she want him the same way he wanted her?
She’d given him no indication whether she would be interested in continuing to land in his bed once she was done with her work here.
In fact, everything she’d said, everything she’d done, showed him that she was planning on going back to Boston when she was finished with this job. The only reason she’d stayed in Manning Grove in the first place was because it had been part of the deal.
Once she gathered all the info and pictures, she could’ve taken off. Done everything else she needed to do to complete the job at home. Away from Ozzy.
She didn’t.
She had stayed willingly and without argument, agreeing to stick to the deal she made with Trip. The requirement Trip pushed on her because Ozzy asked him to without her knowing.
Even so, the fact she didn’t argue it, or seem in a rush to get home, made him think she might be willing to stay after the month was up. They hadn’t discussed it because he hadn’t been sure about what he wanted.