“Oh my God,” Payton said as a look of surprise crossed her face. “You think I’m upset about my mother!”
“Yeah, well, why else would you be sitting here crying your eyes out?” I said confused by the sudden turn in the conversation.
“Oh, Dax, you have no idea…” she said laughing as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m not crying because my mother’s mad at me!”
“Okay, now you’re officially on the train to crazy town,” I said feeling annoyed to have been drawn into a drama that I knew nothing about. “What the hell are you upset about, then?”
“You’re not going to like this,” she said pulling herself up to a sitting position and facing me.
“Well, we’ve come this far. Lay it on me,” I said.
“I could not care less whether my mother hates me or not,” she said pushing wet strands of hair out of her eyes. “I’m just angry that my father didn’t live long enough to be able to witness me finally get revenge for him and my brother.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, trying to avoid staring at her bikini-covered body as she leaned back against the bed and stretched her legs out in front of her.
“My mother killed my brother, Dax,” Payton said in a voice filled with cold anger. “And now I’m going to make her pay.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Payton
I knew it was risky telling Dax what my plan was, but during the weeks we’d been dancing around each other trying to figure out how to manage our relationship, I’d learned a lot about him, and I knew that above all, he was someone who believed in family loyalty. I’d also come to understand that he carried a lot of pain of his own, and that if I let mine out, he’d listen before making a judgment. At the very least, I knew he disliked my mother and the way she’d treated him after he’d been awarded the team, so I felt fairly confident that he’d take my side.
“You are going to get even with your mother?” he said looking confused as he ran one hand through his dark curls and then sighed heavily. “I don’t understand.”
“My mother is responsible for my brother’s death,” I said. “She killed him.”
“I thought your brother died in a car accident,” he said. “I remember reading about it when I was in high school. Some trucker made a wrong turn and t-boned the car he was in, right?”
“That’s the official story,” I said, rolling my eyes at the tired, old tale my family had been telling since the night Jonathan had died. “But it’s not the truth.”
“So, what happened?” he asked as he pushed himself up off the floor and offered me a hand. “Do you want a drink? ‘Cause I need one right now.”
I took his hand and as he pulled me up off the floor I became very aware of the fact that I was wearing what amounted to nothing more than several small scraps of fabric. Dax tried not to look, but his eyes swept over my near naked body before he looked away and cleared his throat. I could feel the heat between my legs as I remembered what his to
ngue had felt like as he’d spread me open and teased me until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Yeah, a drink would be good,” I said, shaking my head to clear it of the image. “I’m going to put something on over this bathing suit.”
“Good idea,” Dax muttered as he walked toward the bar in the living room. I grabbed one of the thick, terrycloth robes hanging on a hook in the bathroom, wrapped it around myself, and tied the belt tightly so that nothing more than my calves were showing and then rejoined Dax in the living room.
Compared to the penthouse, the hotel was dingy and small, but somehow the interior designer had managed to install a large, comfortable couch that stretched along a far set of windows. I sank down on the far end, tucking my feet underneath me as I sipped the liquid fire. It felt good as it burned its way down my throat and then exploded in warmth in my stomach. As I waited for the familiar, warm, fuzzy feeling to take over, Dax restarted the conversation.
“So, your mother killed your brother and now you’re going to exact revenge,” he said as he settled down next to me, resting one arm across the back of the couch in a way that made it impossible to ignore his broad, muscled chest. “Sounds very Shakespearean.”
“It’s not that dramatic,” I said, realizing that to anyone outside the family, this would sound utterly unreasonable. “My mother took my brother with her to Soldier Field the night after the Bears NFC Championship win. She wasn’t paying attention when she made the turn off of Lower Wacker Drive and didn’t see a pickup truck come barreling through the light.”
“That doesn’t sound like it’s all her fault,” he said skeptically.
“She’d forgotten that my brother was in the back seat and hadn’t put a seat belt on him,” I said without emotion. “The force of the collision threw him through the side window and he landed on his head on the pavement.”
“Oh man,” Dax muttered as he took a big gulp from his glass. “That doesn’t prove she killed him, though. You know that, right? I mean, accidents happen.”
“Dax, my mother was a terrible driver, and as a result, my grandfather had arranged for her to always have a driver,” I said. “She had told the driver to go home that night, and then she decided she’d go see my grandfather at the stadium, so she took my father’s keys and his car. I didn’t know my brother had gone with her until my father told me that he and my mother had been taken to the hospital.”
“Still, it sounds like an accident to me,” he said. I recognized the tone. I’d heard it many times throughout my life. It was the voice of someone who was trying to reason with me to try and let my mother off the hook, and when I heard that tone in Dax’s voice, I shut down.
“I guess,” I shrugged, turning my attention to my whiskey glass. I dumped the remaining half inch into my mouth and swallowed hard. The amber liquid burned a path of fire down my throat and quickly spread from my stomach to the rest of my body, leaving me feeling warm and relaxed. I held out my glass, “More, please.”