Renny (The Henchmen MC 6)

And there they were sitting with Renny bouncing on his heels behind them, excited to see his little experiment play out.

The mother fucker.

My hands curled into tight fists, my fingernails biting into my palms painfully. I took a breath and forced my feet to move forward, giving them the best imitation of a smile I could muster.

"Mom, Dad, what are you doing in the United States?"

Last I heard, they had been settled in England. I would say happily, but I wasn't entirely convinced either of them had a capacity for happiness. What my father had was his obsession with work. What my mother had was her obsession with my father. Obsession was not a happy thing to base your life around.

"We were on business in New York and we got a call from your young man," my mother started, lifting her chin a little, clearly objecting not only to my choice of a 'young man' but also my outfit, my hometown, and likely the coffee shop we were sitting in.

I didn't look a lot like my mother. She was full Japanese where I was only half. My skin was darker, my hair lighter, my eyes that of my father, and my body more curvy than hers. But my face had the same roundness she had.

And I didn't inherit any of her strong opinions on cuisine, clothing, music, or theater. It was a fact that always annoyed her. Why, she would bemoan, would I want to play with silly little fake animals instead of sit and watch Les Mis in French?

My father was always a bit more laid-back, more workaday, less pretentious. He never cared enough to notice that I even had a Gameboy, let alone lectured me about how much I played it.

"Renny," I said, forcing a smile but it was all ice, "why didn't you tell me you called my parents?"

"It was a surprise, Mina," he offered, watching me closely. And I just knew he was reading way too much into my stiffness, into the fact that I hadn't sat down.

So I sat down. "How have you been?"

"Perhaps you would know that if you called, Minny," my mother chastened.

"I have called." I called every single mother's and father's day just so they couldn't say I never called.

"Twice a year," she scoffed, shaking her head. "After all we have done for you. The best schools, the right contacts..."

The best schools across eight different countries over the course of my childhood. And the only contacts I had were the pampered, snooty offspring of the women she befriended in the 'right' circles in each of those countries.

"I'm sorry, Mother," I offered, swallowing past the bitter taste of that apology because I didn't mean it in the least. "I have been traveling a lot for work," I said, looking to my father who would not only understand, but approve, of that. "I will make more of an effort." Say, on Christmas or New Years when I knew they wouldn't be around to pick up the phone anyway.

"How has work been?" my father broke in, interested.

He looked older than I remembered. Eight years would do that to a person, but it was almost startling to see. His hair that had always been a rich medium brown was graying. His eyes that were so much like my own had crows feet around them.

"Work has been good. Constant. I have been all over the place the past year."

"But your headquarters is here, correct?" he asked. "Hailstorm Industries."

I almost corrected him before, at the last second, I remembered that was exactly what I had told him many years before when Lo took me in. The 'industries' I thought made it sound more legitimate. I knew he would never look them up. He wouldn't care enough.

"So how long have you and your young man been dating?" my mother broke in, always trying to steer conversation away from work, the only thing my father and I were comfortable discussing.

"Oh, ah..." I started.

"A few months," Renny supplied, moving over toward me, borrowing a chair from the table behind us, and sitting down, his knees touching me.

And, for the first time ever, I wanted to pull away from his touch. Not because I was fighting an attraction like I had been at the beginning, but because I genuinely did not want him touching me right then.

Or ever fucking again.

"Is it serious?" she asked, one brow raising.

It was seriously over at least.

"It has been steady," I improvised.

"You are getting too old to not be serious, Minny," she chastened.

I hated being called Minny. She hated the name Mina because it was my paternal grandmother's name and my mother blamed her for making my father emotionally distant. The joke was on her, though, seeing as my Granny Mina was the only bit of warmth I had ever known my entire childhood.