Good Girl (Love Unexpectedly 2)

I hesitate, wondering how much I can tell her without giving myself away. Without revealing that I may have told a not-so-insignificant lie about my identity. Without revealing that I’m Preston Walcott and that I’m her landlord, and oh, by the way, I’ve been lying to you for over a month.

“He was married to someone else when he met my mother,” I say, reaching

for a piece of bread, even though talking about my father tends to make me lose my appetite. “She did a part-time stint as a housekeeper. His housekeeper. Couldn’t have been more of a cliché if she was the nanny, although I found out later he slept with the nanny too.”

“Your nanny?”

I snort. “No. I was fourteen before I even knew my dad existed.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Your brother’s nanny.”

I nod. “Far as I can tell, Caleb was my dad and Andi’s—that’s my father’s ex—everything. He was some sort of musical prodigy. He got sick when he was in junior high. A rare cancer that just destroyed his body. And my father.”

“When did you come into the picture?” she asks quietly.

I wait until our server sets the wineglasses in front of us before answering. “I was the stand-in.”

She shakes her head, not understanding.

“Other than child support payments, my father only came into my life after Caleb died. The heir was gone, so…” I spread my hands to the side. “The spare.”

“Wow. Wow. That must have been jarring.”

You have no idea.

I pick up my wine. “I got by.”

Jenny rolls her eyes. “I get it. You’re a big tough man. But it had to be an adjustment.”

I take a drink of wine and relent just a little. Hard to deny those big blue eyes anything, especially when she’s wearing a little black dress and fuck-me heels. Even with the ugly orange wig, she’s hot as hell.

“It was jarring,” I admit. “Like I said, my mom and I had a tiny trailer. It was small for the two of us, even smaller when she had a boyfriend, which was mostly always. My dad’s house, by comparison, was huge. Andi was gone by that point—Caleb’s death tore their already shaky marriage apart at the seams.”

She sips her own wine, her eyes never leaving mine. “Wait, so you went from living at your mom’s trailer park to…a mansion?”

“Sort of,” I say with a forced smile. “My father was insistent I attend prep school, and it was the one thing he and my mom ever agreed on. So weekdays were spent with my dad, weekends with my mom. Standard child-of-divorce fare, except…”

“Except your dad was a stranger,” she finishes for me.

I shrug. “Yeah. That.”

“Was it terrible?” she asks.

I smile, this time for real, because I love that she doesn’t beat around the bush, just blurts everything out, honest and earnest. “Not so much. I had a friend back in the trailer park who was there for me no matter what.”

“Finn,” she says, understanding immediately.

I nod.

“What about at the prep school? Did you have friends there?”

I blow out a breath, debating whether it’s better to tell her sort of the truth or avoid the topic altogether. I go with the first option.

“I was lucky enough to find another friend there. The lifelong kind.”

I watch her face as understanding settles in. “Ohhhhh. That’s how you got connected with the Walcotts.”

Noah, you fucking ass. Tell her.