“Yes, that sounds fantastic. I’ll grab two since you have my bag.”

Longnecks dangling between her fingers, she followed him up to his room.

“How was dinner with your mom and sister?”

“It was all right, actually. My dad had lied to my mom about the way I left and the reasons for it.”

“How did she react when she found out?” Asa asked.

“She was surprised and upset. I’m always making waves, so I guess I figured her silence on the matter wasn’t that unusual. But she didn’t know.”

These fucking people made him want to punch things. “Yeah, so I think for this discussion you need to be naked and in the bedroom.”

“What?”

Asa smiled down at her, pausing a moment before he buried his fist in her hair and positioned that sweet, sweet mouth of hers just how he wanted it. After he’d kissed the tension out of her spine, he let go.

“That’s better. Now, naked and in bed.”

She got undressed and he took his time admiring her body. The curves of her, the lotus on her back, tonight a pink streak at her temple that matched the nail polish she wore.

So beautiful.

He got in bed and she snuggled up next to him. He clinked his beer to hers. “Now. Tell me about your family.”

“Will you tell me about yours?”

Asa brushed the pad of his thumb over the swell of her bottom lip and she sucked it into her mouth, biting him and then licking as she let go.

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I’m not.” She grinned. “Okay, so I was a little. But I want to know more about you.”

“That’s fair.” He kissed her quickly before settling back. “So you’re close enough with your mom to have dinner with her and Julie. But she hadn’t actually spoken to you about how and why you left Colman? You’ve talked to her since then, right? It’s been two months.”

He had to have heard wrong.

“There’s a lot of not talking about it in my family. It makes them uncomfortable when I confront them.”

“I don’t get it. Their youngest daughter actually walked out on the family business because she was told to be quiet and do what she was told, and neither of them has spoken to you about this? Or you to them?”

“I tried!”

Asa heard the unshed tears in her voice.

Putting his beer aside, he pulled her into his lap. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you.”

“It is what it is. I need to accept that my dad’s never going to connect with me. Not on any level. I’ve known it since I was about fourteen, but I kept lying to myself. Hoping something would change. Trying to be exactly what he wanted, and when that didn’t work, I struck out on my own and I proved myself. I don’t expect him to make me CEO or anything like that. I don’t have the experience or education to do it. I just wanted to do custom paint, and I proved I could make a profit. My grandpa would have been proud. Why can’t he?”

“You were close to Howie then?”

She smiled as she tucked herself into his body.

“Yes. He was my best friend when I was little. He’d show up at our house and take us out for a drive. Or he’d steal us all away for a week at their house. Shawn and I were closest with him and my grandmother.”

“Was he close with your dad and your uncle?”

“No. I was a kid, so I don’t think I got all the nuances in their relationship. But my grandpa was a firecracker. He loved to laugh. He loved to have fun. He wanted to wring the absolute most out of life, and my father is not like that at all.”

“Kids rebel. Maybe being straitlaced is your dad’s way of giving the finger to his parents.”

“Maybe. My uncle is a jerk and that’s his rebellion?”

He held her a little tighter. “Some people are just jerks. He might be one.”

“Now you.”

“You’ll meet my mom soon enough. She knows about you and she’ll want me to bring you over. She’s… most people love her. I told you my youngest sister lives up here too.”

“You have another sister?”

“Yes, she’s a professor at a small private college. First person in our family to go to college and she just kept going and going.” He grinned and PJ tipped her head back to look at him.

Part of the reason he was so displeased with her family was how hard his mother had struggled just to get her child back, all while Howard Jr. worked to make his daughter feel it was rocking the boat just to talk about things.

“You grew up in Texas, so how did you end up in Seattle?”

“I have some family up here.” His father’s brother, one who’d helped Pat try to get Asa back. “When I got out of the army, my uncle told me I could crash in his guest room if I needed a place to land. Then Duke joined me out here and the rest you know.”

She gave him a look. “I don’t think so. That story was pretty scant on details. You didn’t tell me anything about your dad. But I’ll let you tell me the rest when you’re ready. Today was really shitty, so you should help me forget it.”

Clever that she’d let him have the space around the story of his father while also reminding him she wanted to know. She just seemed to intuit how best to coax him closer to her, make him yearn to share stuff he rarely talked about.

They both needed the sweat of sex to get rid of the day. They’d deal with everything else tomorrow. He also wanted to connect with her, to regain that intimacy they’d lost when he’d handled that business about her morning with her at Twisted Steel.

“How about this? Why don’t I help you remember it instead? Just as the day I gave you the best orgasms you’ve ever had.”

She gave him a coy look from under her lashes. “If you’re sure. I mean. For science and all I guess we should.”

Yes, he was a taciturn man. He liked to listen more than he spoke. But he loved to laugh. With her it was more than that. She didn’t just make him laugh; she teased him. She made him happy in ways he hadn’t realized were possible.

“It’s handy that you’re always game.”

“For science, Asa. How could I turn my back on that?”

“Very brave of you. Face me. I want you to know who brings you pleasure.”

She did as he’d told her to. “I don’t need to be looking at your face to remember you make me feel good.”

“I like that.” He kissed her, tasting her in little nips. “But I still want you to do what I told you.”

Her breath caught and he smiled.

“Today I made it about me instead of you when you came into Twisted Steel. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m pissed off. But not at you. And you deserved to be put before how I felt or what I wanted to do.”

When Asa was twenty-two, he’d had to take his medical files and a bunch of things his mother had tucked away in an attic. His old report cards had been inside. Even from the time he’d lived with his grandparents. And a report from some counselor he’d seen in junior high.

Due to Asa’s unusual circumstances as a young child – being taken from his mother and forced to live with a family that saw him as a physical manifestation of sin and the concomitant physical and emotional abuse he experienced until reunited with his mother at seven years of age – he has manifested difficulty in forming deep attachments and this may hinder his ability to lead a successful life as an adult.

He’d confronted his mother about it, asked her why she hadn’t ever told him. And she’d said, “It doesn’t matter what that counselor said. You do have trouble getting close to people. But once you do, you’d die for those people. And there’s not a goddamn thing wrong with that, Asa.”

He hadn’t expected PJ. She’d floated into his life and nothing had been the same since. But when he’d heard that story from Duke and then watched her face as she talked about it, he knew for certain PJ was one of those people he’d die for.

Which meant he had to take better care of her.

She cupped his cheeks and kissed him. “We’re good.”

“Okay then.” He slid his palm up her belly, up the valley between her breasts. Up to cup her throat as he pulled her in to take her lips. He kissed and kissed her until she was squirming against him, wanting more.