He reached out to take her hand, squeezing it. “No way. I heard it and I’m holding you to it. You scare me. I’m scared I can’t possibly measure up. You were meant for more than me.”

“Shut up. This again?”

He barked a startled laugh. “And then you remind me you’re perfectly capable of your own choices and decisions, so I’m not going to argue the point because as it happens I’m in love with you too. But I still want to hear about what happened in the restaurant.”

Those words made it easier for her to tell Asa. “He thinks I’m a failure.”

Asa’s voice was quiet, but she heard the anger in it. “What? Honey, he’s drunk and he clearly doesn’t like me much. He’s just being defensive. He doesn’t mean it.”

“No. No, I think he does. All these people who claim being drunk made them say offensive or hurtful things. Bull. Alcohol exposes your true feelings. The ones normal filters usually keep you from saying out loud. And it’s not really about you, because he’s made me feel like a failure my whole life.”

Asa blew out a hard breath. “I don’t get him at all. He’s got four really great kids. You’re all at the family business. Were, anyway. You all seem to understand and value what that means. What Colman Enterprises means. He’s mad because you quit. But he pushed you there. Your quitting doesn’t make you a failure. That’s his failure – that he couldn’t see such amazing talent. You chose an alternate path to succeed. It’s petty and abusive to hang it on you like that.”

It did feel abusive, but having him say it, having someone not in her family say it, meant a lot. It meant she hadn’t been oversensitive or imagining it outright. It was so damned nice that he saw it. To be believed.

“When I quit, it was liberating and nauseating all at the same time. I knew even as I was saying the words that it was the right thing to do. It was the right choice. I don’t need him to ask me back, or even to admit he was wrong. For me, that’s past, and if he’d just made the smallest effort I’d have been happy to move on. I would have forgiven just about anything. But there have to be some limits. You just don’t say things like that. Even if you think them.”

She blew out a breath, trying not to cry as the memory of that moment washed over her again. The shame. The sense of betrayal. He’d hurt her so carelessly but with so much vitriol she knew it was exactly how he felt.

PJ pressed the heel of her hand over her heart. It seemed odd that such a wonderful thing – the first time you tell someone you love them – could happen on a day when such a horrible thing had also happened.

“He said things to me. In public. In front of other people. Stuff that got to me because it’s a lifetime worth of conditioning. Anything outside the plan as laid out by Howard Jr. is a failure. And then I’m horrified because I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman who wants her dad to be proud of her.”

He growled and then sighed. “You’re supposed to want your parents to be proud of you. I’m thirty-seven and I want my mother to be proud of me still. More than that, parents should be thrilled their kids still want it.”

Asa hadn’t been this angry at a person whose ass he couldn’t beat in years. Rage simmered in his belly at how upset Howard Colman had made his daughter.

Failure? Was he kidding?

He’d enjoyed her sister and brother Shawn as well as her mother, and even Jay was all right. They all seemed to have a great deal of affection for PJ.

Her father had power over her, which normally, if your dad was cool, was a good thing. But the guy seemed to prefer to manipulate and shame his incredibly talented youngest child, and based on the few stories she’d told Asa, her father had been picking at her the whole of her life.

“You turned out pretty well. Thank goodness for it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not tonight. Thank you for coming with me,” PJ said, her voice tired.

“Nope.”

“What? Nope what?” At least now the sadness was tinged with annoyance and a little curiosity.

“I’m not having any attempts on your part to pretend this all away. Your father shredded your heart tonight, Penelope Jean. You told me you loved me, which means your heart is mine. I don’t take kindly to things that are mine being misused. You’re mine. I warned you I didn’t play, and I don’t. I’m deadly serious about loving you.”

She tried to take her hand back but he wasn’t having that either. Fuck Howard Jr. and his bullshit. He had no right to make any of his children feel this way.

“I need my hands!”

“Why?”

“Why?” An edge of irritation had pushed all the sorrow from her tone.

Asa smiled. “Yes. Why?”

“Because you’re going to make me cry and I want to cover my face. But now I’m just annoyed, which is probably what you planned to start with.”

He snorted. “You’re super smart.”

“Oh my god! You do a PJ impression?” She grinned and it was like winning the lottery. That was far better than seeing her on the verge of tears because someone valued her enough to want to protect her. He didn’t want her tears. He wanted her joy. That’s what love was, and he wished her father understood that.

“Duke says he’d give it a seven and a half. We had a competition. I won fifty bucks.” They’d both laughed their asses off. Duke had adopted PJ as the little sister he never had, and he seemed to have subtly campaigned on her behalf with their circle and in the industry enough to have really mattered. People respected Duke, so if he liked someone, it was taken as a good sign.

It also meant Duke teased her just like he did Asa. Well, not exactly the same, but the tone and affection were.

“Oh my god. I’m going to blush so hard the next time I see him,” she said through laughter.

“I have others. Most of them I don’t share because they’re usually sounds you make when I do something you like,” Asa said. “You know how much I love your noises.”

“I can demonstrate for you and we can do a comparison.”

“Yes.”

“Right on.” She’d done a perfect impression of Duke’s signature expression.

“Holy shit! How long have you been sandbagging that?”

“When I first met Duke it was at the track, like a year or so before I met you. I think you all had just decided to do some sponsorship of a local driver and he was up checking things out. Anyway, he just cracked me up with that beard of his. He had these purple boots,” PJ said.

“Jesus, the Godzilla boots? He got those in Turkey off a street vendor. I’ve tried to kill them but they always make their way back to him, like Christine.”

“Wow, so I already think you’re the hottest man alive and you bust out a Stephen King reference. How can you continue to be so fucking sexy?”

No one gave compliments like PJ did. She had this way of seeing people always at an angle that surprised him and frequently touched him deeply. Each one was a little gift made just for him and no one else in the world.

It made him feel lucky.

At first it had been a struggle to allow himself to want her. But there had been no way around it because they had amazing chemistry. And then she’d been there in his life. Working at the shop, and then once he’d kissed her it had been a hard road to allow himself to need her. To accept that he needed her.

She was inside the walls he’d built as a kid to protect his heart, and she never did any damage. Even when he fucked up she let him work his way back to her. He did the work, even if he sometimes just didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

Penelope Jean was worth the struggle. Worth the time to open up to. Because she understood him. She saw all of him and accepted it.

And because she had a magnificently sexy temper.

As he drove, Asa let it wash over him.

He knew what it was to be in love. Like full-tilt, how the hell could I have thought anything else before this was love–type stuff.