“Good afternoon, Paulina. Raquel. How are you this afternoon?” she says, going into what I call pageant mode. It’s so not the Camilla I know. And it’s not one I particularly like.
“So, back to this thing about your brother calling me a dick . . .” Lincoln’s words draw my attention away from his sister. When I look at him, he’s grinning. “Tell him I paid for the entire bottle of Patrón and we only drank half. He owes me.”
Camilla
THE ROAR OF THE ENGINE is the only sound I hear as Dom’s car takes the curves leading back to my house. It’s been a quiet ride since we left Hillary’s House, neither of us saying much.
It’s a lot to process. For both of us.
Letting my head roll to the side, I watch Dominic control the car. One hand on the steering wheel, one on the gear shift, his jaw is pulsing like it does when he’s working something out in his head.
Why does this have to be so damn hard?
Ford promised to call me later to talk about things. There was an edge to his voice, but I think he was surprised in a good way. He offered again, before we left, to get him info on some contractors to help with The Gold Room and the two of them had an in-depth conversation about fighting styles and things that went way over my head while they ate apple pie.
It was a little more contentious with Lincoln, but it was mostly Linc keeping him on his toes. I’m just not sure how Dominic felt.
“Hey,” I say, my voice barely heard over the engine.
He decreases the gas and the rumble softens. “Hey.”
“I think things went well. How about you?”
“Yeah, I mean, it didn’t go too bad.”
“What did you think of them?”
He gives me a weird look and turns his focus back on the road. “Ford was okay. Lincoln . . .”
“He’s just a big kid,” I explain. “He makes a lot of jokes and has this whole Daddy-role thing now that he has a baby. I really think you two could be friends.”
His laugh is loud and amused, and I don’t know how to take it.
“What?” I ask.
“I think that’s a pretty strong, and inaccurate, word.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“I didn’t say that. I just, uh, I’m not sure our personalities mesh well.”
Looking away, I watch the marshmallow-like clouds high in the sky as we make our way back through the city. My nerves start to wobble the closer we get to my house. Whether or not to push the conversation more or to let it be is murky. I don’t know.
“Who were the two ladies you were talking to?”
“Paulina and Raquel?”
“The two wearing more perfume than a department store,” he clarifies.
“That’s them,” I sigh. “They’re friends of my mother’s. Raquel is really nice. She’s working with Ellie and Danielle on a joint project for helping restock local food pantries. Paulina . . .”
“Is she the brunette?” he asks.
“Yeah. She slept with Barrett—”
“Your brother?” he laughs, looking at me quickly.
“Yes, my brother,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Probably Graham, too, if I’m guessing. She’s married to a friend of my father’s but he’s about a million years older than her and she’s never had any interest in him besides his checkbook.”
“So she uses your brothers as her harem.”
“Ugh,” I groan, crossing my arms. “That whole thing is disgusting to me.”
When I don’t look at him, he chuckles. When I still don’t look at him, he pokes my thigh with the tip of his finger. “Well, I think your mother’s friends weren’t too entertained with you being with me.”
My heart leaps in my chest as I twist in my seat. “What?”
“Both of them looked at me like I was hitting way out of my league.”
“To hell with them,” I say, trying to simultaneously keep my irritation at a minimum and think back to their reactions. “Did they really? What did they say?”
“Nothing. You know how they roll—they’d never say something publicly. That would hurt their stock. Just, you know, be ready for your mom to get a call about it.”
He focuses on the road and makes a valiant attempt at keeping his features void of emotion. But I know him well enough to see it for the fa?ade it is.
The corners of his lips barely turn down, the sadness in his eyes only noticeable if you look for it. Dominic excels at hiding his feelings, and when we first met, I thought maybe he didn’t really have deep emotions. Over the weeks and months we’ve been together, I know differently. I suspect, even, that if he were broken open, maybe he feels them more deeply than most.
My chest squeezes at the signs he’s not meaning to give off, and I wish I could get my hands on my mother’s friends and straight tell them what I think of them. How dare they make Dominic feel any which way? They don’t even know him.
I touch his arm, letting my hand lie gently on the curve of his bicep. It’s as if the contact releases some of his tension because I can actually feel him relax.
“I’m sorry they looked at you that way,” I whisper.
“Don’t worry about it. Women like that—if I wasn’t with you, they’d be asking for me to be their dirty little secret.” He watches for my reaction. “When I go to houses like that—”
“Like mine?”
“Like yours,” he concedes, “those women like the tattooed, blue-collar asshole. We’re what they’re not supposed to have. I’m exactly what their missionary-style, four-inch-cocked husbands are not.”
“Dom.” His name is a sentence, not a question or the start to anything more. I remove my hand slowly.
“So it’s nothing for you to apologize for. If I wasn’t sitting with you, it would’ve been a different ballgame.”
There’s so much I want to discuss, so many directions I want to go with this, that I can’t pick one. I just sit, buckled in my seat, and wish there was a way to strap in my thoughts too.
“For the record,” he says, smirking, “the brunette has fucked Ford too.”
“How do you know that?”
He just laughs.
“Is that what you think of me?” I ask guardedly. “That I’m with you because I shouldn’t be?”
He takes a moment to respond and with each passing second, my anxiety grows. “Maybe.”
“Really? That’s offensive, Dominic.”
“That’s the truth.” He bites his lip as he waits for the guard at the gate of my subdivision to let us in. “Do I think that’s what got your attention at the start? Yeah. Absolutely.”
The gate moves up and he eases the car through. “Is that why you’re still here? No.”
“I hate that you think I’m so shallow.”
“I didn’t say that. I said you wanted me at first because you shouldn’t. The same way you always want a pint of butter pecan ice cream that you lament you shouldn’t eat because of the calories. Then we buy it and you eat a couple of spoonfuls and then you’re done because it’s not really what you wanted. You wanted the lemon sorbet. You just were proving to yourself you had choices and could go off-script.”
“So you’re the butter pecan ice cream?” I ask, trying to follow along.
“Yes. I was at first. Now, maybe, I’m . . . those little chocolate cookies you keep in the back of your cabinet behind the cereal.”
“Wait,” I laugh. “I thought we were talking ice cream.”
“We were, but let’s broaden it to food.”