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“Charity!”
“Your father invited me.” Theo ignores my mother’s indignant squawk, giving me a crooked grin. “It’s good to see you, Charity.”
I can’t tell if he’s intentionally making it sound like this is the first time we’ve seen each other or if he’s just being polite, but I don’t have the energy to sift through the layers right now. I’m far too interested in why my father looked so surprised by Theo’s words.
My mother doesn’t allow any more small talk, hooking her arm through Theo’s and leading everyone to the dining room. I can’t hear what she’s saying as we enter the dining room, but the way Theo’s shoulders tighten leaves no doubt that it’s embarrassing for everyone involved.
“May I get your chair?” Theo is at my side the moment my mother releases him, placing a gentle hand on my back as he reaches around me to pull out the chair. I want nothing more than to slap his hand away and tell him to go bother someone else.
Or turn further into his arms and demand we leave right now so we can both get naked and rub our bodies all over each other.
Sometimes I hate my brain.
Deciding the best course of action is ignoring Theo; I busy myself with cataloging all the changes my mother has made to the dining room since the last time I was here. The walls are still soft blue, but she’s added a mahogany wainscotting to the lower half. The color perfectly matches the ancient hutch in the corner, still proudly displaying her “wedding china”. The table is the same one we had when I was growing up, but the settings are different. She got placemats to match the baby blue walls but decorated the rest of the table in varying shades of blue with small pops of green. It’s all beautiful and expensive and doing very little to distract me from the heat radiating off Theo’s body as he slides into the seat next to me.
“Are you ignoring me, Viper?”
His voice is so deep, even when he whispers, and I have to stop myself from visibly shuddering at the sound. “Are you going to tell me what you’re really doing here?”
“Protecting you.”
“What?” I hadn’t expected him to answer, and even if I had, that wasn’t the answer I thought he would give. “Protecting me from what?”
“Everyone, help yourselves,” my mother calls over the sound of my hissed questions. She and my father have just finished bringing in the last of the dishes from the kitchen, and she gestures broadly at the array of food.
Everyone else begins to fill their plates, but I’m too distracted by what Theo said to join in the frenzy. I don’t realize I’ve zoned out until a plate full of food drops onto the empty placemat in front of me. I look up to find Theo frowning slightly at the plate.
“I wasn’t sure how hungry you were, but I got some of all your favorites.”
He’s right. There isn’t a single thing on my plate I wouldn’t have gotten for myself, despite there being more than one dish on the table with foods I don’t eat. “How do you know what I like?”
Theo shrugs, filling his own plate with a heaping pile of potatoes. “I know you.”
“You don’t.” The words are more insistent than I mean them to be, but this man has me all kinds of fucked up, and I don’t know what to do with that. For his part, Theo just smiles softly at me, then joins in a conversation with Dane and my mom as if I haven’t said anything. Frustration eats at the back of my brain, but I’m too hungry to let it ruin my meal.
Dinner passes quickly, with my parents on their best behavior. That isn’t technically true. My mother was on her best behavior, adding to the conversation only when she had something positive to say and keeping her backhanded comments to herself. My father, on the other hand, didn’t say anything at all. For the entire meal, he just sat there, silently eating his food and staring a hole in Theo’s head.
My mother has just suggested we clear the table when my father suddenly stands, speaking his first words since Theo’s arrival. “Grady. My office. Now.”
Then he leaves, stomping across the house toward the room he uses as an “office” whenever he’s home. It’s nothing more than a desk and a couple of chairs since the man has been working for a mafia leader since he was twenty years old and knows not to do any real business in his home.
Theo nods at my father’s retreating form as he apologizes for being unable to help with the dishes. My mother waves off his words, a frown attempting to pull at her heavily Botoxed forehead. “Your father certainly knows how to end a perfectly peaceful dinner party, doesn’t he?”
No one says anything in response to her as we help clear the table. Our mother doesn’t seem to notice our lack of interest in the conversation, quickly shifting from annoyance at our father to picking apart every aspect of Dane’s life. Why isn’t he dating? Why doesn’t he come home more? Did he ever get furniture for his apartment? Why would he get his furniture from that place? Doesn’t he know she got their furniture from the place on the other side of town, and it’s lasted nearly forty years without so much as a scratch?
She has him cornered at the kitchen sink, so neither of them notices when I slip out. I’m across the house without much of a plan other than simply listening at the office door, but it turns out I don’t even have to do that. The door is open, and my father doesn’t seem to be trying to keep the conversation quiet.
“Are you coming to collect, then? Is that what this is?”
I pause around the corner from the office door, straining to hear the words filtering through the air.
“No, Edmund. I’ve told you several times now I do not intend to ever ‘collect’.” Theo says the word like it has personally offended him. “I am simply here to have dinner with your family.”
“And intimidate me into doing your bidding.”
“Do I look like I’m trying to intimidate anyone into anything?”
The mental image of Theo in his soft sweater makes me frown. He certainly isn’t dressed to intimidate, so why would my father say that?
