Page 25 of Penalty Kick

“Surprisingly well. Dash is a quick learner. He picked up on everything really quickly.”

“No incidents?”

“None! I’ve actually been really impressed with how respectful people are when the players are at Bunz. Sure, there have been a couple of times where someone really drunk will hit on the guys or whatever, but nothing like, obscene. Last night was no different.”

“Glad to hear,” Gunnar replied. “Dash behaving himself is important.”

Their regular server appeared, holding up a pair a menus. “Do you even need these? Or do you just want your usual?”

“The usual,” they said in tandem, unable to hold back their laughter.

The young man nodded, disappearing just as quickly.

“So, I was thinking about what you said last night,” Gunnar continued.

There was a seriousness to his voice, a tone that was almost laced with concern. Talia racked her brain, trying to figure out what she had said that would have him sounding like this. She’d only seen him for a minute, right as Sax and Felicity were talking to her about…

Dash.

Oh shit. What had he heard? Did he know? There was no way Felicity had betrayed her—Talia knew that in her gut. She’d kept every secret, including the big one, that Talia had ever told her. This would not have been the thing that would have changed that. And no one—not even Avery and Liam—knew about that kiss from the auction. Unless Dash had told them. Regardless, none of them would have told Gunnar. So it had to be something else. But what was the question.

“I said a lot of things last night,” she quipped, relying on that sarcasm she always had in her back pocket.

“What you said about your mom.”

What I said about…ohhhhhh…

A lot had happened between Gunnar’s remark about footballers being bad news and her retort about how that had worked out for her mother. She’d forgotten all about the offhanded comment, her brain—and body—way more focused on the super sexy, half-naked footballer who’d been five feet from her all night.

“That was a joke. I don’t actually hold it against you,” she told him.

It was the truth. Gunnar had apologized multiple times when they’d first met about not remembering her mother Elena or their night together in Paris. Although, “night together” was generous from the little Elena had written in her letter. The two had hooked up in a back alley—Gunnar fresh off a World Cup win and Elena a flight attendant only in town for the night. Both of them long gone and back in their respective corners of the world by the time Elena had realized she was pregnant a month later, unsure of who the baby even belonged to.

“I know,” he said, reaching out and covering her hand with his. “But you hold it against her.”

Talia started to reply. To deny it. But then she stopped herself. She couldn’t deny it.

Slumping back against the booth, she didn’t remove her hand, keeping their connection, letting Gunnar’s statement sink it. You hold it against her. He was right. In a way, she did.

Close was not a word that Talia ever would have used to describe her and her mother. At least not while she was growing up. There just had never been that connection that many of Talia’s friends had with their moms. But Elena had told her that she wasn’t close with her own mother until she was in her twenties, so Talia had held out hope. That was why she’d dropped out of school when Elena had her first stroke, thinking that maybe that was the catalyst to bring them together. Turns out, it had been the start of the end.

“She loved to travel. It was why she became a flight attendant—so she could go all over the world. When I was a little girl, she used to tell me all these stories about the faraway places she’d been and all the cool stuff she got to see and do. She’d show me the pictures of her in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Acropolis, or a castle in Scotland. It looked like so much fun. Then one day I asked her why she didn’t go on adventures like that anymore. And you know what she told me?” Gunnar remained silent, a solemn look on his face. His eyes were soft and understanding, knowing exactly what the answer was but letting her tell it anyway. “Because I had you.”

“That doesn’t mean it was a bad thing.”

“I know,” she answered, fighting back unexpected tears. “She never, ever, said it in a way to make me feel guilty. There was always a smile on her face and love in her voice when she said it. But…”

“But…”

Talia paused. Just how much of this did she want to tell Gunnar? She’d made so many life choices because of this, consciously and unconsciously. But he was her dad, and for as close as they’d become in the last six months, she wasn’t sure he was really who she wanted to spill all this to.

“But there is so much I want to do. I want to finish my degree, get my master’s—hopefully as part of the Renaye program—maybe my PhD. I want to continue to work with kids with intellectual disabilities and help them. I’d like to travel. Maybe not quite like Mom did, but prior to moving here I’d barely left Arizona.”

“Okay. Forgive dear, old, stupid Dad here, but I don’t see how any of this relates back to your mom. And why you hold it against her that she had you.”

“I don’t hold it against her. I just…I want a different life.”

“A life you think she didn’t get to live because she ended up pregnant?”