“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought you might have some ideas.”
She looked at him and tried to read the truth in his blue eyes. “You won’t tell her?”
“She’d think what you do. That it’s just a ploy.”
“Would you blame her?”
“No, and I don’t blame you, either.”
He reached out his hand toward her, then shoved it in his pocket.
“I’m gonna head home,” he told her.
She watched him walk to the door and let himself out. When she was alone, she sank back onto the sofa and drew her knees to her chest.
Just when she thought things couldn’t get more complicated, they took a turn for downright confusing. Was David cheating on Mia? If Zach was lying, then he was a worse weasel than she’d thought and she should get herself sanitized after having intimate contact with him. If he was telling the truth, then he was even better than she could have hoped and letting him walk out of her life made her fourteen kinds of stupid.
The worst of it was she didn’t know if sleeping with her had been a spontaneous response to passion, or just one more part of his master plan.
The trick was separating fact from fiction. So where was a crystal ball when she really needed one?
14
Mia sat on the floor in David’s dorm room and watched him pace the small space from the desk to the door.
“I can’t even remember how it started,” David admitted, then crossed to the opposite bed and flopped down on his back. “Then we were just arguing.”
Mia had a feeling that David remembered exactly how the fight with his dad had started, but for some reason he didn’t want to tell her. The fact that he was keeping it a secret bothered her. It wasn’t as if she was going to go all hysterical and start screaming or something. That so wasn’t her style. She also wasn’t pleased that David had taken nearly a week to tell her what was wrong.
She’d known instantly there was a problem, but he’d denied it for the first three days and had refused to talk about it for the next three.
“He said that he didn’t want me screwing up my life the way his life had been screwed up,” David admitted miserably.
Mia crossed to kneel next to the narrow bed. She placed one hand on his chest. “You know what he was trying to say. He’s worried that we’re getting married too young. He wasn’t telling you that you’d ruined his life. David, your dad loves you. Everyone can see that. He’s happy when you’re with him and he’s proud of you.”
“I know.” He turned his head toward her. Tears glistened in his eyes, but he blinked them away. “It hurt right then, you know. But I’m okay with it now. The thing is I kinda thought he was coming around. About the wedding.”
“But he’s not,” Mia said flatly, wondering why she hadn’t figured that out before. Now that David said the words, she realized it was so incredibly obvious.
For a second she thought about getting mad. It was totally insulting in a way. But she knew in her heart David’s dad wasn’t mad that David wanted to marry her-he would have gone ballistic about David marrying anyone.
“What happened when you talked to him later?” she asked.
David sat up and cleared his throat. “What time is it? Are you hungry?”
Mia stared at him. “You haven’t talked to him, have you?”
David wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I’ve been busy.”
She rolled her eyes. “Has he tried to talk to you?”
“I think he might have called. I don’t remember.”
Translation-Zach had been trying to get in touch with his son for days. Mia felt frustration bubbling to the surface.
“If you keep acting like a kid, your dad is going to treat you like one. If you want to show him you’re ready to get married, then act like a grown-up. After a big fight you can’t just ignore the whole thing. You have to own up to what happened. At least call and say you’re okay.”
David’s blue eyes flashed with determination. “I don’t care if he thinks I’m a kid. I’m over eighteen and he can’t tell me what to do.”
Mia clenched her teeth. If she allowed herself to say even one word, she would scream. David’s “he can’t tell me what to do” statement made him sound about four years old. So much for making her point.
He looked at her. “I don’t need him to approve.”
He sounded defiant enough, but Mia wasn’t sure she believed him. David and his father had always been close and going against him would be very difficult. Besides, even though it made her feel disloyal to admit it, David wasn’t exactly a poster child for the mature young adult. She loved him, but she wasn’t blind to his flaws.
“The wedding is a long way off,” she said. “He might come around.”
David nodded but didn’t look convinced. He flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “It’s weird not to talk to him for this long. We’ve always talked.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Even when he was mad at me when I was a kid, he talked. Sometimes when he went on and on about something I’d screwed up on, I used to wish he’d just spank me so we could get it over with. But he never did. Not even once. But he talked for hours.”
Mia sat back on her heels and let the love in David’s voice chase away her doubts. One of the things she adored about her fiancé was his ability to love with his whole heart.
“He was always good to me,” David went on, turning his head to look at her. “After my mom left, there wasn’t much money. Dad was in law school and she’d taken the rest of his trust fund. So we struggled. But he made sure there were lots of good times. He traded his car in for a truck with a shell on the back. We’d take it up to the mountains or to the beach and go camping for the weekend. Just us guys.”
“Sounds like fun,” she said and shifted into a sitting position. Her palm came down on something hard and pointed. “Ouch.”
“What?” David hung over the side of the bed.
“I don’t know.” She raised her hand, then ran her fingers through the shag throw rug David and his roommate had bought at the beginning of the school year. Something metal bounced when she hit it.
Mia picked up a small gold hoop. “It’s an earring.”
David reached for it, but she held it out of reach.
“Give it here,” he told her.
“Not until you explain it,” she teased.
He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Mia, get real. Brian has a new girlfriend every ten days. I have no idea which one of them dropped an earring in here.”
She tossed the piece of jewelry onto Brian’s bed. “You’d better not be messing around on me, mister. If you do, I’ll chop your legs off at the knees.”
She laughed and David grinned. Then he looked away. For a split second Mia felt something cold clutch at her midsection. Then she dismissed the feeling and joined David on his narrow mattress, where he drew her close and told her how much he loved her.
“Everything’s going to be okay with my dad,” he promised.
“I believe you,” she told him, because it was easier than speaking the truth.
“Other people have milk with their cookies,” Brenna said as she picked up another chocolate chip cookie from the plate.
Francesca waved her glass. “They’re philistines.”
Considering the amount of wine the three sisters had already consumed that evening, Francesca’s ability to pronounce a three-syllable word was impressive. Katie herself had passed coherent about thirty minutes ago and was now functioning in that pleasant state of being buzzed. The world might be spinning, but as she didn’t have to go anywhere, what did it matter?
The sisters sprawled across the two double beds in the room that Brenna and Francesca had shared while they’d both lived at the hacienda. Since moving back home after staying with Francesca, Brenna had started packing up memorabilia from high school, but had yet to tackle the excessively pink wallpaper both had loved as teenagers, along with the gaggingly sweet bedspreads, also pink, with flowers, hearts, and swirls of ribbon.