“Your daughter?”
“Yeah, I need someone to help me during the day. My mom is happy taking care of her, but I’d like to find something permanent. With your son and my girl, they could be friends, you know. He’d have someone with him, and I’d pay you. It would be a total live-in position. Also, you’ll get to know my crazy ass family, and they are crazy.”
She found herself smiling.
“Do you have any family?”
Mia shook her head. “Mom died three years ago of cancer, and I never knew my dad, so no love lost. Mom did the best she could with me. I don’t have any siblings either. You?”
“I have too many to count, and what is so strange is more are appearing. It’s like I can’t stop them from turning up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a stepbrother come out of the woodwork over six months ago. Actually, forget that, he’s a half-brother. Daddy got a bit frisky before he met my mother. It hasn’t gone down well.”
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah. So I’ve got a half-brother that could be the head of the Denton family, and my oldest brother, Jacob, has always been the head of it.”
“Are you allowed to tell me these things?”
“I figured the more you knew about me the happier you would be.”
“That is really sweet.” She picked up the burger, and took a large bite. It was heaven, totally bad for
her, and yet it was perfect. She had been used to eating packets of noodles that she could heat up in the microwave, so this was heaven, and she liked that.
“Has it been that long since you had good food?” he asked.
“It feels like it has been a lifetime. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to worry you with all my troubles. I usually keep them all to myself.”
“I don’t mind. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that.”
“So how do you know Ivan?” she asked. “If you’re not business partners, what are you?” The last thing she wanted to be discussing were her own problems with Ivan, and everything that had gone on in the past. She wanted to move on, and just be a good mother to Reese.
“Let’s just say we swim in the same kind of ocean, only he’s a whale, and we’re sharks,” Damian said.
“Oh.”
“Not scary sharks, just, you know, bigger, faster, deadlier.”
“Why were you there tonight if you’re bigger and badder than everyone else?”
She stared into his dark brown eyes, and saw the flash of pain in the depths. “I wanted something, and now I can see how stupid it was.”
“What did you want?”
Damian didn’t say a word, and silence fell between them. She licked her dry lips, and wondered what was going through his head. Suddenly, he opened his mouth, and sounds came out, only it wasn’t coming from him.
She turned to see another man, slightly older than Damian, and scarier. “Budge up,” the man said. There was also another man.
“Why the fuck did you bring him here?” Damian asked, clearly unhappy with the second.
“This is her?” the man who had sat down asked.
Mia moved her son onto the table, and shuffled along giving the other man some room.
“Answer my question, why are you with him?”