He arched an eyebrow. “You want to know me better?”
Realizing she’d stepped into a trap of her own making, she repositioned herself in the rocker as though reestablishing boundaries. She took a sip of wine. “Yesterday on the boat, you were stingy with your answers to Elaine’s questions.”
“Hard to get a word in edgewise when talking to Elaine.” He hoped that would put her onto another track. It didn’t.
“See? That’s a perfect example of how you deflect any discussion about yourself. Why?”
He raised his shoulders. “There’s nothing interesting to tell.”
“I don’t believe you, Drex.”
“Believe it. Even I am bored with me.”
She smiled at his quip, but she wasn’t dissuaded. “Let’s begin with where you grew up.”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You were raised by wolves.”
He laughed. “Not quite. But actually, the guess isn’t too far off.”
She raised her wine stem to her mouth and took another sip, holding his gaze, letting him know with her eyes alone that she was going to persist until he told her.
He weighed the risks, thought to hell with it. He would go for broke. “Alaska.”
She lowered her wineglass, her surprise evident. “You were born there?”
“No. We moved up there before I turned three. I stayed through high school.”
“It’s a long way from there to here.”
He snuffled a laugh. “Longer than you can imagine.”
“I wasn’t talking about the geographic distance.”
He met her gaze. “Neither was I.” Their stare held, and he was the first to look away. He shook the remaining ice cubes, drained the bourbon, and set his glass on the table. He thought that would be the end of it, but Talia wasn’t finished yet.
“Where did you live?” she asked. “The town.”
“Nowhere you ever heard of, and never for very long in any one place. We were migratory.”
“What did your parents do for a living?”
“My dad worked on the pipeline. That’s why we moved a lot. We lived in some places so remote, I’m not sure they were on the map.”
“Life couldn’t have been easy.”
“Wasn’t. Hard work. Long hours. Isolation.”
She looked at him as though expecting him to continue and expand on that. When he didn’t, she said, “Was there anything to recommend that lifestyle?”
He gave her a wry grin. “For dad? Hard work. Long hours. Isolation. And the pay was good.”
“He left you an inheritance. Jasper told me.”
He drew his feet in and leaned toward her. Squinting one eye, he said, “It seems I’ve been the topic of a lot of conversations between you and Jasper. Any particular reason why?”
“No. Just curious.”