She pulled on her robe and wandered out to the living room, finding Wyatt perched on the windowsill in nothing but his slacks, cold night air ruffling through his unruly golden mane.
“Are you alright, mon Bête?” she asked as she made her way to him, accepting his silent invitation to sit in his lap when he stretched out his legs to make room for her.
“Oui,maFigue de Barbarie,” he answered, sporting that infuriatingly smug grin. It took Mia a few seconds to figure out why he was so pleased when it dawned on her that she had called himmonbête.Mine.
It should have been a disturbing slip of the tongue, but Mia couldn’t help but revel at how right it sounded.
Wyatt’s thumbs lightly stroked the skin of her thigh. “I couldn’t sleep, too many thoughts.”
“What’s bothering you?” she asked, shivering as a cool breeze blew over her bare skin.
“Tes yeux.” Wyatt pulled Mia closer, sharing his body warmth.
Mia rested her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. “Why are my eyes bothering you?”
“You looked so sad when I asked you about your family,” Wyatt said, looking down at her with intense russet eyes.
Mia turned her face down, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Maybe if I had a family like yours, I’d be talking about them too.”
“We aren’t perfect, Mia,” Wyatt said with a sigh. “Come on, you wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t caught me with that girl in a club storage room. You want to know why I used to prefer random hookups?”
“Because you’re a pig?”
“You’ve got a mouth on you, Prickly Pear.” He kneaded her ass and Mia winced. “It’s how you ended up with a red behind.”
Mia smiled and looked up at Wyatt. “I’m not sorry, but please continue.”
“I used to be a romantic through and through, it’s hard not to be when your role models for relationships have these great love stories.” Wyatt seemed to get lost in his thoughts before looking back at Mia. “Unfortunately, I seemed to attract a specific type of woman and, being a starry-eyed idiot, I kept getting used.”
“How do you mean?” Mia asked, sitting up straight to get a better view of Wyatt’s face as he spoke.
“My father attracts… attention. Commands it, even. He doesn’t mean to, it’s just the way he is.”
“Sounds familiar,” Mia said with a raised eyebrow, palm smoothing to Wyatt’s neck.
“Yes, well, it took me time to grow into it, and even then, I was never a match for the great Brian Jenkins.” Wyatt’s lips pressed firmly together, his head shaking from left to right. “From high school through college, they’d always use me to get closer to him. The opportunists I could handle, they were after my mom’s attention as much as my dad’s. We’ve always been told that some people will seek our proximity to advance their career or because of money, I was ready for that.”
“Then what was the issue?” Mia had an inkling as to the answer, but part of her still refused to believe it was possible.
“The girls that tried to get him into bed.” Wyatt seemed somewhere between furious and revolted. “He never did anything, I know I can’t be mad at him for beinghim, but sometimes I wish he wasless, you know?” His gaze darkened the more he confided in her. “What finally broke me was the last girl, four years ago, we dated for over four months and I really liked her. She was pressuring me to go meet my parents, asking about my dad and his relationship with my mom. I recognized the signs but convinced myself not to read too much into it, told myself she was just curious about my family and that it was a good sign but I knew better, told her it was too soon. Four months into the relationship I caught her trying to get into my phone to grab my dad’s number, apparently she was in one of his guest lectures and wassmitten, tried using me to get to him.”
“That’s terrible, you must have been so hurt.” Mia could feel Wyatt’s pain. She understood the girls wanting to advance their careers through Wyatt’s world-renowned fashion photographer mother or Nobel prize-winning scientist father. She didn’t condone it, but she could make sense of it.
Seducing a married man twice your age while dating his son, on the other hand, was beyond her comprehension on every possible level, not to mention that the mere idea irked her. She couldn’t fathom how awful Wyatt felt.
“I felt so stupid.” Wyatt gritted his teeth, looking away from her. “This kept happening, I was repeatedly making myself vulnerable. No matter how hard I tried, not a single woman was interested inme. So, I decided—no more emotional attachments.”
“That sounds very lonely,” Mia said, stroking a thumb over his smooth jawline.
“Kind of boring after a while as well.” Wyatt shrugged, leaning into her touch. “Nothing about you is boring, though.”
Mia considered his words, the way he had been with her over the past few months. They had a tumultuous relationship, especially at start, but if there was one thing she was positive about when it came to Wyatt, was his sincerity when he talked about his emotions, especially regarding his family.
“My mother is a self-centered bitch,” Mia said. Wyatt’s head snapped up, his back pressing against the windowsill as his widened eyes searched her face. “She’s only ever cared about herself, about her parties, and lovers and social status. She was never around from the day I was born. My father was amazing until I turned ten, then he just became cold and cruel.”
“What do you mean by cruel?” Anger flashed through Wyatt’s eyes and Mia shook her head.
“Not like that. He stopped treating me like his child, would barely speak to me, stopped hugging me, stopped…” The tears welled up in her eyes as memories she’d worked so hard to subdue surfaced to the forefront of her mind. “Stopped loving me.”