My mother caught the meaning too.
“Will you be home tonight?” she asked.
“I might just stay at the condo,” he said. I could see the look of recognition in her eyes. There was going to be another fight.
“Thank you so much for the meal, mom,” I stood and looked at Joanna, beckoning her to stand too. I didn’t want her to have to see the truth of my family. Not yet. She didn’t deserve to witness the fallout that was about to happen.
“What?” she asked as she looked over at me, blinking. There she was, the role of the doting mother came back to her. “Oh, yes, of course. I’ll be in touch about wedding details, my dear. It was so nice meeting you.”
Just like that we were dismissed. I grabbed Joanna’s hand and pulled her out of the room, out of the house and down the driveway.
“What just happened?” she asked. She looked blind-sighted.
“You just met my family,” I said. “And you almost got to see behind the curtain.”
There it was, the muffled sound of screaming. “Let’s go.”
She just nodded and slid into the seat of the car. I liked it when she obeyed me. I thought about the way she did what I told her to earlier today, the way she bent over and just let me spank her ass. Then I thought about why I had to in the first place.
I realized that I liked it even better when she resisted.
Chapter Ten
Joanna
“So, that’s them. I’m pretty sure you heard it all,” he grinned at me as I took another spoonful of my sundae from Anne’s Dairy Creme. It was the best ice-cream in the entire Baltimore metro area.
“You are really lucky, you know,” I said, finally. I didn’t mean to sound rude or ungrateful, but it was true. “I’ve never really had a family.”
“Yeah, I guess you could call it luck.” He shrugged the smile on his face completely gone. “My mom, she loved me. Loved us. My dad, he wants a legacy. I mean, I get it. I know what it is like to have that need pumping through my veins. I have it.” The way his eyes lingered over me it was like he wanted to add something to that, but he didn’t, he just looked down into his cup. There it was again that little bit of his soul that I’d wanted to see.
“I don’t know what it’s like to have a legacy,” I admitted. “I just know what it's like to be the daughter of a screw-up. I guess I’m just lucky to be alive. My uncle, he was always kind to me. Always provided for me. Especially when my father couldn’t.” I shrugged. I never thought I would amount to much, I never expected to, but I was smart. I loved to read, and I was good at writing.
Greyson laid a hand on my shoulder and looked at me, “but you got to be exactly who you wanted. Do what you wanted. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah, until I have to give it up.”
“You don’t have to, not if you don’t want to.”
The truth was that I’d been second-guessing graduate school the moment I started. I didn’t have anything in common with anyone, and my upbringing hadn’t prepared me for the snobbery of academia. I wasn’t ready for it, and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be.
But I didn’t tell Greyson that.
“I guess we both feel trapped in different ways,” he admitted.
“At least we’re trapped together?” I said, trying to lighten the mood. It seemed to work because he bent down and kissed the top of my head. I didn’t understand how a man who was forceful, who could be so controlling, could also be so sweet sometimes.
But he was. Ever the mercurial one.
“I had no idea that our families would react this way, Joanna. I wanted to take you someplace nice. I didn’t think-“
“It’s not your fault,” I said. It was my uncle’s he was cruel, and he had been looking for a way to break the Fitzgeralds for years. Everyone knew that. This was entirely his doing. He didn’t care about me. Didn’t care about Greyson. He wanted information. He wanted to find the weak links in the chain so that he could break into it.
Or, if he couldn’t do that, he wanted to make them an ally so that he could render the competition moot.
“Why do you work for your father?”
“As if I have a choice.” He glanced around. “It’s not the same as your uncle’s establishment. He wouldn’t keep a man like me on if I didn’t do what I needed to to keep the business running. He wouldn’t just let me leave. This is my legacy. This is my family, and I need to step up and take it over.”
I nodded. There wasn’t anything else I could do even if I wanted to. He had a point, even if I wanted to argue it with him.