“So you don’t need to rehearse again?” I looked out over the view. Vancouver really was a lovely city, situated on a wide bay—all lights and ocean and dark green patches of lush forest.
“I need to go over the slides before the rehearsal tomorrow. But not tonight. I’m too tired.”
Our dinner arrived soon after and we sat down at the dining room table. We ate in silence for a while, facing each other across the table. The only sound was the clanking of his silverware as he cut into his steak and me crunching the greenery of my salad.
Jordan eyed my salad suspiciously. “You aren’t very hungry?”
“I’m fine. I’ve never been the best flyer. Makes me a little queasy.”
“Hmm. Maybe you can order something later if you’re hungrier then.”
“The salad’s good. It’s not your grandpa’s Shepherd’s Pie, but it’s good.”
Jordan smiled at the reference. “That’s my favorite thing he makes. My grandma is the one who made it all the time, and he started doing it after she passed away.”
My mouth thinned and I looked down. “He’s such a kind man. Hopefully, you won’t hold what happened at his house against him too long.”
He shifted in his seat, appearing uneasy that I’d brought it up. He opened his mouth to reply, but his phone dinged and he picked it up. A smile crept across his sexy lips and he typed a message back before setting it down. He glanced up at me, noting that I was watching him.
“What?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Just wondering if that was more supermodel sexting. Maybe a photo this time? If you get lonely tonight, you’ll have some new material to wank off to.”
He shot me a dirty look. “It was my baby sister wishing me good luck with my talk and saying she was going to tune in and watch it on the Internet as soon as it’s posted.”
I grimaced. “Oh.” I cleared my throat and then chewed a few more bites of lettuce and tangy tangerine slices coated with ginger dressing. “She really is a sweetheart. You’re lucky.”
“You don’t have a sister?”
I took a deep breath and let it go. “I do. A half sister, anyway. My dad’s daughter with his second wife. They have a son, too. Like I said, the perfect family unit. Even the two-point-five children. I’m the ‘point five.’”
“They’re a lot younger than you?”
“My brother, Daniel, is six, and my sister, Sarah, is nine.”
He frowned and then cut into his steak, appearing deep in thought.
“What?” I asked.
“Just wondering…so your dad moved on and got remarried after your parents divorced. What about your mom?”
I tried not to make a face at the reminder of her existence. I’d been trying to erase it for the past month. She’d been texting and calling and sending emails and messages on social media practically every day. I’d refused to acknowledge any of them. I had nothing to say to her and her new hubby.
I frowned, picking at my lettuce leaves about as carefully as I was picking my words. The silence stretched and then grew awkward.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “My parents got married on a whim and they were completely wrong for each other. He was already successful, and she was young and pretty. The marriage was a disaster from day one. She screwed around on him while he worked all the time. I was so young when they divorced that I don’t ever remember them being together, actually.”
“Ah, so your mom’s not the marrying kind.”
I laughed. “Oh, she’s the marrying kind, all right. She’s just not the stay-married kind. She’s on husband number four at the moment.”
“So who did you grow up with?”
I grimaced at him. “What is this, the ‘fifty questions about April’ hour? If you want answers out of me, you should cough up some of your own.”
He stopped chewing for a moment and watched me with those studious eyes. They looked more brown than green at the moment.
“Hmm. Okay. Ask me something then.”
I continued picking at my lettuce leaves. I knew exactly what I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t blurt it out like I’d been wanting to do in the weeks that followed our Santa Barbara trip. I had to at least make it appear like I was searching for something to ask him.
“It’s about that comment you made about your dad…that he’s angry at you because you lied to him. What did you lie about?”