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“It’s in my office. Camila will give it to you when we’re done. Finish your pasta.”
Luna strummed her fingers on the table, her eyebrows wrinkled.
“Maybe she should learn sign language,” I murmured, more to myself than to anyone else, sticking a fork inside a juicy piece of steak and dragging it along the mashed potatoes. I never went to restaurants anymore—I spent my money on important things like gas and Theo—so this, in truth, wasn’t completely terrible. I hadn’t had a meal this decadent in years. Trent growled, his favorite form of communication.
“She knows how to speak. She just needs to do it.” He scrolled through his digital keypad, not even sparing me a look. Camila patted the corners of Luna’s mouth with a napkin, filling the pregnant air with words like “washing hands is important” and “want dessert?”
“She obviously feels more comfortable communicating with her hands right now,” I persisted, taking another bite of the steak. “Why make her life more difficult? You said yourself that she can speak. She will when she wants to. In the meantime, you can give her another way to express herself.”
He raised his eyes to me, his gaze loaded like a gun, before returning to his phone.
“I’ll ask Rina to find a sign language teacher,” he surprised me by saying.
“You’ll need to learn it, too,” I pointed out. He didn’t like that. I could tell by the way he put his phone down and regarded me with frosty eyes. He hadn’t touched his chicken parmigiana, and I was almost tempted to ask if he would let me take it in a doggy bag.
“Are you done telling me how to raise my daughter?”
“Not really. And I’m not sure you talking to me—or anyone else, for that matter—like this is constructive for her.”
That was the other thing that bothered me in the growing list of things that pissed me off about Trent Rexroth. He often acted like his daughter was not present in the room, even though Luna clearly understood everything he’d said. Her facial expressions molded and changed according to his words.
He stood up, disregarding me, and walked over to the hostess, paying the check. The waitress flirted with him, playing with her hair and laughing loud at what he’d said, even though Trent was the least funny guy I’d ever met in my entire life. If anything, he could bring me to tears just by looking at me if he really tried. He didn’t flirt back, didn’t smile, didn’t look interested, but when she turned her head for one second to swipe his card, he rolled his eyes and sneered. If nothing else, I wasn’t feeling so bad about stealing his iPad now.
Walking back to the office on the busy sidewalk, Trent and I strode next to each other, with Luna and Camila trailing behind us.
“You seem to have a lot of criticism about my parenting style.”
I laughed at his observation. “Oh, you have a parenting style? I hadn’t noticed. You clearly kept your crappy attitude—the one you wear in the office like a badge—at the lunch table, too. You haven’t spared Camila and me so much as a glance. Do you think your daughter can’t tell that you’re only civil to her?”
“Edie,” he warned. His voice sent a tingle down my spine, and I tried not to let my mouth curve into a smile. We were at it again. The cat and the mouse. But I wasn’t just a mouse. He was Tom and I was Jerry. He might win our battle eventually, but I’d managed to bruise him. I purpled and greened him all the time, leaving battle scars. Marks I loved to look at, in the form of his pissed off face.
“Trent.”
“How’s our little friend, Bane, doing?” He changed the subject.
I bit my lower lip in an attempt to suppress a laugh. The reluctance in his question was no less than thrilling. He shouldn’t have cared. The fact he was the first to bring up that night felt like a victory.
“There’s nothing little about him, and he is good. So, so good.”
“This sass is not worth the retribution, Edie. I promise you that.”
“See, you assuming I care about your power trip is your first mistake. Drop it,” I said easily, and this, right here, was what turned Trent on. I knew it because he stopped for a second, his throat bobbing on a swallow, and slanted his eyes sideways to see if Camila and Luna were watching him as he rearranged his impressive package inside his slacks. I stilled to allow him the time to do so—it was the epitome of provocation, after all. Then we resumed our walk.
“Are you keeping our arrangement?”
“What arrangement?” I bit out, prolonging the conversation. We stopped again, this time at a traffic light, and Luna huddled between him and me, watching the red light with interest. A pedestrian tried to push in front of us, forcing Luna to take a sidestep in my direction. I gathered her by the shoulder and squeezed her to my thigh. Trent caught it, his frown melting very slowly, his set jaw unclenching. The light turned green. We continued walking until we reached the revolving doors of the Oracle building.
