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“No.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I got over the no-daddy-in-my-life thing a long time ago. My mom and I did just fine.”
“No other family members to help you?”
“No. It was always just me and my mom.”
He took a drink and studied her, wondered if it bothered her more than she said. “You didn’t even have anyone to complain to about the way she abandoned you.”
That was the word that always lived in the back of Elena’s mind—the word she never gave voice to. One dinner and a short conversation, and Jed had it pegged.
Abandoned. First her father, and then her mother. Her father she never knew, so she never cared. He couldn’t hurt her. But her mother had abandoned her for most of her life. And she couldn’t believe she’d just spilled all that to someone she didn’t know. She never talked about her family.
“Well, enough about that,” she said with a smile. “I’m very excited you bought the mermaid today. I hope you’ll let me see how it looks at your condo.”
“I’ll be glad to invite you to my place to see it. Maybe you can help me organize the furniture there. It needs a woman’s touch.”
And he easily let her back out. He was her hero tonight.
Their food arrived and conversation turned to less touchy subjects, like the bike rally.
“Have you been to the rally before?” she asked.
“Not this one.”
“You go to others?”
“I’ve been to plenty around the country.”
“The one here is rowdy and attracts hundreds of thousands of bikers. It gets crazy.”
“Do you get a lot more business during the rally?”
“I do, though my shop doesn’t really attract the biker clientele.”
He laughed. “Hey, I’m a biker.”
She lifted a forkful of rice to her lips. “You’re a unique kind of biker. Most of them want commemorative T-shirts and biker-type souvenirs, not one-of-a-kind pieces of art. But yes, we do get bikers popping in to check things out.”
“I’ll have to send some people your way, then.”
For some reason, she believed he would. “Thank you.”
Elena didn’t quite know what to make of Jed. He was nice, polite, easy to talk to, and he listened when she talked. And of course he was also sexy, so hot her toes curled, and he rode a Harley like it was part of his body.
He was quite possibly perfect, which meant there had to be something wrong with him; otherwise there would be some woman stapled to his side at this very moment. He looked to be early thirties, and no way a man this good-looking and this nice could have managed to escape the clutches of a woman for this long.
Which meant he was probably a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy.
That would work out well for her, since she wasn’t looking to settle down now. Or ever.
He probably only wanted sex.
And good God, she really needed sex. She’d really like to have sex with Jed. A delicious, no-holds-barred, all-night-long sex session with someone like Jed should hold her for the next six months or so. Then she could concentrate on her work again.
She wondered if he’d go for it.
