“You make a good point. We spend a lot of time working together. I think how people work with others says a lot about them.”
It wasn’t exactly where he was going with this, but he understood.
“How would you feel if I told my parents about us?”
“We said no one at work.”
“Nora,” he said, his hand reaching for hers. “I can’tnottell my parents because my father is our boss. Give me some credit here. He’d keep it a secret for as long as we wanted it.”
He also knew his father was going to have an issue with this. The sooner he brought it up, the better.
Best to ease everyone into it. Get them to come around to what was going on.
That also could mean telling them about his first meeting with Nora and she wasn’t going to be so happy about that. But it’d come out since Eli knew and he was positive Egan must.
“I don’t know.”
“Nora. I’d like to take you to the island. Meet my other family members and stay there. It’s faster and easier than driving here. We go to the docks and catch a flight when there is one going there. There almost always is space for us at some point if we aren’t fussy. Or we take the ferry. Either works.”
He could see she was processing what he was saying. “You said you don’t have a house on the island. Where would we stay? The casino? I’m not sure I want to do that.”
“We could, but we won’t. We could be seen there.” Her head went down again. “Listen, I’m not embarrassed and when you do that little movement there, you make me feel like shit.”
Her shoulders dropped. “I know. I don’t mean it. I’m the one who doesn’t want anyone to know more than you.”
“That’s right, remember that.”
“It feels as if this is a no-win situation.”
“You’re making it into that. But let’s make a deal. No more talk of it today. Or this weekend. We’ll revisit it again.”
“When?” she asked. “Once Monday hits, we won’t have a chance until Friday night.”
“That’s you sticking to that time again too,” he pointed out. “After work during the week works for me, so just another thing for you to think about.”
She put the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth. “Let’s finish lunch and get out on the water.”
Which meant conversation over.
He shouldn’t be upset over it. He was the one who said no more talk of it today.
Yet he wanted her to continue. To push and maybe show she was just as much into him as he was her.
She wasn’t the only one with insecurities thinking he wanted sex. Which he did, but not just that. Not with her.
What he wanted was someone not hung up on the Bond name.
And those things were just hard to find. Guess because you don’t know you’re wrong until you find out how wrong you were.
23
LET ME EXPLAIN
“It’s not like you to stop in on a Sunday afternoon,” his mother said the following weekend when she opened the door. “We could have been on the island.”
“Dad said you’d be around this weekend.”
He stood on the front step longer than he should have, staring at the familiar door he’d walked through a thousand times before.
