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“Karen’s,” she murmured. The place was a fifteen-minute drive away, and her dad would want to linger.
“That’s it! Let’s go. My treat.”
Beth gave Eric one last, long, helpless look. He just cleared his throat, apparently unwilling to be rude and bow out. Admirable, she supposed, but she desperately wished he was a low-life bastard at that moment. “I’ll get a sweater,” she said, sighing. His gaze slid down to her breasts, then shifted away so suddenly that she thought she saw his eyes spin.
She felt like a guilty kid as she walked to the closet to grab her most modest button-down sweater. But she always felt that way around her father. It was the one reason she let her mom talk her into keeping the White Orchid a secret. Because Beth would rather die than see heartbroken disappointment in her dad’s eyes again. That one time eighteen years ago had been the worst moment of her life. So she pulled on her sweater and pretended she’d been doing nothing wrong and she was still the nice girl she’d been before her father had found out she wasn’t.
ERIC WAS DROWNING IN mortification. At some point during the evening, he just expected to keel over, stone-cold dead from guilt. The things he’d been thinking about doing to Beth. The things he’d meant to do as soon as he got her alone.
But her father didn’t know that. He couldn’t even suspect it. Could he?
At least Eric had gotten a free pass on the ride over. He’d stuttered something about taking his own car, just in case. Just in case of what, he had no idea, but he’d escaped. Admittedly, he’d had a brief impulse to simply drive home, but that would definitely be the last straw with Beth. And he really, really wanted to see her again. He just didn’t want to see her sitting next to her father.
The man was just finishing up a story about living on a ranch in Argentina as a boy. “So your father was a rancher?” Eric asked Thomas politely. Eric immediately took another sip of his wine, hoping the bottle would be gone soon.
“No, my father was an Englishman. A banker. He came to Argentina on business and fell in love with my mother. He never left.”
“She must have been a beautiful woman.”
“Oh, she was, Eric. In fact, my Beth looks just like her.”
“Oh, Dad, that’s not true,” she said.
“It is true,” he insisted, covering her hand with his. “You’re a beautiful woman. But you know, your grandmother had six kids at your age.”
She sighed as if they’d had this conversation many times. “I’m not going to have six kids.”
“No, but one or two…” His eyes slid to Eric. “With a very lucky man.”
“Eric is just a friend,” Beth jumped in.
“Come, querida. You don’t dress that way for a friend.”
Beth pulled her sweater tighter and cleared her throat. “I’m very busy with work,” she said, but her normally confident posture had lost a little of its strength.
Her dad shook his head. “Selling ladies’ foundation garments. With a college degree.”
Eric was slightly confused by that description, but he was more confused by Beth’s reaction. She met his gaze, her eyes widening as she gave the faintest shake of her head. “I’m not a salesperson,” she said as she turned back to her dad. “I’m the manager.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Working in a store like that, it’s no wonder you haven’t met a gentleman yet. It’s nothing but women all day!”
She shook her head, but her dad turned to Eric.
“Why do you think my Beth hasn’t settled down?”
Eric pictured Beth standing in her store, surrounded by lingerie and vibrators and little trays of jewelry that looked suspiciously like nipple rings. He pictured her giving classes on sex and dating men with piercings that marked their bodies like damned picture books. He swallowed hard and looked at her in desperation. Why hadn’t she settled down? Didn’t her father know anything about her?
Judging by the way she shook her head again, he didn’t.
Eric must have looked completely frozen, because Beth spoke for him. “People marry later these days. I’m not in a rush.”
“All your old friends in Hillstone have gotten married and had children.”
Eric watched her face stiffen. She looked…angry. “All right. People who aren’t in Hillstone marry later. None of my friends are married,” she said. “And I won’t be getting married anytime soon. Jeez, I swear, you’re getting worse than Mom.”
“I want to be a grandfather before I die.” Without missing a beat, he turned his smile on Eric. “So, tell me about your family.”
Here was a subject Eric could handle. He gave her dad the abbreviated version of his family story, but Eric was focused on Beth the whole time. She looked younger and softer. And maybe a little lost. Her dad kept a loose hold on her hand as the waiter came to take their plates away. Her father had ordered a cheese course with wine. Beth had eaten only half a cracker.
