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Ethan returned with a handful of paper towels and a new cup of coffee for me, kissed me, and crouched to mop up the spilled coffee stain.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ethan replied. “I’ll get the cleaners up here later on.”
I turned back to the painting. “Do you…should I give the chest back to you?”
“Nah,” he said, going back to his desk. “You take care of it. But if there is a map of buried treasure, hand it over.”
“Sure,” I replied. “What are you doing today?”
“Housework, laundry, sleep.” He shrugged. “Why?”
Deciding to keep my thoughts about the chest for another time, I tried to change the mood in the room. “Because I thought you were one of those guys who worked endlessly, running on coffee and its fumes.”
“I used to,” he replied. “Before I realized that it was more harmful than helpful. A couple of years ago, I decided to take a day off every week, do a mandatory holiday to travel to a new place, and celebrate Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year's. What is the sense of working all day if you can’t enjoy it?”
“Good point,” I conceded. As much as I wanted to stay with Ethan and figure out what this thing was—I really needed to get back home. “Ethan, can you please drive me back to my car? I have a lot of things going on at the winery, and I need to be there.”
“Sure,” he replied.
As his expression began to shut down, I snatched a handout, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him in. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Thinking that I’m running away every time,” I told him, then tipped up on my toes and kissed him. “One day, we need a couple of hours to talk this over, but stop thinking I’m brushing it off. Yes, at first, I was shocked and scared, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, but…I shared my body with you, Vega. Stop catastrophizing.”
Relief flooded his green eyes, and his lips curved. “Okay, I’ll take you.”
* * *
When I got home, I took a shower and decided to talk to Dad. Dad had to know about his great-aunt, or at least know about her. He’d just come from another checkup, and I knew he would be testy, but I had to know.
“Dad?” I knocked on the door to the library; he preferred to be there instead of in the bedroom. “Can we talk for a moment?”
He looked up from the folded newspaper in his lap, “Sure, Mia. What’s going on?”
I sat. “Dad, you know about our family history, right? About your granddad and his dad?”
“Yes, Mia, I spent time with Grandpa Solomon for a few summers before he passed,” he replied.
“Did he ever talk about his dad and siblings?”
Dad looked up from his paper, his brows lowering. “What are you getting to, Mia?”
“I was at the museum the other day, and I found a family tree,” I started. “I saw a Sarah Sullivan, your great-aunt, who I never heard about. Do you know anything about her?”
His lips thinned. “I don’t know much about her, but I do know she was sent to a convent, or I believe so, at least.”
Aconvent? Did she want to be a nun, or was she sent there because she’d gotten pregnant outside of marriage?
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Mia,” he replied. “Why does it matter anyway? What is in the past is in the past, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Don’t you have more important things to focus on? What about that contract you said you were working on? How is that going?”
Not well.
“I’m working on it,” I replied, feeling my gut churn at the lie. “I just—” I blew out a breath. “—wanted to know more about that part of the family. It’s just this controversy with the Vega’s need to end.”
