“Why come here?”
Ty shrugged a shoulder. “He had friends here. Grew up down around Alexandria.”
“Oh, that makes sense. So are you the attorney for his company?”
“Yeah. I graduated law school two years ago. I thought I would work for the company I interned with, but when Dad ran into his own lawsuit, he talked me into coming to work for him. I’m the guy who works the numbers and pulls permits and so on. Dealing with the government in any capacity is exhausting. Moves at the speed of a sloth.”
I snorted. “Sounds fun.”
“What about you? You said you have family around here. What’s the deal with yours?”
Here was the moment to tell him. To lay out my cards, talk about my mother, my absent father who called so rarely that I often forgot his voice. To talk about how my family could give the Corleones a run for their money. “Most of my family lives in north Shreveport. Remember that bar we went to?”
He popped a tot into his mouth and nodded. “Sure. The dickhead bartender and your, um, colorful cousin?”
“Yep. My cousin Griffin owns a tow truck company right next to the bar. My colorful cousin is a private investigator who leases space above the bar. The rest of the clan lives out near Caddo Lake. My grandmother has a place right outside Mooringsport. So we’re a little country.”
And a little criminal.
“I like country.”
“Oh, not gather-eggs-and-sip-lemonade country,” I laughed, teetering on whether to dive in or not. I knew I should give him the lay of the land, but I wasn’t ready to have him dump me in a burger joint in the middle of Shreveport.
“Well, good. I can’t imagine you barefoot, gathering eggs, and then making me lemonade,” he said, giving me a smile.
“Oh, I can do those things, though I would never go into the coop barefooted. I don’t like chicken poop between my toes,” I quipped, chickening out, poop or no poop. Admitting to someone that you’re a convict sort of puts a damper on any situation, unless it’s one in which you’re required to be a badass with some street cred.
“I could see how that could be a problem,” he said, looking hungrily at my tots.
“Do you want some of my tots?” I asked, noting he’d mowed through his.
“Please.” He reached over toward my box.
I smacked his hand. “You should never touch a lady’s tots without permission.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t usually need permission. I know how to read a room.”
“So you’re saying I’m asking to have my tots touched?” Flirty banter was so much better than serious talk about my family and my precarious future. Yep, let’s just do innuendos.
“Oh, I’m not just going to touch your tots. I’m going to devour your tots.” He struck fast, swiping two and popping them into his mouth. He made an exaggerated face of ecstasy. “Oh yeah. Your tots are soooo good.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the sexy, silly Ty who had been chipping away at my defenses and keeping me enough off-kilter that I found myself tumbling toward him. If things kept going in this direction, I would have to tell him about my time in the clink and about my family that sometimes skirted the law. I couldn’t keep hiding who I was. It was as bad as not telling someone you’d been married or that you had herpes or something. If one got to a certain point in a relationship and hadn’t come clean, it looked deceitful. And that was something I didn’t want to ever be. I wasn’t going to blast my past mistakes to the treetops of Shreveport, but neither was I going to treat what I had done . . . or rather hadn’t known I had done . . . like a black mark. I tired of carrying shame. My back was bowed from it.
“Take my tots,” I said, sliding my box of delicious golden potatoes his way.
“You’re a girl who gives it up easy. Nice.” He wriggled his eyebrows, his pretty eyes dancing beneath the lurid fluorescent lights.
“I can’t believe you said that,” I said, balling up my straw wrapper and throwing it at him.
He caught my hand and lifted it to his lips. “I know you’re not easy. But that’s okay. I like a challenge.”
And that did it. My heart sort of tipped over on its side in a good old-fashioned swoon. I realized that I wasn’t falling in love with him. Nope, not ready to go there yet. I hardly knew him. But I was falling into serious like . . . with a guy I could never imagine in a million years would fit with me. But here he sat. And here I did, too.