“I’ll get my checkbook.”
I groaned and slumped against her. “Why does it have to be such a pain-in-the-ass process?”
“Nothing worthwhile is easy. Finding a partner isn’t about ticking all the boxes. No one is perfect, not even you, Sloaney Baloney. Falling in love is about discovering someone who makes you better than you are alone and vice versa.”
I plucked at the carpet. “What if they hurt you?”
“People make mistakes. A lot of them. You get to decide which ones are forgivable.”
“What kind of mistakes did Dad make?”
“He was always late. He brought his work home with him. When he was working on a case that was particularly important to him, he was in his head and not present with us. He had terrible taste in fashion. He was always sneaking junk food into the grocery cart.”
I chuckled.
“But the good always outweighed the bad. Your father and I had a very robust sex life, you know,” Mom added with a wicked gleam.
“Mom!”
She collapsed on the floor laughing. “Ah, that never gets old.”
“You drive me to drink,” I said, joining her on the carpet and staring up at the ceiling.
“I’m just returning the favor.”
“Mom? I don’t know if I ever really told you, but thank you for being such a great mom. You and Dad never once made me feel like I couldn’t…”
Mom sat up and grabbed a tissue from the box between us and held it to her eyes. “Sloane, I appreciate your heartfelt sentiments, but if you want me to stop crying anytime soon, you’d better insult me in the next ten seconds.”
“Your pot roast is dry, and I think your obsession with teeth is creepy.”
We were still half crying, half laughing when the doorbell rang.
Mom got to her feet. “I’ll get the food.” I heard her blowing her nose noisily through the condo.
I hefted the million-pound box of gardening books and lugged it over to the writing desk. I slid it onto the surface and accidentally sent a stack of paperwork flying.
“Crap,” I muttered. I knelt on the floor and began collecting papers, creating a sloppy pile of death certificate copies, greeting cards, and medical bills.
“Floor picnic or should we eat at the table like civilized people?” Mom called.
“Floor,” I yelled back, spotting one last paper that landed between the wall and the leg of the desk. I crawled over and retrieved it.
A name caught my eye as I transferred it to the top of the stack.
Frowning, I skimmed the document.
Lichtfield Laboratories.
Paid in full.
Lucian Rollins.
I felt an icy rush of shock sweep through me.
Mom stuck her head in the door. “Do you want more wine, a sparkling water, or should we switch to Bloody Marys since I forgot to order tomato soup?”
“What’s this?” I asked, holding up the statement.
She glanced at it, and I saw the flash of guilt followed by an involuntary softening. “That’s what I wasn’t supposed to tell you about.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded, bursting into Lucian’s office waving the statement like I was leading a marching band.
Behind his desk, he looked at me with that cool, flat mask, but there was heat in his eyes. And bruises on his face. He looked like some heart-throbby heroic boxer who’d lost a title fight.
“Sorry, sir,” Petula huffed, screeching to a halt in the doorway behind me. “She’s faster than I thought.”
“It’s fine,” Lucian said, making it sound like it was anything but fine.
“Kick his ass,” Petula said to me under her breath and disappeared.
“You may go, Nallana,” Lucian told the woman in the chair across from him.
Her hands were tucked in the pocket of a Nine Inch Nails sweatshirt. She looked amused. “But I wanna stay and watch the show,” she said.
“Go away,” Lucian said, eyes still on me.
On a sigh, she hopped out of the chair, shot me a wink, and left.
I slapped the paper down on his desk. Then just to be a jerk, I dragged my fingertips across the spotless glass top. “Explain.”
“I owe you zero explanations. You need to leave.”
“Not until you explain this,” I said, drilling my finger into the paper.
He glanced down at it, then reached into his desk drawer and did something I didn’t expect. The son of a bitch put on a sexy pair of reading glasses.
It was like the universe was mocking me. The hot guy who rocked my world between the sheets and wore reading glasses was the one man I didn’t want.