Their conversation was interrupted by a group of college students settling into the booth behind them. Their laughter barely disguised the popping of beer cans.
“I forgot this place was BYOB,” Stuart remarked. “We could have brought a bottle of Merlot to go with our meal.”
“I’m not sure this is a Merlot kind of place,” Patience replied.
“Good point. Beer then.”
She tried and failed to stop her grimace.
“You don’t like beer?”
“I don’t like the smell.” He wouldn’t either if he’d spent years breathing sour, stale air.
Stuart was clearly curious, but thankfully he didn’t push. At least not right then. Instead, he stretched his arms along the back of the booth, the position pulling his shirt taut across his torso and emphasizing the contours beneath the cotton. Patience wondered if he realized he was the most superior-looking man in the place.
“So, your sister’s dream is to become a famous chef,” he said. “What’s yours?”
To make sure Piper’s dream came true. Patience busied herself with pulling napkins from the dispenser. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, come on. Surely you didn’t always want to be a housekeeper?”
He was fishing. Looking for clues about this so-called agenda he thought she had regarding his aunt. What would he think if she told him her childhood hadn’t allowed for dreams or aspirations? Or that there was a time when even being a housekeeper seemed out of her reach? Would he trust her more or less? Patience could guess the answer.
“I thought we called a truce,” she said, dodging the question.
“Hey, I was just making conversation. I didn’t realize I’d asked you to reveal a state secret.”
He had a point. Maybe she was overreacting just a little. It certainly wasn’t his fault he’d stumbled too close to a bad topic. “Teacher,” she said softly. “When I was little, I wanted to be a teacher.”
“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Damn him for having a charming smile as he spoke. “What changed your mind?”
“I grew up,” she replied. The words came out sharper than she intended, causing a stunned expression. “And my mother died, leaving me to raise Piper.” She was probably telling him way too much, but she figured revealing some facts was smarter than acting prickly. “Hard to go to school and raise your kid sister.” Not that there was money for school to begin with, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sorry. How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“That must have been tough.”
“We managed. How about you?” She rushed to change the subject before he could ask anything further. “Did you always want to be a lawyer?”
He laughed again. “Of course not. No little boy wants to be lawyer. I wanted to be a professional baseball player.”
“What happened?”
“I grew up,” he said, repeating her answer. In his case, instead of sounding prickly, the words came out sad, despite his clearly trying to sound otherwise. “Turns out you have to have athletic ability to be a professional athlete—or a child athlete, for that matter.”
Looking at him, she found his protest a bit hard to believe. “You look pretty athletic to me,” she said. His arched brow made her blush. “I mean, I’m sure you weren’t as bad as you make it sound.”
“I had bad eyes, allergies and childhood asthma. Trust me, no one was ever going to confuse me with Babe Ruth. Or John Ruth for that matter.”
“Who’s John Ruth?”
“Exactly.” He grinned, and she got the joke. He was worse than a guy who didn’t exist.
“So,” he continued, “with the Hall of Fame out of the picture, I found myself steered toward the family business.”
“I thought your family business was mining?” Ana was always talking about Duchenko silver.
“Not since the turn of the century. Grandpa Theodore turned it into law. Thankfully. Can you see me coughing and squinting my way through a silver mine?”
No, she thought with a laugh. He definitely belonged to suits and luxury surroundings. His choice of words did make her curious, however. “You said steered. You didn’t choose?”
“Sometimes you find yourself on a path without realizing it,” he replied with a shrug.
Patience could sure relate to that, although at its worst, his path couldn’t hold a candle to the one she’d landed on. “Do you at least like it?”
“For the most part. There are days when I’d rather be in the mine.”
“No offense,” she told him, “but I’ll take the bad day of a rich lawyer over the bad day of a poor maid anytime.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “You’ve never had to draft a prenuptial agreement for your step-grandmother.”
At that moment, the girl at the counter called out their order, and he slid from the booth, leaving Patience to wonder about his answer. Writing some document hardly seemed a big ordeal.
Stuart returned a few minutes later with a tray laden with food. The smell of fresh beef made her stomach rumble. Grimy location or not, Al’s did have good burgers.
She waited until they’d divided the burgers and French fries before picking up the conversation. “How is writing a prenuptial so awful?” she asked him. “It’s not like unclogging a toilet or something.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you met Grandma Gloria.”
“Harsh.”
“Not harsh enough,” he said, biting into his burger.
So Patience wasn’t the only person Stuart had issues with. Maybe he didn’t like outsiders in general. Or was it only women? “She had to have some redeeming quality. I mean if your grandfather loved her...”
“Grandpa Theodore wanted her. Big difference.”
“She must have wanted him too,” Patience replied. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to defend this Gloria person, unless it was because exonerating Gloria might improve her own standing in his mind.
“She wanted Duchenko money.” There was no mistaking the venom in his voice. “And she went after it like a heat-seeking missile. Didn’t matter who she got the money from, or who she had to hurt in the process.”
Like who? The way his face twisted with bitterness made her think he was leaving something out of the story. It certainly explained why he had issues with her befriending Ana.
“This Gloria woman sounds lovely.”
“Oh, she was a real peach. Did I mention she turned thirty-four on her last birthday?” he added abruptly.
“Thirty-four?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hasn’t your grandfather been dead for...”
“Ten years,” he supplied. My grandfather died ten years ago.”
Making Gloria...ew. Patience wrinkled her nose at the image.
“Exactly. And now I’m stuck dealing with her for the rest of eternity.”
Patience took a long sip of her cola. His comments had opened the door to a lot of questions, about many of which she had no business being curious, and yet seeing his frown, she couldn’t