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“Did you want something, Eddie?” Besides to sit there and make it hard to remember how bad things were?
“Yeah, actually. It’s Cardin. She’s out back.”
He wasn’t worried, so Delta knew there was no reason for her to be. “And?”
“With Whip Davis.”
Ah, well, now she understood why Eddie was here. God forbid their daughter become involved with a Davis. Though to be honest, Delta wasn’t overjoyed with the news. She wanted better for Cardin than a life spent on the road, a life not her own, but Whip’s.
“If you’re worried, why aren’t you out there playing chaperone?” she finally asked, realizing she’d been lost in thought way too long, and Eddie had been staring at her all the while.
“Because Cardin’s twenty-five, making Whip twenty-seven, and I remember being that age.”
What he meant was he remembered being seventeen and not even out of high school, and then by eighteen, both a husband and a father. “Are you more concerned with their privacy, or with the embarrassment of catching your daughter in flagrante delicto?”
“Up against the Dumpster in broad daylight?” Eddie shook his head, snorting an incredulity Delta didn’t buy. “I hope we taught her better than that.”
“Oh, Eddie.” Frustration squeezed her like a too tight belt. “It doesn’t matter what we taught her. Hell, if kids listened to what their parents said, Cardin wouldn’t even be here.” She paused, added, “Or maybe your memory of being that age isn’t so great after all?”
His eyes flared with heat, then grew smoky, smoldering as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his fists bracing his chin. “I have the memory of ten thousand elephants, D. I haven’t forgotten a thing.”
That made two of them, and was the reason this conversation was now at an end.
She looked down at the folder she’d completely mangled, and at a second fingernail that was now a mess, and tried to find a thought that didn’t have the remembered imprint of Eddie’s hands and mouth all over it.
She had absolutely zero luck, so couldn’t have been more appreciative of the interruption when Cardin opened the door.
“Mom, I need to change my schedule—” Cardin cut herself off and careened to a stop, her ponytail flying, her face flushed. “Dad. What’re you doing here?”
“He’s worried about the company you’re keeping,” Delta answered before Eddie could say a word.
Cardin looked at her father and frowned, her black hair and blue eyes so similar to his that Delta couldn’t breathe for the crushing ache in her chest. How had things gone so wrong?
“What company?” Cardin asked Eddie. “You mean Trey? Are you kidding me? Why in the world would you worry about me talking to Trey?”
“I’m worried that you’re not just talking,” he told her, delivering the words as he would a reprimand.
Cardin rolled her eyes. “Is this more of that broken-heart crap?”
Delta raised a brow at that. “What broken-heart crap?”
Spinning away from her father, Cardin pushed up her bangs with one hand, parked her other at her hip. “He told me earlier he doesn’t want Trey to break my heart, and I told him it’s not going to happen.”
Oh, to be young and certain and naive. Delta sighed, choosing her words carefully. “His breaking your heart would imply there’s something going on between you two.”
Cardin didn’t answer. She faced the room’s small air conditioner instead, the refrigerated breeze blowing her hair here and there. Delta switched her gaze to her husband. All Eddie did was shrug and drape himself at an angle in the chair.
That left Delta to do the dirty work. Hardly a surprise. She’d been doing it all this last year. “Cardin? Is there something going on with you and Whip?”
Their daughter’s shoulders stiffened before she turned, her expression bright and wary, the color in her cheeks giving her away. Delta stifled a groan, and barely managed to keep herself from looking toward Eddie, from telling him silently that they did, indeed, have cause for concern.
If Delta knew anything about her daughter, it was how much Cardin hated the way her parents could talk without saying a word. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“I don’t want to talk about Trey. I want to talk about my schedule.”
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