Page 223 of Handsome Devil
“I’m not my father, either,” I said.
“Prove that to your grandmother.”
“How?”
“It’s simple, Dane. Make this marriage work. Make strong, beautiful babies who’ll carry on her name. Be the kind of man your grandfather was. Hardworking, charming, but steadfast.” She set down her drink, then fixed me with a dry look. “And don’t make any more sex tapes.”
She started toward her wrap, like we were done here. Like that was all there was to say on the subject.
“Why did you let me move to Vancouver to live with my father when I was a teenager?” I asked her. “If you thought he was such a loser, and you expected so much of me? How could you trust Brett Easton to groom your heir?”
She slipped on her wrap, then looked me in the eye again. “Because I knew you’d prevail.”
“You knew I’d come to see him as a loser, too?”
“I knew you’d see him as he is, and I knew you’d become exactly who you are. Even Brett Easton couldn’t mess that up.”
She headed toward the door, and I got to my feet.
“How did you know that, though?”
“Because, son of mine, you’re so much like me.”
Well, fuckingyikes.
Like her?
Cold? Alone? Untouchable?
Holy shit. All this time I was trying so hard to make sure I didn’t end up like my dad, I didn’t know I’d become my mom.
She’d paused at the entrance and looked back at me. “You look like my father,” she said, gazing at my face. “That’s what we see when we look at you. We see the best men of this family. And you’re it. The last.” She gave me a meaningful look. “Until you make some of those babies we just talked about.”
I walked over to her. “What about Lex, Mom?”
“Yes. Lex. We’ll just have to see what kind of man he becomes, too, won’t we?”
“He’s already a man.”
Shetsked softly. “Boys. Playing at being men. With so much left to learn. Like Brett was, when I met him.” She studied my face again. “How I loved him then… But he wasn’t like my father. He wasn’t steadfast.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“It was the only time your grandmother was truly disappointed in me. When I married that man.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. I didn’t know of any time that my grandmother had been disappointed in my mother.
“You did better than me there,” she said. “You married well.”
“I married a woman who didn’t love me, to try to secure my inheritance, Mom.”
She tipped her nose in the air. It was a very Devi-like gesture. “And how do you know she doesn’t love you?”
“I told you. She left.”
“Hmm. So you assume because a woman leaves you that proves she doesn’t love you? As I said.Boys.With so much left to learn.” She pulled on her gloves. “You know, your father never put anything on the line, including his own neck, for someone he loved. And I’ll admit, I never did either. I was a terrible mother.”
I started to say something to refute that, but she didn’t let me.
