looked up and grimaced. “It’s a text from Daddy. He wants to know why we haven’t come back home yet.”
Which meant Darwin Grayling was tracking them. It made him furious, but he had to hide it. He smiled. “Tell him there’s a storm and I don’t want to get caught on the road in it.”
She nodded and typed some more. Then she drew in a sharp breath. “He says come home anyway, he has to speak to you about something.” Her blue eyes narrowed with concern.
“Okay. His call. But if that storm hits, I’m getting off the road and to hell with being a little late getting home. Tell him that,” he dared, dark eyes glittering.
She bit her lip. “Will you send flowers, if I do?” she asked with graveyard humor. “Okay. But I’m editing that a little,” she added, as she started typing again.
“Chicken,” he taunted.
She laughed hollowly. “Paul, you haven’t ever really seen Daddy in a temper,” she told him when she was putting up the phone in her purse. “If you had, you’d think twice about making him angry.”
“Why?” he asked innocently as he drained the last of his coffee. “Does he start turning green and burst out of his clothes?”
She didn’t get it at first. Then she did, and she exploded with laughter.
He leaned forward and said in a ghostly voice, “You wouldn’t like me if I was angry!”
The laughter increased. She wiped tears from her eyes.
He grinned and got up to pay the bill, beating her to it.
“I was going to get that,” she protested.
“I might not be a millionaire, but I can afford lunch,” he said with apparent good humor, but there was hurt pride beneath it. He was painfully aware of the differences between them.
She glanced at him, with his hands deep in his pockets as they walked, his lifted chin as eloquent as a eulogy.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked.
He frowned. “What does?”
“That I’m…that I stand to inherit millions,” she blurted out.
“Nah,” he said, passing it off. “I like you in spite of it.”
“Oh, you!” she laughed, punching his muscular arm.
“All the same, your dad’s going to be particular about any man who comes into your life,” he added.
“That would be pure luck,” she said with a sigh. “We’re wrapped in cotton and packed in a box when we aren’t studying. I had to beg and plead just to get to go to college in San Antonio. And he only made that concession because he knew you’d be driving me both ways.”
He stopped walking, aware of boats going by on the river in front of the businesses, draped in bright colors and packed with tourists despite the summer heat. “Don’t you feel like breaking out of that satin prison? Ever?”
She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. Of course she did. With him. She wanted to run away with him, live with him, love him, take care of him. And that would never be possible. Her father would kill him, even if he actually wanted her. Which he didn’t.
She smiled faintly and turned away, walking again. “There’s not really any way to get out, unless Daddy loses his millions. Then it wouldn’t worry him if I got involved with someone, because he’d have nothing to lose.”
“Not much chance of that ever happening,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Not much,” she agreed.
“He won’t let you date, will he?” he asked suddenly.
“No.”
He glanced at her. “I don’t like that note in your voice, Isabel,” he said quietly.
“What note?”
“Fear.”
She swallowed. He couldn’t know how her father reacted to threats of male interaction with his girls. She couldn’t tell him, for fear of what he might do. He’d lose his job and she’d never see him again. Or even worse.
“Can’t you talk to me?” he asked softly.
She hated that deep, tender tone. It made her toes curl, made her hungry for things that had no real physical expression. “I wouldn’t dare,” she said, and then laughed as if to make a joke out of it.
He didn’t realize that she wasn’t kidding. He’d never seen her father raise a hand to her or Merrie. In fact, all he saw was that he was overly protective of them.
“I read somewhere that millionaires marry among their own, to keep the money in the families that have it,” he said as they reached the car.
“It’s pretty much true,” she had to confess. “Two of my friends at college married men their parents picked out for them.” She made a face. “Neither of them was happy about it. One girl even tried to run away, but her parents’ security team caught her at the airport and brought her home.”
He unlocked the car with his smart key and put her inside. He was quiet, uncommunicative. He’d just recalled what he’d learned about the bodyguards that watched Sari and Merrie any time they were away from the ranch, even when they were with Paul. It made him angry, as it had when he heard about it. It was as if Mr. Grayling didn’t trust Paul to take care of his daughters.
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