Free Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) by Holley Trent Page B

them…at least used to. I was curious about what they looked like inside.”
    “Ah.”
    “Are you moving?” Trinity furrowed her brow.
    “One way or another. This is a less than ideal situation. Did you think I wanted to live in a trailer in my parents’ side yard for the rest of my life?”
    Her eyes made big O’s.
    Ah, she had thought that. He chuckled.
    “Well, I…I dunno. Why do you live in a trailer in your parents’ side yard? Why not in the house?”
    He picked at the peeling label of his beer bottle with his thumbnail. “Let’s just say my mother doesn’t agree with my lifestyle choices.”
    “Which are?”
    He cut his eyes toward the blushing blonde and gave her his Nuh-uh smile.
    She got the hint, and put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture.
    If she’d asked a specific question, he might have answered, but he didn’t like being the quarry in a fishing expedition.
    “Well, what about your dad?”
    That he could answer. “We try to keep Dad out of most of our little squabbles. Besides, he’s rarely home. She takes the lady of the house thing far too seriously in my opinion.”
    “Sounds like there’s lots of love between the two of you.”
    He shrugged. “Plenty of love lost, truth be told. Whenever I fuck up spectacularly, she’s quick to tell people I was adopted.”
    Her jaw dropped, and this time instead of her cheeks coloring, they paled.
    He grinned. He liked seeing her speechless, and briefly he considered a couple of other ways to knock the words out of her mouth. Then he remembered how damned young she was. Not jailbait by any stretch, but inexperienced in life. She needed a bit of growing up. A reality check at the very least.
    “Don’t pity me,” he said. “I wasn’t some lost kid that got taken in by a rich guy and his barren wife. Well, not exactly . My Dad is my actual biological father.”
    “And your real mother?”
    He put his empty beer bottle on the nightstand and sat up a bit against his pillow. “Don’t know. That’s why I’m so damned good at tracking people down. Just ask Nikki. I’ve had a lot of practice at it. All I know, or rather, all my parents have told me, was that I was born in Belgium when my father was working overseas, my birthmother disappeared, and my father brought me to the US. Sounds shady as shit to me, but hey—people keep secrets all the time. I suspect my mother was a whore and my father won’t admit it.”
    There went that look of shock again. Now he laughed outright, and put his legs over the side of the bed to stand. “I’m fucking with you, Trinity. Really, though, I think I’ve worked out who my mother might be, but I haven’t had enough evidence to confirm my guess. Besides, I’m not sure she’d be interested in hearing from me after all this time.”
    “Well, why wouldn’t she be? I would want to know if a child I gave up was thriving.”
    “Maybe you’re right.” Time for a subject change. His parentage was too personal a thing to be discussing with a mere coworker, especially one that frequently seemed hell-bent on his demise. He bobbed his head toward the discarded pile of MLS reports. “What’d you think of the listings?”
    She exhaled, probably glad to be let off the hook, and turned to wake the monitor up. She scrolled through the listings then shrugged. “I dunno. They’re cute, I guess. Not really something I’d see a bachelor living in. Why don’t you get an apartment?”
    “Aw.” He resisted the urge to ruffle her hair. She was like a friend’s kid sister, often annoying, but smart, cute, and fun to tease. “I agree with you. Well, on the bachelor part. Not so much the apartment one. I want the space and the land, but I haven’t found too many floor plans that’ll accommodate what I need.”
    “Well, what do you need?” Now she looked genuinely curious, and he liked this Trinity—this “Ask, not assume” Trinity.
    “Something a bit more fluid, I guess. I don’t like having a builder