“Sure we did.” I joined them under the dim kitchen lights, beside my wife, laying a soft hand at the small of her back. “We’re careful, we don’t use our real names, and there’s nothing tracing back to our home or personal lives. We vet every individual client. There’s clear and concise rules, contracts, and consent. It’s a business, and Natalia is remarkable at what she does. Would you have had any idea at all, if that hadn’t happened?”
Camilla’s mouth twisted. Her shoulders rose and fell but there was no argument. Apart from this hiccup, our career had never posed an issue in our personal lives. And let’s face it, a man being publicly splashed for doing porn meant nothing. I would still be a business owner, I would still carry clients, and hell, I might even gain a few. The double standard was insane.
“I’ve been doing this for years,” Tally confessed. “Despite the stigma surrounding it, I feel more respected and admired than in any other job I’ve ever had. Sexsells, and you’re naive to think it doesn’t. I’m taken care of with or without a man in my life, and isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that what the three of you strived for and accomplished all on your own, just like me? I’ve been taking hits from our entire family since I graduated college because you all assumed I wouldn’t figure it out on my own, and that I started dating Mateo and got engaged because I’m desperate for a man to keep me afloat. Iletyou think that, because my pride is less important than keeping the peace. Let’s not disrupt it any further.”
A car horn honked outside. Isabella flicked her wrist out, checking the time on her smartwatch. “We don’t know what to think,” she said. “All I know is that we need time, Talia. It’s a lot at once, and I don’t think you can blame us for needing to process it. You’re asking us to keep a huge secret here, too, you know.”
“But you’d do that for your sister, right?” I looked at each of them. It wasn’t a threat, it was an expectation. A loaded question. “You’d do that for someone you love.”
There was a flash of guilt in all of their eyes. That, or they’d really had a number done on them by male authority—their father, presumably—because the smallest bit of contention out of me rattled something loose. “I want to make something clear, too,” I said. “I have never given this woman an order or made her do anything she didn’t want to do. She has control over me in every aspect of our work life. I support her with my entire chest.”
A corner of Natalia’s lip twitched upward at me and she turned to her sisters again. “I understand if you need time. That’s perfectly fine. Just…don’t do anything that might?—”
“Ruin the family?” Camilla tossed out.
“That would be far from what ruined it,” I shot back. “There’s already plenty to blame.”
Mia picked at her cuticles with her head down, her lack of an unsolicited opinion entirely out of character. There was no way she had nothing to say, and yet it was like her lips were sewn together. The hangover couldn’t have been that bad. Even my headache was mild and I’d outdrank every woman standing in this room.
The car honked again and we all looked to the door.
“Let’s revisit this when we’re all home,” Bella suggested. “Clear our heads.” She threw a carry-on over her shoulder and gripped the handle of her suitcase so hard her knuckles lightened a shade.
“I think that’s best,” Camilla agreed. She followed her younger sister toward the door, pulling her own suitcase.
Mia was the last one to grab her bag and she stalled with her foot keeping the door open in the threshold. “I have to show some properties this afternoon,” she said. “Buyers are really persistent.”
“Okay.” Tally tilted her head. “Yeah. Good luck.”
“But I’ll see you soon.”
My eyes twitched. She was hesitating, stuck on what to say. Then it occurred to me Mia might have wanted Natalia to know she was leaving for a work commitment, not a personal reason. She was cracking a window, casting a line, leaving the dialogue open. Tally took a few steps to meet her.
“If someone’s going to bring Mom and Dad into this, can you at least convince Cami and Bella to let it be me?” she asked. “I swear I will, but they should hear it from me first.”
Mia nodded. “I think they’ll agree with you on that.” Bella called out to Mia from the driveway, and she rolled her eyes. “I have to go. Tell everyone I said bye.”
“Safe flight,” I said.
Mia pulled the door closed behind her, and Tally stayed in the thin window watching the SUV pull away on the dusty desert road.
chapter thirty-seven
Natalia
I was spiraling.
Partly because I couldn’t bring Ophelia home with me, as I watched her from the brown leather armchair across the bedroom while she packed away my entire suitcase. She folded my silk pajama pants into a neat square and tucked them in the main pocket, then moved onto the matching button-up shirt. I swung my legs over an arm of the lounger, resting my neck on the opposite one, and stared at the ceiling. “I wish I was an only child.”
Phee snorted. “Then you’d only have one bridesmaid. You don’t have any other friends.”
“First of all,ouch. Secondly, I don’t even know if I have more than one right now. The jury is still out. My sisters haven’t landed in Florida yet where they can choose to ruin my life or never speak to me again. Maybe they’ll do both,” I sang. “Maybe I’m free!”
“You’re not a whale being let loose into the ocean.” A zipper opened, followed by rustling. “Clean or dirty?”
I dropped my head to the side to see Phee holding out a plum purple thong. “Clean.”
She rolled it into a more compact size and packed it away, next to a small family's worth of unworn socks, four bathing suits, and three different bras for our whopping two-night stay.
