“Enough.” Harlow stood. “Mindy and Hector, thank you for inviting us to your home. Luis, I hope this is rock bottom for you. God knows you should be ashamed of yourself for enabling her bullshit.” She nodded at her brother who knew a scene was going to happen when Gloria walked in. He knew she was right because he cast his eyes down without an argument.

  “Don’t you speak to him that way,” Gloria said.

  Harlow continued like Gloria hadn’t said anything. “I’m done trying to have a relationship with anyone who helps her harm me.” She didn’t say she hoped to see them the following night because the way she felt right at that moment was that she never wanted to lay eyes on Luis or Gloria again. Hector, who’d said nothing to defend her was up there too.

  But Gloria wasn’t done. Obviously. She was a world master champion shit starter. “So it’s true. You’re opening your legs to your boss?”

  Hector groaned.

  “Who I do and do not open my legs for is absolutely none of your business despite your lifelong obsession with my sexuality. Do not insult Miles, who was invited to be here for a meal, not some sort of talk show set where half the family starts beating each other up. You’ve all embarrassed yourselves enough.”

  “If anyone leaves, it should be Gloria,” Mindy said, surprising the hell out of Harlow. And everyone else from the shocked looks she was getting. “Go ahead and pretend you didn’t know this exact thing would happen, Luis. But this is my house. And Harlow and Miles are invited guests and family who brought wine, presents for all the kids and a good attitude. Let’s contrast that with you, Gloria. Not invited. Pretends your youngest grandchild doesn’t exist for some reason I think relates to why you don’t like your daughter. Or me. Whatever do we all have in common?” Mindy mimicked being puzzled while she tapped her chin.

  In the tv room the boys hooted and laughed and had a good time and Harlow was relieved, so relieved, they weren’t touched by any of this. Because she felt sick. Sick that her mother would make Lulu feel like she’d made Harlow feel her whole life.

  Was it because she was a girl instead of a boy? And if so, why? Could it be so simple and yet utterly complicated?

  “Let’s all calm down,” Luis said.

  “Calm down?” Mindy thundered and Hector sighed heavily.

  “Harlow and Miles, please, sit down. Let’s all have a meal and stop fighting,” Hector said. “Harlow, stop letting her push your buttons. Mom, you need to rein this in. Your grandchildren are here. Think about the example you’re setting.”

  “Don’t talk to your mother that way! She’s whoring it up out there and it makes us all look bad. Just like your father. Worthless. You and Luis you went to school and got training. She can’t be bothered with that or hard work. Never has a regular job. You talk about my example? What about her? Allow this tramp around your boys and they’ll think all women are just like this one over here. They’ll trap those boys into marriage by getting pregnant on purpose. Just you wait and see. I had to protect you from her influence. Even when she was a baby she flirted too much. You can see how she is. A lazy slut.”

  Though she’d had years and years of dealing with Gloria, Harlow couldn’t prevent the way she recoiled from her mother’s words. Though she knew better, she paused to see if anyone would actually kick Gloria out for real, and after a few more loaded seconds, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She hated herself for the hurt that trickled past her shields.

  Before she could say anything though, Miles tossed his napkin to the chair. “Harlow, let’s go.”

  “No, please don’t go,” Mindy said before glaring at Gloria who was in her element having just set things on fire for pleasure.

  “He’s right. Nothing has changed here,” Harlow said. “I wish I could believe otherwise, but I’m old enough to accept reality.”

  “Go get our things and say goodbye to your nephews,” Miles said in her ear.

  And leave him alone with them? No way. She shook her head.

  “I’m good,” he said firmly. “Go on. Give them some love and we’ll leave.” Harlow nodded a little jerkily before heading to the room where she’d left their things.

  Mindy pointed at her husband. “This has gone on long enough. You need to think hard about the next few minutes and do the right thing or risk your relationship with your sister being broken forever.” And she got up and headed after Harlow.

  Miles wrestled back his absolute killing fury at the way Harlow had just been treated by her family. This wasn’t about his feelings. “Now that she’s out of earshot, let me go ahead and say a few things.” Miles pulled his sleeves down with care before he looked to Gloria and then both Harlow’s brothers. “You two,” he said to Hector and Luis, “are the poorest excuses for brothers I’ve ever encountered. Do you know what I’d do if anyone spoke to my baby sister the way your mother just did to Harlow? It’s a long list, but nowhere on it is make my sister responsible for the abuse heaped on her. Not that our mother would ever speak to her children that way because she’s not a spiteful bitch.”

  Gloria sputtered and he didn’t care. He held eye contact with Harlow’s brothers until they both looked away before he looked to their mother again. He’d hoped against hope that at least Hector would do something, but he’d been wrong.

  “Understand this. First, if you speak to the press and say anything disparaging about Harlow, I will make it my business to strip away everything that matters to you and set it on fire.” He shifted his attention to her brothers. “That goes for you too. She loves you and your children. She came here tonight knowing she might be ambushed by this trash, and she came anyway. With an open heart because for some unknown reason she continues to love you despite the fact you do nothing to protect her from behavior you know is wrong. You don’t deserve her.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Gloria demanded,

  “I’m someone with more connections than you can dream of. I’m someone who cares deeply for your daughter. Someone who is absolutely shocked that any parent could be as cold and meanspirited toward someone as full of love and light as Harlow. And, I’m someone who will make good on all the threats I just made. Call your child a lazy slut? Get yourself right, you nasty cow.”

  Harlow came back down the hall and he moved to meet her and Mindy.

  Lulu started crying and Hector murmured to her, trying to soothe her.

  Gloria opened her mouth and Miles stood, waiting. Letting her see on his features just how much he hoped she would. Never in his life had he wanted vengeance more than against this person who had put so much sadness on Harlow’s face.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mindy told them. “I would have warned you early on, but I honestly thought after Hector called her, she wouldn’t come. Please don’t blame Hector.”

  “But I do. And you know why. I can’t always feel like a choice was made and it wasn’t me. It’s never me. I don’t know why. But Hector and Luis saw it my whole life and here we go, time eleventy million and it was you and Miles who defended me. I’m worth more than this. I have to go,” Harlow said, and Miles stepped between them, shielding her as they left.

  She made it to the car and a few miles until they’d gotten out of the subdivision until she turned her face into Miles’s shoulder and started to cry.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  By the time they returned to the hotel, he had ordered a meal for them both and sent a note to Poppy. He asked her to coordinate with Nora to get an overnight bag packed for Harlow. So she could sleep in his room that night.

  He wouldn’t push it if she wanted to be alone. But he didn’t want her to be all by herself as she was still reeling from that night’s horror movie of a dinner.

  She was on auto pilot, and he steered her into the elevator and then into his suite. “Dinner will be here in about ten minutes. Do you want to change into your pajamas first? Get your makeup off?”

  Harlow’s gaze cleared a little. “I should go to my room. I’m not feeling very sociable right now.”

  “That’s okay. You can change and get into bed, and we can watch a movie, or you can read, and I’ll get some work done.” He pointed at the bag on the couch. “Nora packed you an overnight bag so you’re all set. You can go down in the morning for your yoga and breakfast with your crew as usual. It’s not like they don’t know where you start the night out before you fall into your own bed.”

  She should resist. Go back to her room, eat a pint of ice cream while drinking minibar vodka and watching Steel Magnolias, weeping.

  The shock of the night had settled in. Harlow kept replaying her mother saying she’d been flirty with men even when she was a baby and that’s why she’d dumped Harlow off and walked away. When she’d been barely older than Lulu was!

  Miles had heard it all. Every horrible, ugly word. She wasn’t sure what he’d said while she and Mindy had been out of the room, but it had to be pretty harsh, because when she thought Gloria was going to talk some last shit to Miles and he’d just looked at her…Gloria had shut right up.

  He’d stepped in and shielded her. Protected and defended her. And now here he was having ordered food and provided her with her favorite flannel PJ pants and her sleep tank along with her toothbrush and essentials like a change of clothes for the morning.

  She took the toiletry bag and headed into the bathroom, closing the door at her back. She took her time getting rid of her make up, undoing and brushing her hair out. Her favorite pajamas brought her comfort, the cotton so soft after countless washings and so Nora had included them. Harlow needed to remember that. Remember there were people who knew her and loved her.

  A deep longing for a hug from Marcella seemed to throb. When Gloria had tossed her away, it had been her dad’s youngest sister who’d come to live with them to help Harlow’s dad raise her.

  It had been Marcella who’d taken her to the dentist. Who’d helped her with school projects. Who came to every performance, every play and musical. She remained a constant, and an example Harlow would have when and if she became a mom herself someday. Harlow would call her to reconnect and check in but she couldn’t face the decision as to whether to tell her aunt what had happened or not,

  Letting that love bolster her, Harlow gathered herself and went back to the main room where the food was being delivered.

  Miles pointed her to what she had come to think of as her side of the bed. She obeyed, telling herself it was easier than arguing. And maybe it was, but she did it because she liked it that he was taking care of her.

  Even as she was mortified that he’d been there to see that entire situation unfold.

  Her phone buzzed as Miles brought in the food. A glance showed three messages from Hector and one from Nora. She opened Nora’s, which was a few sentences saying she loved Harlow and that if she needed anything to let her friend know. She’d wait for Harlow to share what happened and urged her to let Miles spoil her some.

  “Is that going to make you feel worse?” he asked, tipping his chin toward her phone. The look in his eyes told her he wanted to throw it out a window if it upset her.

  “I’m not looking at the messages that might make me feel worse. I just read Nora’s.” Harlow put the phone on the nightstand, screen down.

  When he pulled the heating dome from the plate, it revealed a chicken sandwich she knew was only on the lunch menu. She’d tried to order one the night before and they’d told her no.

  “I saw that you liked it when you had it for lunch yesterday,” he told her, setting a glass of iced tea next to her.

  “They said it was lunch only,” she said before taking a big bite and moaning in pleasure.

  He shrugged. “Well, not for you.”

  She grinned at him before dragging a crispy French fry through the spicy catsup the hotel restaurant used and she’d discovered she really liked. “I have to figure out what all is in this so I can make it at home.”

  “I’ll see about getting the recipe for you,” he said, and she realized he would do just that. For no other reason than that she wanted it.

  Wow.

  “So.”

  He got into bed and attacked the steak he’d ordered for himself. “If you apologize for anything someone else did tonight, I’m going to be annoyed,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have taken you over there. I knew something like this could happen. She’s just…honestly, I don’t know what she is. I like to think I’m mature enough to understand I’ll never get anything I need from that woman. But here I am.”

  “You won’t, no. But that’s not maturity to be beyond feeling any type of way about it. She’s your mother. I’d be a mess if my mum ever treated me or Poppy that way. Or even a shadow of that. And if I hadn’t come with you, you’d be alone right now. So, I don’t want you to feel sorry I was there because I’m not. I don’t know how to begin to process a woman like her, to be totally honest with you. But it seems like this has been a lifetime of crap behavior from her.”

  Harlow took a deep breath and decided to share something to put the situation in perspective when it came to Gloria Martin. “When I was sixteen, the last year I had any regular visitation with her, I stayed at her house. She had a spare room with one of those pull-out couches so I slept there.”

  “Your brothers had rooms?”

  “Of course they did.”

  “Did your brothers have their own rooms at your dad’s house?”

  She snorted. “Yes. They still do. But to be fair, my dad’s house is far larger than the one my mother lived in. Anyway, so,” she began again.

  “What? I thought the making you sleep on a pull-out couch instead of a bed was the issue. It’s worse than you not having a room of your own at your mother’s house?”

  She put her head on his shoulder a moment. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve him. Hell, she’d never had the experience of having some terrible scene with her family and having a person at her side, her romantic interest, being a shoulder to lean on the way he’d been. She understood why it was worthy of so many songs.

  “In her house, on all the walls were framed photographs. My brothers at plays and theme parks, at birthdays and Halloween. All their school pictures. Santa’s lap. All that stuff. There was not a single picture of me anywhere. She had a frame that said something like “My family” and it was her pregnant with Hector and Luis and their baby pictures. The whole house was just full. It was great. For Luis and Hector, I mean. Because again, not a single picture of me. And I know my dad always sent them to her whenever he got any he thought were good. I had school pictures and Santa pictures and pictures from plays and musicals and dances I went to, but you wouldn’t know it to be in her house.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. I went home after a week because she was too busy to be taking care of another kid. That was exactly how she explained it to my dad. He tried to shield me from it but he believed a kid should be around their mom, so he pushed for me to go there to see her, especially after she moved to Atlanta. Which by the way, we didn’t know she had until she had her attorney send a change of address for the child support for my brothers. Anyway.”

  She ate the rest of the chicken sandwich and wished she had a milkshake instead of tea.

  Miles wanted to speak so badly. But he knew right then, he needed to listen way more than he wanted to talk. His outrage was his burden, not hers.

  At least she ate her food since they hadn’t eaten more than appetizers as dinner had been finishing up. They’d been unable to have a single bite after that scene.

  “Hang on a second. I want ice cream. They have peach ice cream here. Do you want some?” he asked. Though he knew she did.

  “That’s not a very good question, Miles. Who doesn’t want ice cream?”

  They looked over the menu and he placed the call.

  But he knew the story wasn’t over so once the call was made, they settled back in, and he tried to be patient enough to wait for her to resume speaking.

  “About six or seven months later, it came out during an argument with my dad, who was trying to make me go back to visit her again for spring break. I refused but he kept at it until I finally told him about the picture wall.”

  Miles hissed, imagining how that might have gone over.

  “At first he was shocked. He made me repeat it once more because I don’t think he believed he’d heard right. Then he hugged me so tight and said I never had to go again if I didn’t want to. And I never did. He didn’t demand to know why I hadn’t told him. Then he asked me to leave the room and called her and asked her directly about it. I’m not going to lie, I listened on an extension. She didn’t even deny it. She said since I didn’t even live with her why should it matter? He kept trying to get her to see how it would have made me feel, the lack of a room that was mine, no pictures anywhere when he knew she had them because he sent them to her. She said she hadn’t gotten around to it and that when I did something noteworthy and he took a picture of it, then she’d put it up. He doesn’t know I heard her side of the conversation. He’d feel even worse and it’s not his fault.”

  “Does he know she’s still this way to you?”

  “I think he’s bewildered by it. He loves Hector and Luis, but they’ve been poisoned over the years about him. You heard her tonight about how he’s lazy or useless because he didn’t go to school like my brothers did. She used to say that about him all the time. How he was uneducated and therefore not a good person. My dad was a high school dropout. He grew up in a not so lovely part of Los Angeles and ended up doing construction work. That’s when he and Gloria were first together, and she got pregnant, so he married her. Then he started the band with his cousins and friends, and they had success. Not at first of course, no one ever does right away. But he kept working construction while making music in every spare moment. Eventually they got a break and a record deal, and she had Luis after that. I don’t know a lot about their early years. He never talks about it, and she only does in negative terms. But I know he’s smart and I know he works his ass off to support not just his immediate family but also the extended family the crew depending on the band for their livelihoods made up.” Harlow shrugged. “And I know a college education is great, but not for everyone and just because you don’t go to college doesn’t make you stupid or lazy.”