”All right, one down-time trip with all the trimmings against…” She swallowed and risked it. “What do you want?”
Malcolm eyed her thoughtfully. Margo braced herself for the worst. But Malcolm Moore didn’t say “An hour in my bedroom” or anything even remotely close to that. “How about your life story?”
”Huh?”
”Well…” That nice smile of his made her feel warm and funny inside. “How else do people get to be friends, if they don’t know anything about one another?”
But…
Her life story? She turned away. “There’s not much to tell.” To her horror, her voice wobbled.
He touched her arm gently “Margo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought it might be nice to get to know you.”
She wrapped both arms around herself and wondered about that. Was she a person worth getting to know? Her father had certainly never thought so. Billy Pandropolous had-for reasons of his own, involving sex and cold, hard cash and a booming market for pretty young things fresh from Minnesota. But Malcolm wasn’t like that. Was he? Billy had seemed nice at first, too. Or maybe Malcolm was just looking for a chink in the armor, to get even? It was silly of her, perhaps, but she didn’t think so.
But tell Malcolm about her father’s drunken rages? Or finding her mother and a stranger she’d never seen beaten to death on the kitchen and living room floors? Or running for New York the second she turned sixteen to try and earn the cash to find her grandfather, only to land in Billy Pandropolous’ loving hands?
She blinked back tears. Well, she could always lie.