“Dad?”
“Good morning, Connie,” he greeted, in the same tone I imagined one might greet an unfamiliar employee. “Emily said you had a guest over. I was almost concerned I might barge in on some unsuspecting boy.”
There was nothing venomous at all in his words, but my heart skipped nonetheless. He might well have been attempting banter, good fun, but that was certainly the last thing I wanted. I sat up next to Connie. I was facing away from him so that he couldn’t see my expression, but the fact that I was clutching at the bedsheets must have given her an indication as to how I was feeling. “Mr. O’Reilly. Hi.”
It had always amazed me how oblivious they were, the O’Reilly’s. There I was, in his daughter’s bed, naked from the waist down, and yet I was a complete stranger to him. A guest in
