Page 71 of Mile High Baby

He sat for a moment, drinking in silence. Finally, he said, "You like living like this, don’t you?”

“Like what? Like my friend is going to get himself and his family killed? No, Henry, I don’t.”

“Touché. I meant the planning, strategizing, spying, danger.”

I shrugged. “It keeps life interesting.”

“And dangerous.”

“Sometimes.”

Henry studied me. “I used to think that if you got married, a woman could settle you down a little bit. Even now, you’re so raw and rough around the edges. I guess it would take a special woman to do that."

I immediately thought of Victoria and how she had bewitched me like no woman ever had. "Yeah, well, that woman doesn't exist. If she did, I’d have certainly met her already."

Henry laughed and shook his head. “You won’t find love with one-night stands.”

"I don’t see you happily married, Henry. You're saying you've been a monk all these years?"

The smile on his face faltered a little bit. It had me wondering if perhaps there had been somebody. But if that was the case, where was she? Had he loved and lost? Yeah, well join the club, man.

"I have Victoria, and she's the greatest thing that ever happened in my life."

If he'd stabbed me in the gut, the guilt wouldn't feel as fierce as it did at this moment when I thought of the things I did with Victoria, his daughter, the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

I downed my drink. "We chose different paths."

Henry cocked his head to the side. "Don't you ever wonder what it would be like to be married and have a family?"

“Nope. Never.” At least until I met Victoria. And even then, any of the thoughts that tried to break in about a future with her were immediately blasted away because there was no future. Not with Henry's daughter.

"Why not? Don't you ever get lonely?"

"No, Henry. Settling down isn’t conducive to the life I want to lead. It was the reason I walked away from my father, and that reason hasn't changed. Besides, if I'm lonely, I can always find a friend." I waggled my brows like a douche man whore to make my point.

Henry looked at me over his glass as he took a sip. When he brought the glass back down, he asked, "Doesn't it get old? Mindless sex with a woman whose name you don't know and will never see again?"

I shook my head. "Nope." Well, until it met Victoria. “You know, Henry, maybe if you got laid, you wouldn’t be making enemies in high places. Maybe that's your problem. You need to get laid."

"You always were the vulgar one."

I laughed even though I wasn’t liking how I was coming out in this conversation. "You must be forgetting that I knew Henry Banion back in college. There were no shortages of notches on your bedpost."

"Yes, but then I grew up."

I pointed at him. "Because you had to. You got a woman knocked up, and you ended up having to do the right thing."

He scowled at me. "I didn't change my ways to be a father because it was the right thing to do. I did it because I love Victoria. I'm not joking, Alex, when I say she's the center of my world. You’ve met her. You’ve seen the woman she's become. I'm so fucking proud of her."

I felt like I'd been given a slap on the hand, and in retrospect, I probably deserved it. “Well, I don’t have that.”

“That you know of. Who’s to say that there aren't a bunch of little Alexes running around in this world, considering the number of women you fucked over the years?"

The idea of it sent a chill down my spine. "Now you're just being mean."

He shrugged. "It could have happened. It could still happen even for a geriatric like you. I've heard of men as old as seventy and even eighty getting women pregnant." Henry looked upward as if he was imagining something. "What I wouldn’t do to be there on the day a woman shows up at your door with a round belly or a child and tells you you’re the father.”

"I thought you liked me. Why would you wish something like that on me?" But even as I said the words, I had a flash Victoria round and glowing with my child growing inside her. I shook my head to get rid of the vision.