by Bay, Louise
“Come on, Dad. You know she’s not eating wheat,” Amanda said.
Why did the women in my life have the ability to make me feel so hopeless? In my day job I was respected, some would even say admired. With my family, I was just some guy who forgot that my sister wasn’t eating wheat.
Jesus.
“So don’t eat it,” I snapped. “I have some popsicles in the freezer.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes in the exact same way Amanda always did. “I’m not five. I can’t have popsicles for dinner.”
“Good. So you’ll eat spaghetti,” I replied.
Scarlett hopped off her stool. “We’ll go out,” she announced.
“You’ve just watched me make spaghetti sauce.”
She shrugged. “It’ll freeze. Come on, Amanda. Get your shoes on. We can go to that place on the corner. I like the sea bass there.”
Unbelievable.
In the office if I shouted “jump,” a cacophony of voices would ask how high. At home I got an eye roll and a shrug, if anyone heard me at all.
But, as was becoming my mantra, some battles weren’t worth fighting. I turned off the stove and grabbed my wallet and my keys and followed them out to the elevators.
Amanda linked her arm into mine and instantly I felt better. She was fourteen going on twenty-seven most of the time, but every now and then she was happy just to be my daughter.
We stepped into the elevator. “Tomorrow, can we go back to the store we tried last time?” Amanda asked.
“The one where I hated everything you tried on?” I wasn’t going to change my mind. Surely we weren’t going to have the exact same fight in front of Scarlett this time?
“I met a lady in the laundry room the other day. She gave me an idea about a dress I think you’d like, and I think I saw some that might be similar at that store,” Amanda said.
“The laundry room?” I asked. Why had Amanda been in the laundry room? I had a housekeeper to do the laundry.
“Yeah. The other day.”
“Why were you doing laundry?” I asked, glancing at Scarlett, who was staring at herself in the mirrored wall of the elevator and applying lip gloss.
“Sometimes girls just need to do laundry,” Amanda answered as if it were obvious.
I glanced at Scarlett, then back at Amanda, expecting one of them to provide a more detailed explanation.
The elevator stopped prematurely. The doors opened and Harper appeared. I watched in slow motion as she began to grin at my daughter. Her mouth froze when her eyes lifted to mine and then behind me to Scarlett.
I should have seen this coming.
In the same way there was a time lag between the impact of a bullet and the pain being recognized by the brain, I savored the few tenths of a second before I knew things would get messy. Harper looked beautiful. Her shiny chestnut hair was swept up into a ponytail that highlighted her long neck. Seeing her dressed in her workout clothes, I found it difficult to avoid touching her.
“Harper!” Amanda said.
I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. How did Amanda know—
“Dad, this is who I was telling you about.” She stared up at me, then clearly registering utter confusion on my face, she said, “In the laundry room.” She waved at Harper.
I glanced at Harper, who had yet to step inside the car. “There’s plenty of room,” Scarlett said as she pulled Amanda back, leaving more space next to me. “Hey, we met the other day,” Scarlett said.
What the fuck was going on? My separated worlds were literally and figuratively crashing into each other.
“Harper, this is my dad,” Amanda said. “Dad, this is Harper.”
I cleared my throat, hoping it would help my words come out in a normal pitch when I replied. “Yes, I know Harper. She works for me.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “She does? Well that makes sense. She’s smart. I told you she had some good ideas about dresses.”
The doors shut.
“You’re right. She is smart,” I replied, glancing at Harper, trying to catch her reaction. It wasn’t as if we had a personal relationship, but given what had happened between us, the fact I’d not told her about Amanda seemed wrong all of a sudden. Harper wore the same expression she had in the war room when I’d given people tasks for the JD Stanley research—blank and cold.
“This is perfect,” Amanda said. “Like Scarlett says, it’s fate.”
“You shouldn’t listen to everything your aunt says. Use the eighty-twenty rule. I’ve told you about this before.”
Scarlett punched me in the arm and I caught a reaction in Harper’s face that I couldn’t quite place. “Harper, this is my sister, Scarlett.”
Harper’s beautiful brown eyes softened slightly as she smiled. “Nice to see you,” she said.
“You poor thing, having to work with my brother. I expect he’s a total tyrant, isn’t he?”
Harper shrugged and Scarlett said, “She’s got you pegged, brother.”
“He’s not a tyrant. He lets me have anything I want,” Amanda said.
“I may not be a tyrant, Amanda, but neither am I an idiot who can be easily manipulated by flattery. I do not, and will not, let you go to your eighth grade dance dressed like a twenty-five-year-old.”
Amanda ignored me. “That’s why this is perfect.” She smiled and turned to Harper. “Are you busy tomorrow?”
Harper squinted, trying as hard as I was to keep up with my daughter’s train of thought.
“You don’t make her work on a Saturday, right, Dad?” She didn’t wait for my response before releasing my elbow and putting her hands together in a prayer position. “Pretty please, will you come shopping with us tomorrow? We can find one of those dresses we saw online. And I haven’t even begun to find shoes. Please? If I’m on my own with dad, he’ll have me go in sneakers—”
What was she asking? I needed to spend less time with Harper, keep my worlds more separate.
“Amanda, you can’t just impose on people like that,” I interrupted. “Harper doesn’t want to spend her free time schlepping around New York trying to find you a dress. And Scarlett’s coming with us.” Spending the day trying not to touch Harper was the last thing I had on my agenda for the weekend.
“I told you I can’t come tomorrow, didn’t I?” Scarlett asked. “I have to get the first train back because I’m taking Pablo to the vet.”
“Seriously?”
Scarlett just shrugged. Why hadn’t she told me she wasn’t coming? In fact, why was she in Manhattan at all?
“Sorry,” Scarlett said. “I thought I told you. The vet called me this morning. He hasn’t had one of the injections he was meant to have.”
Amanda slouched against the wall of the elevator just as the doors opened into the lobby. “There’s no point in going tomorrow if Scarlett’s not there and I can’t ask Harper. We’ll just end up fighting,” she said.
“It will be fine,” Scarlett said.
I ruffled Amanda’s hair. “Come on. We’ll find something, I promise.” I stepped off the elevator after Scarlett, holding out my elbow for Amanda, glancing at Harper who was staring at my daughter, her eyebrows pulled together.
“Please, Harper? Come with us? I promise I’ll take no more than an hour. Just two stores, maximum.”
Harper inhaled and the elevator doors started to close with Amanda still slumped against the mirror.
“Come on, Amanda,” I said as I held the doors open. “I’m sure Harper’s busy.” I turned to Harper. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine . . . I . . . want you to have a great dress and I have a couple of hours tomorrow morning.”
“You do?” Amanda clasped her hands together. “You’ll come?”
My palms started to get sweaty. It was the last response I’d expected. Working with her this week had been difficult enough. I’d been haunted by flashes of her bent over the conference room table, me pushing her skirt up to reveal her high, tight ass.
&nb
sp; “Amanda,” I barked. “You can’t expect people to just drop everything and do whatever you want.”
“Why not?” she replied. “You do.”
I caught Harper trying to stifle a giggle. “I don’t mind. Honestly. We’ll have fun.” She grinned at Amanda. “But now I have to go to the gym.”
Amanda shot out of the elevator. “And you won’t change your mind?”
“If she does, then—”
Harper cut me off. “I won’t change my mind. I promise. Have a good night.”
Harper glanced up at me as the elevator doors closed, and I had to fight the urge to peel them open, push her against the wall, and press my lips against hers.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The thought of spending time with Harper on a Saturday with Amanda had given me a headache. What would I say to her? I didn’t want my employees to know any other side of me other than the one in the office. And although Harper and I had fucked, it wasn’t as if we’d had dinner and I’d confessed all my secrets. Despite being gorgeous, sexy, ballsy with a hint of sweetness to add to her sour, she was my employee. And Vegas was behind us—we were in Manhattan full time now.
Chapter Nine
Harper
I slumped on my couch, my phone clamped to my ear. Dressed and ready to go eighth grade dress shopping with Amanda and my boss, I was just waiting for the knock on my door. “I’m cured. I’ve been dreaming about his penis and just like that, it’s gone. Any attraction I had to him has just disappeared because I never knew him.”
“Just like that?” Grace asked, her voice suspicious.
“I’m serious. I can’t find someone attractive who had a daughter who wasn’t important enough to tell me about, who wasn’t man enough to marry the woman he knocked up. I’ve lived my entire life with the consequences of that kind of selfish behavior.” Running into Max in the elevator last night had been a shock. When I’d seen the woman with him, I’d assumed I’d run into him and his wife and child and I’d almost exorcist vomited all over the place. Relief she was his sister had only lasted for as long as it took to register he had a kid.
He was a father and hadn’t told me. What else was he hiding?
It wasn’t like we were dating; he didn’t owe me anything, but the fact he was so secretive about it? It seemed dishonest. He never mentioned his daughter in interviews or around the office, there weren’t even any photographs on his desk. It was as if he was hiding her. Ashamed. It made me sick to my stomach. Had that been how my father had felt about me? Embarrassed or ashamed I existed? Poor Amanda.
“But Max isn’t your dad. I mean, when did Charles Jayne ever take you dress shopping?”
I dropped my head back on the cushion and stared up at my ceiling. “So he has his daughter on the weekend occasionally—doesn’t mean he wants his kid around. Looked like his sister was the one who was looking after her anyway.” I sighed. “But this is a good thing. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed being attracted to Max—I hated the fact that I’d slept with my boss. Now I’m cured.”
Being a controlling asshole was one thing. Turning your back on your family was quite another. Max being a tyrant in the office seemed inextricably linked to his success on Wall Street, so maybe I’d been able to forgive him that on a professional level. Maybe I even enjoyed it. A little. But his hiding the existence of his daughter changed my view of him completely.
I checked my watch. Amanda said she’d swing by at ten. She was a sweet kid, and I couldn’t begin to fathom what it would be like to try to pick out a dress with a man who resented my existence. She deserved more, so despite wanting to spend the day in bed recovering from my grueling work week, I’d agreed to go shopping.
“I still don’t get why you just stopped wanting to jump his bones because you found out he was a father. Most women would find that a turn on,” Grace said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not most women. And I doubt he’s winning father of the year anytime soon.”
Max wasn’t about to win decent human being of the year anytime soon either. He’d seemed to leave Vegas without looking back. He wasn’t affected by me at all in the office. Even that first morning after I’d turned up drunk at his door. He’d set up the war room and we’d had our first meeting about JD Stanley. There’d been no compassion in his voice, just cold calculation. He’d seen an opportunity to make money from my connections and nothing more. Well, I’d make it work in my favor, too. I’d ace the Goldman presentation so he couldn’t say no to me doing the JD Stanley pitch. If I could go in front of my father as an adult, a business woman—show him what I’d become without any help from him—maybe he’d just wither in my mind and I’d never think of him again. I’d be free.
“So no more sleeping with the boss?” Grace asked.
“Definitely no more sleeping with the boss. I’m not having my father find out and assume that the only reason I got the job was because I looked good on my back.” That was the only thing he thought women were good for.
“I thought you said you didn’t find Max attractive anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“So if you still found him attractive, you’d still be sleeping with him?”
“Why are you giving me such a hard time, Anderson Cooper? I have more than one reason not to sleep with him.”
“Does that mean you’re going to call George?”
My brain had to rifle through its filing cabinet to place the name. Oh, the art gallery guy. “Maybe.”
“He said you took his number.” I had. I’d liked him.
So why hadn’t I called him?
I jumped at the loud bang at my door.
“Harper,” Amanda called from the corridor.
Shit, this was it. I took a deep breath. “Gotta go,” I said into the phone and hung up. I glanced in the mirror by the door, removed a clump of mascara from the corner of my eye, and smoothed down my hair. I could handle a couple of hours with a guy who was my boss and his daughter. Especially now Vegas was over and any attraction I’d had to him had disappeared. This would be a piece of cake.
* * *
Being in a cab with my boss and his daughter after we’d agreed to stop having sex was beyond weird. I’d let my sympathy for Amanda override my logic when I’d agreed to go shopping today. I’d underestimated how awkward spending time with Max would be. I thought it would be a simple case of saving a fourteen-year-old from her uncompromising, uncaring father. The problem was I’d forgotten the father in question was my boss and had seen me naked.
“Do you agree?” Amanda asked, looking at her dad.
We’d taken a cab uptown and Amanda had been chattering away about the kind of dress she wanted to buy. Max seemed to have little interest in her as he stared out of the window.
“I think it’s going to rain,” he said.
“Dad.” She punched him on the leg and he caught her hand and wrapped it in his. “Do you agree about the dress?”
“I’m not committing to anything until I see it.”
“Well, if we don’t find something today, I’m going naked.”
Max chuckled. “If you were a couple of years older, I might worry. Right now, I think your teenage angst is my insurance policy against that happening.”
“I don’t understand what you just said,” she said.
“And so that’s a double win for me, peanut.” As he scooped his arm around her shoulder to pull her close, he caught my jacket sleeve. “Sorry,” he said and I smiled, staring at my hands in my lap. Unclear whether I was imagining things, I wanted to stare at the two of them. They seemed comfortable with each other, happy to be in each other’s company. A pang of jealousy ran through me.
“Here we are,” Amanda announced as the cab pulled up.
The humidity hit me as I got out of the car.
“It’s definitely going to rain,” Max mumbled, staring up at the sky.
He held the door open, gesturing for me to go before him as Amanda led the way into a boutique. I hoped this would be a one-stop
shop and I’d be back home by lunchtime.
As we started looking around, Max found a chair outside the dressing rooms and concentrated on his phone rather than his daughter. Typical. Why had he come at all?
“What about this?” Amanda asked, holding a long purple gown against herself as she turned toward me.
I grinned. “We should definitely try it.”
We picked out six dresses in total, and Amanda managed to sneak a couple of strapless ones in that I was sure wouldn’t go down well with her father.
“We can do shoes and a bag once we get the dress,” I said as Amanda stopped on the way to the dressing room, transfixed by a table of sparkly evening bags.
I hung up the dresses I was carrying, then shut the curtain on Amanda.
“Harper, will you stay there while I change so you can see it before my dad? I want to surprise him with the perfect choice.”
“Of course,” I replied and leaned on the wall opposite Amanda’s room. “Which one are you going to try on first?”
“The purple one. Uh-oh,” she said. “My dad isn’t going to like this one.”
The moment she opened the curtain, I knew she was right. Max would never go for the dress. And I couldn’t blame him. A twenty-five-year-old would have to make an effort not to look slutty in it. The neckline dipped very low in a big swath of fabric, but it was so low her bra was showing.
“I don’t think it suits you,” I said, not wanting to hurt her feelings or for her to feel as if her dad’s opinion was the only one that counted. “People say that you should wear the dress, the dress shouldn’t wear you. Now I’m not sure what that means, but I think we’re in dangerous territory. What about the shorter one?”
Next she appeared in a beautiful yellow dress with spaghetti straps, diamanté beading across the bodice, and a netted skirt that fell just above the knee.
“What do you think?” I asked, grinning.
“I think my dad would like it,” she replied, but the look on her face said even though she thought her dad would approve, she wasn’t in love with it. “But I think I want to look more . . . grown-up.”