“Here we are,” I told him as the cab pulled up in front of my building. His eyes flickered up the height of the structure, but he didn’t comment until we were inside, not even when he encountered the doorman and the concierge and the bar and restaurant right there in the lobby.
Only once we had reached my unit and I opened the door for him did he react. “Annabelle, this is amazing.”
I leaned against the wall, watching him walk around the living room. I had been looking forward to this moment, to showing him the product of all of my hard work. I had imagined his pride and my satisfaction at that pride. So why did I still feel like I wanted to cry?
He turned to face me, and I had to avert my gaze. The guilt and the embarrassment and the anger were building up inside me, threatening to send me into a screaming fit. I rubbed my fingertips roughly over my forehead, knowing a headache was imminent.
“Are we going to talk about what happened back there?” he finally asked.
“I would rather not.” He was quiet for a long moment before turning and walking to the kitchen.
“Dad?”
I followed him as he walked straight for the fridge. He smiled as he pulled out two cold cans of Natty from the door. “I thought you might have some of this.”
I couldn’t help but smile, as crappy as I was feeling. Natty was the beer of choice for my dad and his friends—about the cheapest beer you could find, actually. I would never admit it to my friends, knowing they would think me completely white trash, but I had always loved it and kept a six pack in the fridge at all times. I only ever drank it alone, though. After a long day, when the pressure of work had built up, making my muscles tense and my head ache. When I was feeling particularly lonely and wanted a connection to something, anything.
Suddenly, I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. I covered my face and stood there, sobbing.
“Oh, sweetie.” My dad’s voice sounded almost resigned, as if he had been expecting this. I felt his arms come around me, and for a moment, I stood rigid in his embrace, too afraid to let him comfort me—too afraid it would make me lose it even more. But then, in that same resigned voice, “I knew you were unhappy, but I had no idea it was this bad.”
“You… What do you mean you knew?” I gasped, trying to control the wave of emotion that was fighting to get out of me.
He pulled back just enough to take my hands away from my face, really looking at me. And I could see in his eyes that he saw me, that he could see every little thing I had tried to hide from everyone else.
And what he saw made him so damn sad.
“You’re the most important person in my life. Of course I knew.”
I let myself hug him then, gripping the back of his shirt so tightly I knew it would leave wrinkles, while I sobbed onto his shoulder. He rubbed my back, exactly the way he had when I was a little girl, and let me cry, not talking or soothing, not trying to make me feel better. Just standing there with me in the kitchen, the fridge door open and forgotten behind him.
I cried until my head ached, until I was sure there were no tears left, before I pulled back, wiping at my face, feeling exposed and embarrassed. But my dad acted like nothing strange had just happened. “How ’bout that beer, huh? We can sit down, and you can tell me what’s been going on with you.”
So we grabbed our beers and headed to the couch in my living room, and I told him how completely and utterly miserable I was in Vegas.
“How long have you been feeling this way?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It was exciting at first. Making deals and developing these properties. I was so proud of us. And once the money started coming in, it was…fun, I guess. Being able to buy whatever I wanted.” I motioned around the room, at the fancy gadgets and the designer furnishings. “When I started to feel bored, I told myself it was because I wasn’t challenged enough. So I worked harder.” I closed my eyes. “This is what I had worked for all those years, you know. What you had worked for, what you wanted for me. To be successful and—”
“Annabelle.” His voice was sharp. “I never wanted this for you.”
My eyes snapped open and I stared at him. “What?”
“I never wanted you doing a job you disliked, in a city that you disliked, with friends who made you feel bad.” For the first time, he looked angry, but I had no idea if it was at me or at my friends. “I wanted you to be happy. I pushed you in school because I wanted better for you, sweetie. Better than always wondering if you’ll be able to make ends meet. But better doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy. You know that, right?”
I let out a deep breath, trying to let the words sink in. I had spent so long thinking I had to put up with the things in my life that I didn’t like because it was part of the plan. Had I been wrong?
“Anyhow,” he continued, waving his hand. “You were telling me about Vegas.”
I nodded, taking a long sip of my beer. “I figured out pretty quickly that I would rather be doing something else, but there never seemed to be a time to do anything about it. First, we were getting our business off the ground, and then we were establishing ourselves. And then… Things got bad with the economy, Dad. We had so much more going out than was coming in, and I’ve been so scared. I couldn’t leave Emma like that. Not after…” I thought of the way she had helped me, had always made sure I had what I needed, the way her parents had paid for my school to keep my loans down when the scholarships didn’t cover it all. “Not after everything.”
He was quiet. “That girl back there—Mary?”
“Liz,” I corrected, wincing with guilt. Both for what she had said and for the fact that she was supposedly one of my closest friends, and he didn’t even know her.
“Liz. Does that…happen a lot?”
“I’m so sorry she was rude to you,” I burst out, my face flaming with color. “I was so embarrassed and mad, Daddy, I’m so sorry and—”
He held up a hand, interrupting me. “Annabelle, no offense, sweetie, and excuse my language, but I don’t give a shit. You think I care what a spoiled little brat has to say about me?” I couldn’t help but grin at his description. “I know who I am and how hard I work, and I honestly could not be offended by a person like that no matter what they said.”
The shame intensified in my stomach. I had never been able to say the same. How had a man with such a strong character ended up with a self-conscious, embarrassed, no-backbone wimp like me?
“My concern here,” he went on, frowning at me over his beer can, “is how often that kind of thing happens to you. These friends of yours—do they act like that a lot?”
I thought of the countless digs Liz had lobbed at me over the years. Of the way Mary, and a dozen school friends, tended to virtually ignore me whenever Emma was absent. “Yeah,” I whispered. “It kind of happens a lot.”
“When you were at school?”
I nodded, grimacing at the clear anger in his voice. He very carefully set his beer can down on a coaster and stood. “Why didn’t you tell me? You always said you’d made friends at school and you were happy. Kids were teasing you? Making you feel bad about money?”
“It wasn’t really like that, Daddy,” I said quickly. “I did make friends, and they didn’t openly tease me or anything—”
“They just made snide little comments instead?” he snapped.
“I…I guess so.”
“Damn it, Annabelle!” he suddenly shouted, sounding angrier than I had heard him in a long time. “Why didn’t you say anything? I never would have let you spend all that time with Emma and her family if I knew what kind of people they were—”
“No, Dad! Emma wasn’t like that, I swear. She’s been a real friend to me, always. The others… I think they were actually jealous, to tell the truth. That she and I became so close.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced, but he at least sat down, reaching for his beer and draining the rest of the can.
“Well,” he said when he was done. “I think you need to get
the hell out of here, to tell you the truth.”
I smiled weakly. “I…can’t do that. Not right now, anyhow.”
His sharp eyes snapped up to my face. “You’re planning something.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t ever shared my plans with anyone. Somehow that fact made them feel more personal, almost sacred. They were just for me, without anyone else’s opinions or influences. It was the way I had felt that summer with Rick, carrying that secret with me.
And look at how that turned out, I thought. Maybe that was the real reason I didn’t want to tell anyone—because the last time I hadn’t been strong enough to pull it off once there was the slightest interference from the outside. When I thought about it that way, I realized the truth—I was completely terrified I would let myself down again.
“Stay here,” I said, jumping up. “Just for a second.”
I ran into my home office and opened the bottom drawer of my desk. There was my black portfolio, the file I had been building for more than a year now. I plucked it from the drawer and ran back out to my dad.
“This,” I said, placing it in his hands. “This is my plan.”
He opened it, flipping carefully through the pages. Proposals and number breakdowns, bank statements, maps. Pictures from magazines and printed from the Internet. And then, at the back, potential properties. Dozens of them.
“What is this?”
“This is my exit strategy.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Yeah?”
“I’ve been socking away every last bit of money I could,” I said, feeling the excitement growing in my chest. “For a few years now. Investing and saving. And I’m almost there—I’m so close, Dad.”
“Close to what?”
“Owning my own hotel.” I scanned his face for reaction. “I want to buy something small, a boutique kind of place. Something on the water. Maybe… Maybe in Greece. I’m not set on that, of course, but I always picture it in Greece. I want to fix it up and make it exactly how I want and I want to run it myself, not sell it to some management company. That’s what I want to do.”
In the quiet that followed, I could feel my thudding heart in my chest. I wanted him to approve, wanted him to think it was a good idea. Wanted him to feel as excited about it as I was.
He grinned. “You know what? I can totally picture that.”
I had wanted to take him out to a fancy restaurant, show him some of the glitz and glamour of Vegas. Instead, we ordered a cheap pizza, sent the concierge out for more cheap beer, and spent the evening talking about the hotel.
My dad had some great ideas. Being so mechanically minded, he was a great resource on what kind of work would need to go into some of the properties that I had found. He also, to my utter surprise, had a great eye for design. We actually had the same taste in a lot of things, from an affinity for brightly colored artisan tiles to a shared belief that you couldn’t beat a simple, airy white bedroom when it came to creating a relaxing space. Only once had his eyes widened—when I shared with him the amount I had been able to save.
“All that money?” he asked, sounding awed. I knew it was more than he had ever possessed.
I nodded. “Like I said, I’ve been saving everything.” I laughed. “I’ve even been buying my clothes used from eBay. It’s fun to imagine what the girls would say if they knew that.”
He shook his head, eyes wide. “I’m really proud of you, Annabelle. This is incredible.”
I went to bed that night feeling better than I had in ages—longer than I could remember. And in the morning, I slept right up until my alarm clock went off. I sent a quick text to Emma, telling her I was skipping kick-boxing, and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast—a real breakfast, not my usual order of coffee.
“So I’ll meet you for lunch?” I told my dad on the way into the office.
“Sounds good to me.”
“Make sure you keep a close eye on your watch,” I advised. “There are no clocks in the casinos, and it’s easy to lose track of time.”
He grinned as I swung my legs out of the cab. “I plan to kick some blackjack ass. Maybe add to your hotel fund a little.”
I kissed his cheek, laughing, and headed into the building. I hadn’t taken more than a step into the lobby when I collided head on with a tall figure. “Shit,” Rick muttered. “Sorry, Annabelle. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“Me, neither,” I laughed, moving out of his way. He shot me a strange glance. “What? Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” He followed me toward the elevator, apparently on his way up, as well. “You just… You look different this morning.”
I looked down at my outfit, a black pencil skirt and white linen blouse—nothing too out of the ordinary.
He was looking at me, too, that strange expression still on his face, while we waited for the elevator. “Not your clothes. Just… You seem happier, I guess.”
“It’s nice having my dad around.” The elevator arrived, and he gestured me on first. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said I want to catch up with him.” Rick pressed the button for ten. “I never forgot how kind he was to me, you know. Not many people would have taken a chance on me.”
For once, the mention of our shared past didn’t send me into a shame spiral of guilt and anger. Instead I nodded. “He’s a good guy.”
Rick was quiet, watching the numbers on the display go up with each passing floor. “I’m glad you told Liz off yesterday,” he said suddenly, his voice fierce. “She was way out of line.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not for me to talk about your employees, I know that, but—”
“She’s a bitch,” I said simply, the words feeling good rolling off my tongue. Why had I waited so long to admit that? “She probably always has been.”
The elevator arrived on ten, and he followed me out, looking a little impressed by my assessment. “I think we’re meeting at nine,” he said once we reached the point in the hall where our paths would separate. “Jim texted me this morning to let me know.”
I realized that this was the first time I had seen him come in without Jim and frowned. “Don’t you guys usually come to work together?”
It hit me like a ton of bricks—they hadn’t come from the same place. Which meant that Rick hadn’t slept at Charlie and Mary’s last night. Which meant he had slept somewhere else. With someone else?
“Sorry,” I said quickly, looking away. “It’s none of my business.” I felt like throwing up, felt like bursting into tears all over again. All of the peace I had found the night before seemed to evaporate.
“No, biggie,” Rick said, his voice easy. “Actually, I’ve checked into a hotel.”
I couldn’t help but turn and stare at him. “You did? Why?”
He grinned a little. “It only seemed fair. Jim was spending a lot of time with Lucy, and I figured they wanted some privacy. As much as they could get at Mary and Charlie’s, at least.”
My head was spinning. “Wait—Jim and Lucy?”
He raised his eyebrows in an expression I couldn’t read. “Didn’t you know? They’re dating. Pretty serious, from the looks of it.”
I gaped, opening and closing my mouth several times before I found words. Jim and Lucy? “Since when?”
“Oh, probably since she came back from L.A. She started coming up to our floor a lot, I think she was a little tired of, um, her in-laws. And Jim was around a lot while I was here working. I guess they kept each other company.”
The strangest thing about this entire revelation was that he didn’t seem at all upset. His face was smooth and unconcerned, maybe even a little amused. There was no way he was that good of an actor, was he?
“I… I had no idea,” I said lamely. “I…hope they’re good together?”
He chuckled. “You know, at first, I couldn’t see it. Because Lucy is so spirited, you know? So active and excitable. And Jim has that whole boring-guy-in-a-sweater-vest vibe going for h
im. But I think they’re balancing each other out. It’s nice, actually.”
“Wow.” I shook my head, still not quite believing it. “That’s great.”
He met my gaze, his eyes unreadable. “I couldn’t agree more.” He smiled, briefly. “See you at the meeting.”
I walked back to my office, trying to comprehend what he had just told me. Rick was not with Lucy. Whatever Mary had said about a possible engagement had apparently been crap, or wishful thinking at best. Lucy and Jim! It was hard to picture her with someone like him. Lucy, with all of her silliness and excitement, her love of glamour and fashion. And Jim, who, as Rick just said, definitely had a bit of a boring vibe, as much as I liked him. Lucy was all about the hottest club, who she might see, how sophisticated and impressive the guest list was. And Jim seemed like he’d be more comfortable spending the night in. Those two, as a couple? I couldn’t imagine it.
And what did that mean for Rick? His eyes flashed through my mind, dark and unreadable, as they had been a moment ago. I couldn’t agree more.
I found it hard to concentrate for the next half hour and was actually relieved when it was time to head to the meeting, even though I knew Liz would be there. Sure enough, her eyes narrowed when I walked in, and I saw her lean over to whisper something to Mary. I openly rolled my eyes before pointedly taking my seat at the head of the table, right next to Emma.
“We’re in good shape,” Emma said once everyone was present. “We have a strong design idea, and our proposal is in great shape.” She smiled at me. “Numbers look good?”
“They look great,” I confirmed, feeling a jolt of hope in my chest. “We can save them tons of money.”
She nodded. “Excellent. Now,” she continued, looking around the table. “This isn’t the time to slack off or get over confident. The hardest part about this is not knowing what the competition is doing, so we need to be diligent about our work.”
There were nods around the table, though Mary didn’t look particularly happy about the reminder that we still had hard work to do. “On that note,” Emma went on, smiling. “I’ve managed to get us all invites to a gallery opening on Saturday. I have it on good authority that Mitchell Clay will be there, so it’s the perfect time for networking. And, the heads of Sullivan and Harte sit on the board of the art council, so we might even overhear something about the competition. Let’s all meet here and head over together, okay?”
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