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She was in the kitchen pouring the first glass of the Bordeaux she favored—and, for the first time in her life, wondering how much each glass actually cost—when her dad walked in. His smile brightened when he spotted her, a rare sight that normally would have thrilled her, and she hated herself a little for the anger that bubbled in her gut.
Forcing that anger back down, she forced a smile of her own. “Hi, Daddy.”
Ew. After learning that Frankie called men Daddy while they fucked her, the word just felt wrong.
“Hi, pumpkin. Bit early for a drink, isn’t it?”
“What’s the saying? It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?” Lifting the glass, she toasted him with it before draining half the liquid in a single swallow. The alcohol burned in her stomach, or maybe that was just her fury at being lectured about drinking by a raging fucking alcoholic.
“I suppose that’s true,” he returned with a chuckle.
The silence that fell between them felt more strained than usual. Could he feel it? Could he tell something was wrong?
If he could, he did a damn good job of hiding it.
Tears formed a lump in her throat. There’d been a time her parents would have been tuned into every nuance of her moods and behavior. Her mom, especially, but even her dad had always been able to tell when something was bothering her.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d taken that for granted, having someone who knew her moods inside and out like that, until it was gone. And, standing there in her spacious kitchen with her too-early glass of wine, and her father smiling serenely at her like her entire world wasn’t crumbling down around her, she couldn’t help but feel as though she’d lost both her parents when her mother had died.
Maybe if she could bail him out of this hole he’d gotten himself into, he would get better. Even as the thought popped into her mind, she recognized the desperation in it. But her heart stubbornly clung to that hope.
Because if she went through with the auction, and he gambled it all away again, she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him.
“How are things with the businesses?” The question popped out of her, seemingly of its own volition.
If she hadn’t been aware of their troubles, she probably would have missed the way his smile tightened just a bit at the edges, the way his eyes dimmed slightly at the question. “Everything’s good. Why do you ask?”
“I dunno.” Shrugging as nonchalantly as she could manage while her emotions boiled and raged inside her, she lifted her wine again. “I’ve got that fancy degree hanging in my room, not really doing anything. Maybe I should, you know, start to get more involved.”
“We can certainly talk about it.”
Dad-speak for “I don’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you ‘no’ outright, so I’ll just dance around making an actual decision until you get bored and move onto something else”.
“Just a thought. But if you’d rather keep funding my pampered-princess lifestyle, I’m certainly not going to complain about it.”
His smile turned teasing. “Is that your way of telling me you’re planning another girls’ trip soon?”
“Actually, Frankie wants to do something big for Memorial Day, since she’s going to be so busy the next… well, the rest of her life, I guess, with the whole ‘becoming a hotshot surgeon’ thing. We might go down to the Maldives.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. Frankie did want to do something spectacular for Memorial weekend, but she was actually planning a trip up to her dad’s cabin. But Lottie wanted to watch her dad’s face as she presented him with the much more extravagant, and wildly more expensive option.
But he barely even flinched. “I’m sure you girls will have a lovely time.”
For a moment, she could only stare at him. Had she completely misinterpreted how dire their situation was?
Or, more likely, was he just lying to her fucking face? Again.
“Yeah. Sure.” Grabbing her nearly empty glass and the rest of the bottle, she rounded the wide island and prayed he wouldn’t notice the tears swimming her eyes as she paused to press a kiss to his cheek. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too, pumpkin.”
With her heart breaking in her chest, she made her way up to her room where she planned to spend the next twenty-four hours as drunk as possible so she didn’t have to think about what a fucking mess her life had become.
* * *
BRADEN
Finger hovering over the Duvall’s doorbell, Braden briefly wondered again why he was here for the second time in less than a week. While he’d made it a point to check in with Emmett as often as possible since Natasha had died, he hadn’t visited more than a couple of times a month since those first few weeks after the funeral.
