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“You didn’t mess up, Daddy,” she sighed as she lifted her hands and began to pick at her nails rather than letting her gaze meet her father’s.
If her father saw how much it hurt, he might blame himself. She didn’t want that.
“I almost messed up,” he reiterated. “I almost didn’t introduce Mason to the general out of pride. I knew what he wanted, what he was, but seeing how it hurt you would have broken your mother’s heart. I couldn’t have that, you know.”
A sad smile pulled at her lips as she nodded again. That was her father’s way of saying it had hurt him to see her hurt.
“I got over it, Dad,” she promised him.
“Not all the way,” he guessed softly. “You weren’t in love with him, so you got over the man, but you didn’t get over the lesson, did you, baby girl?”
“Dad—” she began to protest.
He lifted his hand, silencing her immediately. As always, she clenched her teeth, irritated with herself because that one moment could immediately remind her that if she didn’t quieten, then her father could refuse to speak to her for days.
It had happened once, and only once, when she had been no more than five.
“Now, look at me.”
She lifted her gaze slowly, emotion clogging her throat as she met the concern and affection in her father’s eyes.
He’d been a stern disciplinarian when she had been a child, but he had been a friend after she’d passed that unruly teenage stage. He was her boss and, sometimes, her sounding board, but he was always her father.
“Daddy, I don’t want to talk about Casey,” she stated, her tone respectful but det
ermined. “This is my fight, not yours.”
“And why is it a fight?” he asked softly. “What is it, Sheila, that has you watching the road expecting him, and yet refusing to make that first move?”
“Because I don’t know what he wants from me.” Frustration filled her voice now. “He wants me to guess, or to beg, I don’t know,” she bit out furiously. “And I can’t stand not knowing.”
“Maybe he just wants you,” her father suggested gently.
Sheila turned her gaze back to the flowers as she shook her head. “He wants more. He has to.”
“What do you want from him?”
Her gaze swung back to him in surprise. “I just want him, Dad,” she whispered. “That was all I ever wanted.”
“His love?”
She nodded slowly. “Just his love.”
“Maybe, Sheila, you’re wrong. Maybe that really is all Casey wants from you.”
Her lips parted to argue the suggestion. There had to be more. Casey had to want more. No one had ever wanted just her love, and she couldn’t imagine Casey did either.
“Cooper has intel ready to come in,” he told her before she could argue his opinion of Casey. “He’ll be waiting on you in the office tonight at nine sharp. Don’t be early, Sheila, and don’t be late.”
She wanted to roll her eyes at the order. Her father was a stickler for punctuality.
“And what time should I be home, Daddy?” Unfolding herself from the top of the desk, she slid from the seat until she was standing beside his chair, looking down at where he pushed his glasses back atop his head.
“Getting back isn’t the problem,” he told her. “Cooper and his wife Sarah are leaving town tonight and want to get on the road early. Cooper knows how I am about chain of evidence.”
Anyone who worked with her father knew that. Cooper was always present if he wasn’t the one to turn over the flash drive.
“I’ll be there at nine sharp,” she promised as she turned to leave the office.
