She nodded. “Thank you. I want to be the one to explain my actions and the reasons I felt they were needed.”
“Okay,” he said, not having any idea what she was talking about.
She took a sip of wine, as if to steel herself. “When I left the States, barely a week after graduating from Rhodes, I had what I thought was a good reason. As I told you, I often felt lost and alone and needed to hear my grandfather’s voice, only I couldn’t get through to him. Of course, now I’m a little suspicious that he never got my messages. Still, at the time, I had no reason to think that. I assumed he was just ignoring me because he disliked my mother. And although you might think otherwise, Cobra, I still have no reason to think differently. I always made good grades in school, and even after taking off a semester in college, I still graduated on time, at the top of my class, and with honors.”
“I’m sure Richard attended your graduation,” Cobra said.
“Yes, he was there. And he even told me how proud he was of me, but I didn’t feel it was sincere.”
“Why?” he asked, reaching out and taking her hand in his. A part of him needed the connection, as well as to provide her with support.
“Mainly because Granddad is so reserved. I never know what he’s feeling. He’d never given me any indication that he loved me, so why should he be proud of me for doing something I knew he had expected? It didn’t add up.”
She released a frustrated breath. “So I went to Paris, fully intending to act like the party girl he thought I was.”
“Is that why it bothers you when people refer to you that way?”
“Yes. Because anyone who thinks that about me doesn’t truly know me. If they did, they’d know how focused and driven I am.”
After taking another sip of her wine, she said, “Anyway, I moved to Paris thinking I didn’t care anymore and would live the life Granddad thought I was living anyway. But when I’d been there less than two months, something happened.”
He lifted a brow. “What?”
A smile touched her lips. “I met Camille LeGraff. We met at a coffee shop, and immediately became the best of friends. A few months later, we moved into an apartment together.”
She paused as if remembering that time. “Cam was a psychology major working on her doctorate, and I would, more times than not, be her case study.” She chuckled and then added, “The sofa in our apartment is where we would hold our therapy sessions.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“It was. I had a lot of garbage to unload. As my unofficial therapist, she got me to see that, regardless of how my grandfather felt about me, I needed to live my life the way I wanted.” She chuckled. “What’s funny is that according to her, Richard Sharpe and I seemed very much alike in many ways. Cam got me to accept that being a ‘party-girl’ was not in my makeup, no matter what anyone thought. However, being driven to succeed was. And I discovered she was right.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I enrolled in the university to work on my graduate degree. I wanted an MBA. And I didn’t want to attend just any university; I wanted a degree from Harvard. Not because that’s where Granddad had always wanted me to go, but because that’s where I always wanted to go, too. I guess you can say that I decided togo to Rhodes College during one of my rebellious stages. I did it to spite Granddad.”
“And is that why you prefer to be called Desiree? Did you see it as a way to spite Richard as well, since you believe he didn’t like your mother?”
She shrugged. “I admit that was part of it, but the main reason is that being called Allison made me miss my grandmother a lot. I loved her so much.”
“How did you attend Harvard while living in Paris?”
“It wasn’t easy, trust me. I enrolled in the Harvard Extension School. Although the classes were online, they weren’t easy. It also required that I spend so many classroom hours in Boston.”
“You came to the States, and Richard didn’t know?”
“I didn’t want him to know. I figured he had already made up his mind about my worth. I didn’t need anything to get me down, and I had to stay focused on my goal. Getting that degree was something I wanted to do to prove a point to myself. I even did my internship at the Sharpe Corporation in Paris. They had no idea I was related to the CEO.”
Cobra frowned. “How could they not know you were Richard Sharpe’s granddaughter?”
“I didn’t tell anyone, and all my employment records are in the name of Desiree Sharpe and not Allison. So, as you can see, for almost three years I wasn’t living it up in the streets of Paris, Cobra. I was working my ass off to get my MBA and learning everything I could about the company I will inherit one day.”
He didn’t say anything. Desiree honestly believed she was a thorn in her grandfather’s side; a granddaughter he didn’t care about. He hated that, but it would be up to Richard to prove otherwise. The wedge between them was bigger than he had assumed, but Cobra didn’t see it as anything that couldn’t be repaired. It would take effort and a willingness to meet eachother halfway. But more than anything, it would take open communication.
“That’s what I meant when I said that a lot about you didn’t add up, Desiree. I’ve dated party girls, and you didn’t fit the mold.”
He decided he might as well go all in. “So…how did you meet Aimery LeBlanc?”
“At the theater. Camille occasionally moonlights as an actress, and to support her work, I would often go and watch her perform. Aimery and I were together for only a few months.”
