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I take a deep breath, letting it out painstakingly slowly so he won’t hear it. This man—my father—is flat-out lying to me. And it’s breaking my heart more and more with each word he spits out.
“It’s gone.” It’s a lie I feel compelled to tell him.
When this is all over, after I finish looking after Darcy and Ferguson, I have an apartment and a life to get back to. It’s not much of one, but I do have to have money available to get back on my feet. At this rate, there won’t be a penny left if I’m not careful.
“All of it?” He’s just as suspicious as I am. “You can’t have spent it.”
I follow it up with another lie. “I put it in an investment fund, Dad. I want to make sure that if I don’t get a scholarship, at least I can still go to college.”
He laughs shakily. “You had me worried. I thought you did something dumb like spend it on a car or something. That means that you can take it out of the fund.”
I shake my head. This can’t be happening. “No. It’s a locked-in investment. I did it that way so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend it.”
“I never in a million years thought you’d be so damn selfish,” Dad spits out. “You’re out living the life with that hockey player, and you don’t even have the decency to help out the man who raised you. I need that money, Faith. You’re not going to have a job to come back to if you keep this up.”
I hang up before he says another word.
Tears sting my eyelids. What the hell is going on? I’ve never known Dad to be like this.
Why would he lie? Better yet, what else is he lying about?
My minds begin to spin. The late nights Dad kept, that I never batted an eyelash about. The Sundays he insisted he had to go to the store, even though it wasn’t open.
I believed every word he ever said, always had. He’s my dad. And I’ve never had any reason to doubt him.
Until now. Which brings me back to my original question. Why lie?
Whatever the truth is, he’s been hiding it for a long time. He gambles, and he drinks. Hell, I’ve smelled it on his breath many times. All his friends do, too. It’s never occurred to me before to wonder if he does too much of it, though.
I know I’m grasping at straws. I don’t even know if it makes sense to come to such a conclusion. My hands are shaking as I turn the key in the ignition. I need to pull myself together. I need to go pick up the kids. Most of all, I need to dry the tears that won’t seem to stop falling.
There are only two things I know for sure I as pull the car out of the parking lot. The first is that no matter what Dad needs that money for, it’s not my problem. The second is that I have no intentions of going back home.
Chapter Twenty
Faith
I know my time in Tristan’s house, living Tristan’s life, is coming to an end. And I know that this thing between me and him isn’t real.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten lost in the whole allure of it. Hell, I bought sexy lingerie for our sexy Skype calls. If that doesn’t scream “I’ve got it bad!”, I don’t know what does.
It all seems like a dream. But that dream crashed into reality when he surprised me by coming home a day earlier than expected. One minute I’d been conjuring up erotic thoughts of him in my subconscious while I slept soundly, the next his hands were on me, waking me from slumber, pushing himself inside me.
If those dark, shadowed hours together last night were any indication, Tristan Wright missed me just as much as I missed him, whether he wants to admit it or not.
I’ve managed to save the salary he pays me, and I’ve been careful not to mention money to him again.
Dad’s called me once, but I ignored it. I haven’t mentioned that to Tristan, either.
I’m trying to just enjoy the time I have life living here. But, there’s a very real fear—one I keep shoving to the back of my mind—that this is all going to come to an abrupt end. Sooner than I’m ready for it to. I was hired to be a nanny, but now I feel lost as to what I really am.
“Tristan?” He’s still in my bed, dozing contently between wakefulness and sleep. The kids will be up soon, and he needs to head back to his own bedroom before they do. But, he’s going back on the road in a couple of days, and we need to talk, no matter how scared I am about what his real thoughts are on our situation.
“Hmm?” His eyes flutter but don’t open.
“What’s going to happen if you make it to the playoffs?”
His eyes snap open, startling me, and in a blink of an eye he’s got my arms pinned down, hovering over top of me. He’s got more than the playoffs on his mind, and I can feel the proof pressed against my thigh. The ache of missing him for so many nights returns, and he presses his lips against mine.
