Page 80 of Juniper Hill (The Edens 2)

“Why have you been calling me?” I asked Mom.

Her eyes flicked to Dad, guilt creeping into her expression. Maybe he didn’t know that she’d been dialing my number nonstop.

“If you really wanted to know, maybe you should have answered the phone,” Dad clipped. Okay, so maybe he did know about the calls.

“Why the private investigator?”

“You packed up your car and left.” Mom looked at me like I’d offended her. Like I’d spit in her champagne.

“There was no reason for me to stay in New York.” I leveled a glare at Dad. “I had no job. No home.”

He leaned back in his seat, giving me that impassive stare he was so feared for at Ward headquarters. “That was your choice.”

“Was it?” I arched an eyebrow.

“We wanted to make sure you were safe,” Mom said, her voice dropping to nothing more than a whisper.

She had wanted to know I was safe. Having me followed must have been her idea. From the look on Dad’s face, he couldn’t have cared less.

“If you were really worried about my safety, you would have come to the hospital when I was in labor.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Mom looked to Dad with blame etched on her pretty face. “That man from yesterday. Who is he?”

“Knox Eden. His family owns this hotel.”

“Oh, is—”

Dad frowned. One single glare and Mom ceased speaking as he waved her away. A flick of the wrist that her questions were nothing.

She shrank into her chair. While Dad hadn’t changed in months, Mom seemed . . . tired.

The lines around her eyes were more prominent, not that there were many. She had a team of estheticians who pampered her weekly along with a world-class dermatologist and the highest-paid plastic surgeon in New York City to ensure she didn’t look a day over forty.

Unlike Dad, Mom hadn’t come from money. She’d married into wealth, and because of her prenup, there was little she’d do to risk the six-carat diamond on her ring finger. She’d fight time and age tooth and nail until the end of her days.

At one point, I’d pitied Mom. She loved her lifestyle and it had trapped her to my father’s every whim. But that was before she’d left me alone. Before she’d cowered to his will and, as such, forsaken her child. There was no pity left.

She could call every day from now until the end of her life. It was too damn late.

She’d made her choice.

And I’d made mine.

“Why are you really here?” That question I aimed at my father. “I’ll take the truth this time. Because there is no way you’d travel here to rescue your daughter.”

“You’re to come home. Once we arrive in New York, we will have a more thorough discussion.”

“Unless you plan to put a bag over my head and drag me onto the airplane, I won’t be leaving Quincy.”

Dad’s jaw clenched. “You’ve made your point, Memphis. You’ve had your little tantrum. Enough.”

“You think this is a tantrum?” I huffed a dry laugh. “This isn’t me acting out to get your attention. I don’t need or want you in my life.”

Imagining Drake saying that statement to me would have been like a dagger through my chest.

Mom flinched.

Dad didn’t so much as blink.