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Guess her mother didn’t believe David’s story.
And her father sure as hell didn’t.
“You hurt my daughter?” he said. Not said so much asroared. A good old English roar.
“You both need to calm down.” David had his hands up now, not in mock surrender anymore. “You don’t want to make this ugly.”
“I’ll show you ugly when I’m done beating your face into a bloody pulp,” Daddy said as he approached David with murder in his eyes. “You’re twenty years older than she is. You were a guest in our house. We put a roof over your head. We paid you a fortune for that mural you didn’t bother finishing and that’s how you repay us? By hurting our daughter?”
Her father grabbed David by the shirt.
“Daddy, stop it!” Lia screamed. She couldn’t bear the thought of her father going to jail for attempted murder. “Stop it right now. He’s not worth it.”
“It’s worth it to me,” he said, looking at her with so much pity it ached.
“She’s the sane one in the room,” David said. “You do not want to get on my bad side here, okay? I can make life very difficult for all of you.”
“What’s he talking about?” her father asked. “Lia? What the hell is he saying? What’s going on?”
She saw David inching toward the door as if to make a break for it. Her father grabbed him again by the shirt and pushed him against the wall, not hitting him, but holding him there.
“I can have you arrested for this,” David said.
“Shut it,” her father said. “Lia, talk. Now.”
“Daddy, listen. Mum...I’m sorry. I’m not sorry about what I’ve done, but I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you. I was in love with David and I did flirt with him and I did tell him I was in love with him, that’s true. He came to my room that night and we slept together. And the next night, I saw him with you, Mum.”
“Oh, Lia...” Her mother’s eyes swam with tears.
“It’s okay, Mummy,” she assured her. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. He knew.” She pointed at David. “He was using us both because he could. I was so angry and hurt that I told him he had to leave the house and never see you all again or I’d tell you we’d had sex. I never said I would tell you he’d raped me. You know I never would do that.” She’d never even considered doing something like that.
“Of course we know that, angel,” her mother said in the same tone Lia had said to August,Of course I love you.
“Angel?” David repeated. Her father shook him a little. Lia didn’t try to stop him.
“I wrote him a note and promised him if he left and never spoke to you all again, I would never tell you what he did to me,” Lia said. “I knew you’d blame yourself, Mum. I knew you’d be heartbroken, and I didn’t want you paying for what he did.”
“Sweetheart, I’m your mother. You always have to tell me things like this. You have to. You just... You’re my child. I protect you. You don’t protect me.”
“And I protect the both of you,” her father said. “I’m going to throw this bastard out on his head and make sure he never steps foot in this country ever again.”
“You don’t want to do that,” David said. “You absolutely do not want to do that.”
“And why is that?” Daddy demanded.
“Because he knows something about me,” Lia said with a heavy sigh. “He knows I did something illegal.”
“Who hasn’t?” her father asked. “What did you do? Slap a bobby? Steal the crown jewels?”
“Since I was eighteen I’ve been running a sort of...escort service with my friends,” Lia said. “Well, not sort of. I’ve definitely been running an illegal escort agency with my friends. I handle all the arrangements. They’re the, you know, the service providers. A few of your friends are clients.”
“My friends? Who?”
Lia saw the fire in his eyes. No time to be discreet when her father was ten seconds away from either a murder or a coronary.
“Um... Xavier Lloyd. Jack Raymond. Derek Jones. Lord Pomeroy. Should I go on?” Her father’s attorney. A billionaire investor. An art gallery owner. An old friend of her father’s from Eton.
“I think that’s more than enough,” her father said.
