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Graham scooped her up, squeezing tight. Two little arms curled around him. “Hey, pumpkin. Jeez, you’ve grown a foot since I last saw you.”
Emily tilted her head and grinned, one tooth missing. “I’ve been taking vitamins.”
“Oh? That’s the reason?” He gave his daughter one last squeeze and lifted his head to see Monique approaching. “Hey.”
She gave him a cool smile… as always. “Hello. As you can see she’s beyond ready for dinner with Daddy Graham.”
Daddy Graham?
“Yeah,” Emily said, waving a five-dollar bill. “Daddy Josh gave me some money for the arcade. I’m gonna play skee ball.”
“Daddy Josh?”
Monique brushed manicured fingernails across an imaginary horizon. “That’s what Em calls Josh. Easier that way.”
“Really?” Graham said, eyeing his former fiancée, wondering whether this new term had come from ease or a vindictive way to twist a fork in Graham. Monique enjoyed creating drama. It’s what made her brilliant as an artist… and nearly impossible for Graham to live with.
She lifted a shoulder and gave him a half smile. “For Emily.”
“What’s wrong?” Emily asked, her forehead crinkling as she glanced at him. Her brown eyes looked worried even as her rounded cheeks were flushed with excitement.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” Graham said, giving Monique the let’s talk later look. “Time to go.”
“I don’t have to sit in a booster anymore,” Emily said, eyeing the sedan Ullo had delivered to him that morning. “I’m big now.”
Emily had grown in the past four months. She’d always been such a tiny girl with brown velvet hair and fluffy fairy skirts. As a mature seven-year-old, she wore a T-shirt with silvery looking stuff on it and trendy teenager-looking jeans. Her sneakers had sequins on them, and the hair bow was noticeably absent. A small glittery purse hung at her side.
But he had no idea if she needed a booster seat or not—another mark against him as a father. He’d never thought to check that kind of stuff. Monique had always handed him the car seat or the diaper bag or the medicine. He didn’t even know the pediatrician’s name anymore.
This was why he’d had to come back to New Orleans.
This was why he’d had to ignore the ignoble feeling within him when he’d found out about Tess yesterday and make himself indispensable to Frank Ullo and his company.
“So you’re the new Frank Ullo, huh? Never even crossed my mind something like this could happen,” Monique said, eyeing the Toyota Avalon before lifting her gaze to him. “Highly ironic you’re working for my competition. It’s almost Machiavellian.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he said, opening the rear door. Emily climbed in, looking around the leather interior, poking at buttons. “I told you as much when we talked last month. It’s a perfect opportunity for me, doing something I’m good at. It puts me back in New Orleans. Back in Emily’s life as her father. Her only father.”
Monique narrowed her dark eyes. “Feels like you’re punishing me. Upstart was yours, too, at one time, and you’re making this personal when it’s not. You’ll take food from the mouth of your child, merely so you can look good.”
He closed the car door so Emily would not witness the contention that always sat between them.
“You know that’s not true. There is more than enough room for both of us in this business. This isn’t about you.” The dislike he had for Monique would forever overshadow the passion they’d shared. She always held a piece of herself back, setting barriers she protected. The mother of his child had always been a faucet, running either hot or cold, but never both together.
Her gaze was frosty… but wasn’t it always now? “Tell yourself that, Graham, but anyone can see the writing on the wall.”
“This isn’t revenge, Monique. It’s about a job. Not allegiance. In case you didn’t get the memo, I need this… and I can’t return to Upstart, now can I?”
Her bitter laugh was answer enough.
“Exactly.” He moved toward her and Monique didn’t step back. She’d wouldn’t. Not Monique. Small, delicate, with dark arched eyebrows, a bowed mouth and wavy hair, Monique was a fiery ballbuster. Even as Graham despised her for what she’d done to him, he admired her ability to stand her ground… all five feet one inch of it. “This isn’t war, so don’t don the armor.”
“I’ll do whatever I wish to do, Graham.”
“Of course you will, but I’m asking, for all of our sakes, don’t make this personal. There is plenty of business for both Ullo and Upstart.”
“You didn’t used to feel that way,” she murmured, an almost savage look in her eye. “You hated Frank Ullo. You hated that he controlled the market and squashed smaller businesses trying to take a piece of the pie. That’s changed now because he signs your paycheck?”
“Upstart is no longer in the position it once was. Frank Ullo isn’t, either. You know that.” He wanted to get out of there before he and Monique started shrieking at each other on the street. Dealing with her had become more and more contentious in the past two months… ever since she learned he intended to come home to New Orleans. Monique liked having control, and the agreement they had over Emily would change.
