AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lucas didn’t add his reassurance, she noted. “Feel better,” she said to Joe, leaning over to kiss his cheek.
“I already do.”
She smiled at him; well, she tried to. Hoped to God, she hadn’t hurt the poor guy.
“I’ll call you about dinner,” Lucas said as she left the room.
“The offer has been revoked,” she said. “See you soon, Joe.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEAGEOFtwenty-two is not generally celebrated as time of deep wisdom and calm, measured acts.
Almost as soon as she broke up with Lucas, Colleen regretted it.
But the thing about being right most of the time...it was hard to know what to do when you were wrong.Ifshe’d been, that was because Colleen was kind of on the fence.
She knew one thing. Everything felt wrong without him.
At first, she’d just been furious. Life was going to hell on a lightning-speed roller coaster. Dad, Mom, Gail, a baby...and Lucas hadliedto her, had played God, deciding what she should and shouldn’t know. What did that say? What if he kept other things from her? What else wasn’t he telling her? Say they did get married and he got a brain tumor. Would he keep that from her, too? Huh? Would he?
“Colleen, enough,” Connor groaned one night. He was done at the CIA and was working at Hugo’s. Colleen was still bartending at the Black Cat, but she’d come over on her dinner break because she wouldn’t eat the food at the Cat with a gun to the back of her head. “I can’t stand to hear this one more time.Youbroke up withhim. If you want him back, call him. Okay? But I can’t listen to youandMom complaining all the damn day!”
“Men. You disgust me.”
“Really? Is that why you were making out with that guy the other night?”
“Oh, please. That was nothing.” Colleen shifted, guilt squirming in her stomach. The guy in question was some dork from Ithaca and, yes, she’d flirted with him. And kissed him. And then told him that while he was cute and she was positive she’d regret it, she couldn’t go out with him (that is, have sex with him). Because that kiss had been totallymeh.
Not like kissing Lucas, when the world seemed to stop, when the world seemed to smile, even, because they were so right together.
Then again, Lucas hadn’t been banging on her door, begging to get back in touch with her. One voice mail. One call to the house. That was it. So they were taking a break. Fine. Maybe it’d get his priorities straight. Maybe he’d miss her.
Maybe...and this was the thought that caused a cold tremor of fear to shake her heart...maybe he was relieved. She was, after all, his high school sweetheart. He’d said he wasn’t ready for marriage. Maybe...maybe like so many other men, her stupid father most certainly included, he wanted to see if there was someone else out there.
Because he sure didn’t try very hard to win her back. She hadn’t seen that coming.
Dad had moved in with Gail the Tail. He hired a divorce attorney and started proceedings, and Mom sobbed for twelve hours straight, and Colleen cried with her as the movers took her father’s things away, taking with them the memories of her happy childhood.
Connor hadn’t been as close with their dad as she had, but this had shaken him, too. Not just Mom’s distress, but Dad being so...pathetic. A hot young second wife. Another family. And in case that wasn’t enough, a convertible.
But despite that, she couldn’t stop loving her father. She was mad, embarrassed, furious...but when she heard his voice on the phone, or even when she saw him, sometimes, just for a second, she’d forget that he was the man who cheated on Mom, and she’d just remember Daddy. The man who taught her to ride a bike and sail a boat, who used to brush her hair when she was little, who read her stories, who let her stay up late and watch scary movies, then sat on her bed when she was afraid to go to sleep.
The Tail got a cushion-set diamond as big as a human eyeball, despite the fact that Mom and Dad weren’t even divorced. Dad had shown her the ring, for the love of God.
Oh, and they were having a girl.
Dad invited her over to the new place for dinner to meet his lover/fiancée. “I know you’re upset,” he said on the phone, and the thinly veiled impatience in his voice chilled her. “But, Colleen, enough. If you’re going to come over, and I hope you will, I’d appreciate some civility. Your mother is hysterical crying half the time and screaming the other half, Connor won’t speak to me, and I won’t put up with a guilt trip in my own home.”
It was almost a threat. Another wife; another home; another chance at fatherhood. Another daughter.
In other words, accept or be discarded.
She went to dinner.
The Tail herself answered the door wearing a cropped T-shirt and micro-shorts. Fantastic body, completely athletic and lean and perfectly muscled. Poor Mom. Gail’s red hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she looked dewy and innocent. And most horribly of all...young.
“Colleen, at last!” she cried, throwing her arms around her. “I’ve been dying to meet you!”
