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He didn’t.
One look at his face and I realized he wasn’t bluffing.
I had my limits, and my father constantly pushed them. I’d just discovered what I absolutely would not do.
Marry Alex Davenport.
I didn’t know him. Had only heard of him because of his family's business reputation.
And I wouldn't marry anyone else for that matter either.
“You didn’t force Lincoln or Teague into marriage.” I hated to drag my older brothers into this, but I had to use whatever defense I could find.I don’t want todidn’t seem to be making the point.
His nostrils flared in annoyance. “You are my only daughter. I will not allow just any man to have you.”
A chill skittered down my spine.
“I’m not an object.” To him, I was. Nothing more than a robot to make him money.
He had the audacity to look angry. “Your hand in marriage is a coveted gift. By refusing to cooperate, you’ve put us in an undesirable position.”
My father had putmein an undesirable position.
He’d stepped up the pressure, cornering me daily about this since I’d returned to New York.
“I have done everything you ask of me, but this”—I shook my head—“I will never do.”
“I most certainly did not ask you to slum it with that—”
“It’s done.” I wouldn’t think of Garrett Calhoun. And I wouldn’t admit that my father was right. I never should’ve gotten involved with him.
That man didn’t deserve my defense, yet I was offended by how my father had referenced him. But I wouldn’t waste my breath taking up for him. Scum. That would’ve been a more accurate description.
He tilted his head and narrowed his gaze. “It better be.”
Of course he knew what I’d been hiding. Not even my protective brothers had figured it out . . . and I lived with one of them.
“I’m going to be late.” I stood taller, though I felt like a little girl in my father’s presence.
“I’ve postponed your closing. You have no business purchasing that building anyway.” He waved me off as if I wasn’t capable of bringing in multi-million-dollar deals like I had for the past decade. He pressed the intercom on his phone. “Send in the Davenports.”
Rage swirled from my toes all the way to the top of my head. There was only one other person who could garner this type of reaction from me.
I felt like a caged animal. Feral and ready to strike.
Except there was no escape. My father had won this round in a single knockout blow.
I gripped the back of my chair as Alexander Davenport the Third, according to the list of potential husbands I'd brushed off, led his parents into my father’s office.
Father stood and pasted on a luminous smile that the rest of the world believed was the real him. “Alex, come in, my boy.”
I was going to be sick. He’d never treated us that way except in front of others where perception was everything.
He bent and kissed Mrs. Davenport’s cheek. “Della, you look lovely as ever.” And then he shook the elder Davenport’s hand. “Alexander. If this rain would let up, maybe we could get that golf game in.”
They all laughed as if this were an afternoon of old friends, but we were at the office. Clearly, it was a business transaction.
And I was the commodity.
