Page 51 of Courting the Consequences

Kara’s heart pounded in her chest. She hated when he sprung these surprise lunches or dinners on her. It usually meant he wanted something. It was how he delivered all his orders. “Well, I’m working from home today,” she answered slowly, her mind racing. “I had a client dinner run late last night.”

“Let’s do dinner instead then. I have some things I wanted to do around the city anyway. How about Supérieur?” he suggested.

Kara rolled her eyes. “Sure, Dad. Sounds great.”

“Great. I’ll see you at seven,” her father said before he hung up.

Kara shook her head in disbelief. This was turning out to be the week from absolute hell.

That evening, Kara was dressed in a modest navy-blue dress to meet her father at the stupid French restaurant men like him loved. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and she had a dusting of makeup on her face. She looked posh.

She hoped her father was still in a good mood when she arrived.

She parked her MKX in front of the valet stand and quickly handed off her keys. She hated valets most of the time. She would rather park her own vehicle and walk so that if she wanted to leave she could find it easily.

The doorman opened the door, and she quickly gave her name to the maître d’. Her father had a standing reservation at the all the fancy restaurants in Mourningside. Being his daughter had some benefits, she had to admit. Other times, it was more a nuisance.

Before the maître d’ could reply, she saw her father across the room at his usual table. It was a large banquette that was on a raised platform along the back wall. It was really two tables, but they were both his. Most nights they were pushed together to form one large table, but tonight, thankfully, they were separated.

The banquette had a view of the entire dining area and a great view of the large, open window that allowed patrons to watch as the kitchen staff prepared their food.

It also let him feel like he lorded over all of them.

Kara hated it. The long banquette was too much for just the two of them. They would end up sitting side by side and facing the room instead of each other.

She would have to grin and bear it. These types of dinners had been common with her father ever since he “swooped in and saved her from state school,” as he claimed. She had already been in her third year of college at Northern Illinois University and declared a prelaw degree when he had reached out, claiming he got her phone number from the school records.

Regardless, he had swept in and offered Harvard on a silver platter. At the time, she felt she would have been an idiot to turn down an offer of that magnitude. Despite Marcos’s warnings of strings being attached, she accepted her father’s offer and transferred to Harvard the second semester of her junior year. She finished out her undergrad and then went to Harvard Law School.

When she moved back to Mourningside, she discovered the strings that Marcos had warned her about. Instead of going to work at the nonprofit law clinic on the south side, helping kids like her and low-income families as she had dreamed of when she was in law school, she was given a job at Carmichael and Associates.

She refused to take the junior partner job her father had handed her, instead working her way up through the ranks as an associate until she became the youngest senior partner the firm had seen. It only made sense that when her father announced his retirement she would take over as managing partner.

Kara squared her shoulders and walked across the room. Her father’s eyes swept over her attire quickly before he met her gaze and smiled. That was a good start, she supposed. Appearances were everything to him. “Hello, Dad,” she greeted with a demure smile.

Her father stood from the other side of the banquette and walked between the two tables. He met her when she reached the top of the platform and greeted her with a smile and a kiss to her cheek. “Beautiful as ever, darling.”

Vince Carmichael was as handsome and formidable as ever. Tall, with a lithe muscular build, he filled out his tailored, three-piece Hermes suit to perfection. At sixty-five, her father’s blond hair had taken on a white-blond sheen that was very in right now. His blue eyes crinkled in the corners, but her father was still very attractive for his age.

Kara chose the seat across from him and sat with her back to the room.

He frowned slightly but otherwise didn’t comment. “How was your day at home?”

Kara steeled her spine. “It was fine. I managed to catch up on my case files.” She had, but it wasn’t something she had planned on doing until after her father called.

He nodded absently as a sommelier walked over in a tuxedo. “Good evening, Lady, Gentleman,” he greeted with a soft voice. “Can I interest you in our wine menu?”

“Yes,” Vince answered and reached for the menu the man handed him, as if he didn’t order the same fucking wine every time they came here. “Ah yes, we’ll try the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richebourg Grand Cru, 2017,” he ordered.

Kara’s eyebrows rose at the name of the bottle that easily cost five thousand dollars. “Are we celebrating something?” she asked when the sommelier walked away.

“Can’t a father just want to spoil his daughter once in a while?” her father deflected with a smile.

Kara forced a smile to her lips but felt that he could see right through her. Even a decade later, her father still set her on edge. She was always waiting for the other shoe to drop with him.

A moment later the sommelier returned with two glasses and the bottle of wine her father had ordered. He set down the glasses, before he opened the bottle. He poured a small splash of red wine into a glass before handing it to her father.

She watched Vince as he sniffed the wine. He tilted the glass gently and swirled the wine around inside the glass before he sniffed it again. Then he took a small sip. She watched him swish it around his mouth before finally swallowing it. “Yes, that will do. Two glasses please, and leave the bottle.”

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