Page 110 of Crushing Clover

For a man old enough to have sired me, he was in regrettably great shape. Most of the rich assholes I’d gone to school with were fortunate enough to have fathers who—if they weren’t good guys—at least had the decency to be prematurely old due to overindulgence in booze or drugs, if not straight-up dead.

But no, not me.

I got to keep living this fucking nightmare every month.

But hey, only two months after this.

“Saint John,” he said by way of greeting, wiping the water from his eyes and slicking back his hair.

“Warren.”

“I really wish you’d call me Dad.”

“I really wish you’d do me a favor and drop dead.”

He snorted, his smile a snide curl of his lip. “Well, no one can say I raised you to be soft.”

“You didn’t raise me at all. That was the servants.”

He cocked his head, conceding the point. “I was busy amassing the wealth you’ll be enjoying for the rest of your life. Very sad. Maybe you should get some fucking therapy, already.”

I set my jaw, unwilling to admit I’d been considering it, and not only because Clover kept telling me I needed to work through my feelings about Arabella. “I had a therapist, remember?”

Warren launched himself backward, doing a length of backcrawl before coming back my way, butterfly stroke. The pool called to me. He’d made me do laps so often as a punishment when I was a kid it had become a secret solace for me. Being underwater, like being in a well-stocked library, brought with it a quality of silence I enjoyed. It helped calm the anger that had been seething in me since I was a child.

Not too much silence, though. I’d tried a float tank therapy place once and lost my shit after maybe two minutes. Those places were great for some people, but the last thing I needed was to be completely alone with my thoughts.

“Yeah, I remember your therapist. Lyanna. Cute little thing.”

“She was great until you fucked her.”

“Jealous?”

“I was ten,” I said incredulously. “I couldn’t figure out why she was always defending you, all of a sudden.”

He grinned, his aristocratic face begging for a fist. “When the dick is good enough, they get a little obsessed.”

Neither of us had ever been afflicted with false modesty.

He launched himself out of the water, making me back up to accommodate him on the pool deck. It had been redone recently, reminding me of how shitty ours was getting. There wasn’tmoney for anything except necessities and the odd splurge, and now with an extra mouth to feed, there was less. Not that she ate much.

“Speaking of women who are obsessed with me, how is our little Arabella doing?”

“I haven’t talked to her in years. You know that.”

“No, no. The lookalike.” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Candy?”

The lapse in memory was all for show. The man never forgot a name.

“She’s fine.”

“Has she been asking about me?”

“Of course not.”

Humming, he grabbed a towel, and draped it over his dripping shoulders. “Good. I warned her about what would happen if she didn’t please you. Asking you about me would be unconscionably rude.”

Did he seriously think that was the only reason Clover wasn’t asking about him? Probably. The man’s ego was as bloated as his bank account.

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