Page 89 of Love Off Course

“He’s your best friend.”

“He’s also a manwhore. And old like me. Not good enough for my baby girl.”

“Daddy…”

“I told him that too,” he tells me, smirking. “When I saw him flirting with a waitress not hours after he asked for my blessing to date you, I walked right over to him and punched him.”

My eyes bug out of my head trying to imagine this. “He told me you punched him, though his story varies some. I still can’t believe it.”

“Believe it and my story is the correct one.”

“You punched him because he said he was going to date me and you gave him your blessing, but then he flirted with another woman?”

Daddy scoffs. “I didn’t give my blessing. I told him no.”

“Daddy…”

“I’ve been friends with the man forever. I’d be stupid to not know how much you idolized him. But, as your father, I wasn’t about to let him ruin everything by dating you. You deserve more.”

“Maybe I deserve him,” I argue. “We’ve known each other forever. There’s history there.”

“You need Camilo.”

His words are a punch to my stomach. “I was with him for less than two weeks. I don’t need him. We were a fling.” The lie is sour on my tongue.

Daddy sees through it. Fatherly senses and all.

“Did you know I fell in love with your mother in three days?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did. I was in town for work, stopped into a bookstore to grab a coffee and a few moments of peace, and saw the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“Mom worked in a bookstore?”

“Focus, child,” Daddy teases. “There she was with her messy hair and her wide smile looking so pretty I couldn’t look away. I walked right over to her and asked her out.”

“And she said yes?”

“She told me she had to work and she couldn’t just leave.”

“You tried to make her leave?”

“It was destiny and I wasn’t about to wait for it.”

“So what happened?”

“I had to wait six long hours for it. Sat in the bookstore drinking coffee after coffee, unable to look away from her. When her shift ended, she finally gave in. I took her to dinner and…” He grins and shakes his head. “The details of the rest of the night are ours, but just know I fell madly in love with her. I couldn’t get enough of her. Within months, she was pregnant. Before you entered the world, I made her a Reid. I made her mine.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I want that one day.”

“You’ll have it.”

“With someone like David?”

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