Page 58 of The Grumpy Billionaire
It was almost surreal to be here with him like this, surrounded by his familiar Dad-smell in an embrace I remembered from my earliest childhood. He hadn’t been a frequent hugger, so when I’d gotten one, it had felt extra special.
We took our seats across from each other at the two-top table. I picked up my menu card, preparing to mark it with my choices, but Dad just kept staring at me.
“You look beautiful, Mimi,” he said, using the old nickname leftover from a time when I was too little to say my own name and called myself simply “me.”
“You look so grown-up.”
“Thanks, Dad. It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”
A waiter stopped by the table to take our drink orders and waited while we quickly checked off our desired burger fillings and toppings and handed him our cards.
He promised us food within fifteen minutes and walked away, leaving us nothing to do while we waited but talk.
Crap. After the phone call with the headmaster this morning, this had seemed like a good idea. But now that we were here, I had no idea how to start the conversation.
The boys. Talk about the boys. Keep it focused on them.
“So I wanted to talk to you about the boys…”
Dad interrupted. “First I’d like to say, thanks for meeting me. And again—I regret our long estrangement. There’s no use warming up to it or putting the subject off any longer. It’s the elephant in the room, so we might as well talk about it.”
Well, okay. So it was out there then.
I swallowed an enormous lump that had formed out of nowhere the second he’d begun his heartfelt apology. I could see it was sincere. The regret was coming out of his every pore.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
I didn’t have to explain whatitreferred to. He knew exactly why I’d cut him out of my life.
“I wanted to protect you,” he said. “At the AG’s office, we were involved in a big operation to take down the Rhode Island crime families. Reid’s dad was involved in all that, and I didn’t want you caught up in it. You were just a little girl. You didn’t know any better. That kind of thing… those kind of people… they can ruin your whole life, your future.”
“But Reid wasn’t involved in that world. He was just a kid. He didn’t even know his dad. His mom protected him from that.”
“Rhode Island is a small state. You can’t escape from who you are here, no matter how much you might want to.”
“Who youareisn’t determined by your DNA,” I argued. “It’s about the choices you make in life. It’s about your heart, your character.”
“I don’t know, kiddo. A last name can really haunt you, especially here where everybody kind of knows everybody else.”
My father’s expression morphed into one of horror as something occurred to him. “Imagine if you’d gotten pregnant with his child…”
“I wish I had,” I blurted out, shocking myself.
But no, that couldn’t be true. A child would have tied me to Reid for life. Ididn’twant to be like Mom, eternally connected to a powerful man who could run roughshod over me and make me miserable.
Dad looked at me with sad eyes. “You still love him… after all this time.”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “I don’t. I mean, yes, there’s still some leftover attraction. We all have our type, right? That’s all it is. I ran into him at Uncle Tony’s Pizza. He looked good,” I added belatedly by way of explanation.
“I’ve heard you’ve been spending quite a bit of time together recently,” Dad said in a casual tone.
My heart iced over. Had someone seen us together at the Marina? Or at the kite festival in Easton Park—and reported the “transgression” to my father?
“How do you know that?” I demanded. “Are you having mewatched? You are, aren’t you?” It was a good thing we were having this conversation in a public place, or I might have been screaming like a raving lunatic by this point.
A conversation from the past few days rushed back to my mind, Reid’s confession that he’d used private investigators to track me down and report back to him after I disappeared from his life.
It occurred to me that he’d grown up to be scarily similar to my dad, something I never would have expected.
