Page 492 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I cried so hard I thought I might throw up.
For a brief moment I considered calling Aleena. The moment passed as quickly as it came, and I stayed on the floor in my empty townhouse grieving for the man I never thought I could love.
Shit.
CHAPTER 34
CHADWICK
My father met me at the front door of the estate. He invited me inside, and I took off my scarf and winter coat in the foyer. I hung it on the coat rack by the closet that my mother had covered in coats and placed a hat on top of one night, dressing it up to look like the silhouette of a man to scare the living shit out of my old man when he came home late from the office one night.
She’d been peeved that he wasn’t spending as much time with the family as he usually did.
He was peeved that she almost gave him a heart attack.
“You’re just in time,” my father said as I followed him down the wide hall to the dining room, where I caught a whiff of gravy. “Dinner just finished. We’re having pot roast. Another of your mother’s old recipes. I’ve had Geraldine referring to your mother’s old recipe books for weeks. It finally feels easier to enjoy things that remind me of her.”
Five years.
How had it already been five years?
The dining-room table had been decorated for Christmas, and the two chairs at the far end of the twelve-seater table were pulled back for my father and me. A small candle burned at our end of the table between salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Christmas trees. My father had bought those for my mother at a Bavarian town in Germany one year.
We weren’t sitting down for long when one of the kitchen staff came out with red wine. I sat quietly while it was poured, and my father swirled and sipped, gave his nod of approval, and sat back while the house employee filled our glasses.
“It’s been a long time since we sat down to a meal like this just the two of us,” my father said.
“It has,” I agreed. “At least a couple of months, right?”
“Two months indeed.”
“We should be better about that.”
He lifted his wine glass. “To many more family dinners.”
I tapped my glass to his. “To many more.”
He drank and watched me over the rim. His hazel eyes, so similar to mine but with gray lashes, studied me, and I sat up a little straighter and forced myself to smile. My old man always had a way of reading me like he was reading the pages of a book.
“The fundraiser gala went well,” I said.
“Better than any other year.”
A quiet moment stretched between us.
Finally, he asked, “Is everything okay, son? You seem unlike yourself.”
“Everything is fine, Dad.”
“You know, sometimes I’m content to let you lie to me. You’re a grown man now. You don’t owe me answers to all my prying questions. But,” he added, “sometimes I also feel like I need to push. This is one of those times. So, I’ll ask you again, is everything okay?”
We were too similar for me to be able to slip anything past him.
I stared at my wine glass. “I’m fine, Dad. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
He continued watching me like he didn’t believe me, but he let the matter go. “Very well. On that note, I’d like to talk to you about something important.”
I shifted in my chair and made myself more comfortable. My mind danced all over the place, wondering where this was going, and I hoped it wasn’t about the video of Armie and me at the club. “Yes?”
