I sat back and pasted a smile on my face and pretended to enjoy myself. This was the last time I let one of my yoga students set me up on a date. Of course, I thought that last time, too.
“You’ll like him, you’re just his type.” That usually meant the guy liked the bigger girls, a description I fit into perfectly. The other reason, the one that was the reason for the smile… Well, I wasn’t going to tell him the truth. He was too boring to deserve it.
The man across from me was in his mid-forties, if not older. It wasn’t the age difference that bothered me or the way he spiked his hair to hide the thin patch on top of his head. He was pretending too. He had told me he was in his late twenties.
“I just can’t get over how much you look like Britney Scythe.” He sat back shaking his head and took another sip from his margarita.
How many times could he mention that I looked like the model he had a crush on in his teens?
“With paler hair, you could be her reincarnation. Especially during her pudgy phase.”
I rolled my eyes. Mom died when I was seven. I looked like her, but I was nothing like her. If I bleached my hair a few shades lighter and wore different clothes, I would be a blonde bombshell just like she had been.
“If I was thirteen. And that would make you a perv.”
He sputtered and sat upright. It was fun to mess with the men who could only see my mother in me. I looked very much like her, so much so even my father couldn’t find evidence of himself in my face. But I wasn’t my mom or her reincarnation. I was my own person. It would be nice to be seen for myself.
Brakes squealed and I looked out past the patio we sat on and into traffic. My eyes locked with the last person I wanted to see right now. I should pay better attention to what I wished for. Devin Hopper was probably the one person who saw the real me, and he didn’t like me very much. The feeling was mutual.
Horns sounded and we could hear various shouts from the road.
My date turned to look over his shoulder. “What’s going on out there?”
My father’s pit bull saw me and was now being a jack-ass in traffic trying to get his car across all the lanes and into the restaurant’s parking lot. I had less than five minutes before this date was over. I hated it when he saw me out in public. He always did this, every time he spotted me. I swear he drove around the city just looking for me.
“I have no idea,” I lied. I finished my margarita in a hurry. The cold cut through my brain like an ice pick. I winced and pressed my thumbs into the space where the bridge of my nose turned into eye socket.
“Harleigh!” Devin’s voice was deep and menacing.
Would he yell at me about being on a date? Or because I had alcohol? Would he approve of what I was wearing, or was I out at the wrong time of day or night? It was a crapshoot as to what was going to piss Devin off, and I always pissed him off.
“Have you been drinking?” he snarled.
It was the margarita that sent him over the edge today.
“I’m almost twenty-two, I can legally drink,” I said. I crossed my arms and glared up at him.
“Who is this guy?” my date asked.
Devin looked at the man.
I knew that his eyes were narrowed behind his reflective aviators. I wished he would take those damned sunglasses off. They made his flared jaw and hyper-defined cheekbones stand out. Devin was too much of an asshole to be as attractive as he was. His upper arms strained against the fine cotton of the shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up. When he crossed his arms, every muscle from his shoulders to his wrists rippled with power. He looked dangerous, in a hot movie bad-guy way with slicked-back dark hair, and wearing a black dress shirt and designer slacks.
My date looked like Joe Not-So-Average in comparison. Until he wouldn’t shut up about my mother, I had thought he was reasonably attractive. Next to Devin… Well, if a date could go from bad to worse, this one had on every level.
“He’s kind of like—”
“Don’t say older brother. I’m nothing like an older brother, we are not related.”
Devin knew me well. It was easier to call him something like an older brother or cousin than it was to explain he was my father’s favorite, not-quite adopted, chosen son.
“I know that, but the way you act sometimes,” I said with a huff. I turned to my date. “He’s my father’s lackey, and a pain in my butt.”
My date stood up and started to make placating hand gestures.
“Hey buddy, let’s calm down here. The lady and I are just having a couple of drinks. You don’t need to worry about Britney, I’ll take good care of her.”
I let out a heavy sigh.
“Shit, I mean Hayleigh,” he stammered and tried to backtrack.
When Devin wrapped his hand around my upper arm, I didn’t fight him and stood.
“Harleigh, I’m sorry. I know your name,” my date continued to babble. He messed my name up twice.
I shook my head. “I’ve got to go. The retriever is here for me.”
Devin gave my arm an unnecessary squeeze against my insult. He let go of me and tossed a couple of twenties on the table.
“That should cover her half. Don’t call her again.”
I let Devin lead me out of the restaurant. Neither of us said anything until we were in the car and driving down the road.
“What did you think you were doing? He’s old enough to be your father.”
I laughed. My father was sixty-four before I was born, and my date was nowhere near that. He was probably closer to Devin’s age, and no one would ever mistake Devin for being that old.
“What’s wrong with wanting a sugar daddy? It was good enough for my parents.” I couldn’t help myself, Devin annoyed me, and I antagonized him.
“It’s not good enough for you. Is he your dealer?”
“What?” I yelled.
“Your drug dealer?”
“Now you’re just being insulting. You know how my mother died. As if I would ever do any of that stuff.” I settled back into my seat and crossed my arms. Poking Devin with a proverbial stick was no longer fun. He made it too personal when he implied that I did drugs.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked after several minutes of tense silence.
“I’m taking you home. You need to pack up a few things and then I’m taking you back to the house. Your father wants to see you.”
“Why can’t you ever just call and tell me Daddy wants to see me? Why is it always such a production?”
“I’m terminating your lease, you’re moving back into the house,” he said. He never once looked over at me.
“What? Devin, why? You can’t tell me what to do. You aren’t my father. You’re just some interfering,… arg. You aren’t my boss. I’m twenty-one.”
“Your father wants you home.”
Devin waited in the car while I shoved a few items into an overnight bag. I still had a full bathroom of everything I needed back at the house. It wasn’t lost on me that I was allowed to live on my own more for the sake of letting me play an independent woman than actually letting me be an independent woman.
I tossed my bag into the back of Devin’s car and slid into the passenger seat. I would never tell him, but I really liked his car. Especially when he drove it with the top down.
He guided the car up into the hills to the house. House, seemed inaccurate, this was a historical robber baron’s concept of a house. Oversized, over ornate, and amazing. Daddy had purchased it for his first wife. And he stayed after all these years, keeping in pristine museum shape. It was not a good house to grow up in.
There were more bedrooms than there were people who lived there, but there were no places to play and run and be a child outside of my room. I knew Devin kept a room at the house, even though he hadn’t lived there since I had moved back in after my mother’s death. By then he was all grown up.
He carried my bag up the main staircase. He stopped at the door to my room.
“Go on in, see him.” Devin nodded to the door at the end of the hall that led to my father’s bedroom.
Tina, Daddy’s current wife, stepped out of the room as I approached. She put her arms out and approached me with little shuffling steps.
“Oh, Harleigh, it’s so good to see you.” She hugged me into a cloud of perfume.
“Hi, Tina. How’s he doing?” I asked.
Tina’s hands slid away from the hug, and she grabbed onto both of mine.
She looked back over her shoulder. “He’s holding out. I don’t know for what. He’s so stubborn.”
We both stared at the closed door for a moment.
“We should go get our nails done, huh? Something to clear away the gloom. We just have to accept the inevitable.” She squeezed my hands and let go.
I watched her sashay down the long upstairs hall. She jumped out of the way when Devin exited my room. Devin made eye contact with me. I lowered my gaze, turned, and pushed into Daddy’s room.
The lights were dimmed, and machines beeped. All of the normal furniture was gone. The oversized bed, the heavy wood side tables. Everything except the long dresser with the large mirror had been replaced with medical equipment. And from a glance, it looked like the dresser was used as a place to store medicines and other related things. The room seemed darker than I ever remembered it being.
His nurse looked up as I entered. Her face was illuminated by the light of her e-reader. She gave me a slight nod and returned to her book.
I sat as gently as I could. “Hi Daddy,” I said, picking up his hand.
My father had always been old. Now he looked ancient. I had known he was failing, I hadn’t realized how close he was.
He gripped my hand. “Harleigh.” His voice sounded like rustling paper. “Don’t worry girl, Devin will take care of you.”
“I’m not worried, Daddy. Devin will take care of everything. He always does,” I said.
“I had hoped you would be married by now.” There were long gaps of silence or coughing between words. I waited for him to say what he needed to say.
It made sense that my father would want me married; he would want someone else to have to deal with me. It never hurt any less, but I was used to it.
“Devin,” Daddy wheezed.
I was ready to jump up and get him. I knew he wouldn’t be too far away.
“He should have married you by now.”
I patted my father’s hand and shook my head. Devin would never want to marry me. I may have giggled at the idea years ago when I had a crush on him, but that had long since passed.
