“Oh, may I see it?”
She hesitated for a moment before biting her lip and getting to her feet. She ran to the dresser on the opposite side of the closet and opened the bottom drawer. I was vaguely aware that’s where my daughter kept her collection of important and sentimental things, but I kept out of it. It wasn’t my place to disturb her privacy.
When she retu
rned, she was holding a family picture, one that brought a lump to my throat to see. She had definitely rendered mine and Ashe’s likeness as we cradled a smiling Elle between us. I don’t think we’d ever had a family moment that was genuinely sweet like that. Had Lindsay assumed we were one big happy family, or had she put a spin on the interpretation to make Elle happy? If that was the case, she sounded more perceptive and mature than I would’ve given her credit for, since she would’ve been maybe fourteen at the time she drew this, according to the date. “It’s lovely. I can see why you cherish it.” Maybe Elle was right. Lindsay would be a good candidate.
Elle took it back just as carefully as she handed it to me and returned it to her drawer. When she returned, she stood over me for a moment until I got to my feet. Then she looked up at me, and her expression was solemn. “Will you find Lindsay for me, Dad?”
Even if I hadn’t been inclined to start with, hearing her call me “Dad” instead of “Ben” and asking in that way was sure to clinch it. Maybe she was manipulating me, or maybe she just wanted it so badly that she was forgetting to hide behind her veneer of sarcasm and cynicism. I nodded. “I’ll do my best, baby girl.” When I reached out to ruffle her hair, this time she didn’t pull away. For just a moment, she let my fingers rest against her white-blonde locks before turning away from me.
“I’ll fix my hair and be down in a moment.” Ah well. It was a dismissal if I’d ever heard one.
“We have about fifteen minutes before we need to leave, so please don’t dawdle.” I left her with the gentle reminder as I turned away and exited her room.
As soon as I was in the hallway, I reached for my phone. Dialing head of security at the company was common, as he was one of my right-hand men. Eric Baylor answered immediately, and I quickly relayed what I remembered about Lindsay Valentine, along with the information that I wanted her found quickly. “As long as she’s on the up and up, make her an offer she can’t refuse,” I said before hanging up a couple of minutes later.
I was feeling brighter and more optimistic as I ventured into the breakfast room. Maybe Lindsay would be just what my daughter needed to become a happy child again. Even better, she wouldn’t be any sort of temptation or distraction for me. After my disastrous relationship with Ashe, I was done with women other than an occasional one on the side to meet my needs. No emotions, and nobody gets hurt. But a mother figure would be good for Elle.
Besides, I remembered Lindsay as a mousy girl with plain brown hair, big glasses, and a straight, albeit chubby, frame. I didn’t remember much more about her than that, but I was starting to feel optimistic that she was a very safe bet.
After the kind of luck I’d had recently, I needed a safe bet.
CHAPTER 2
LINDSAY
T ears prickled behind my eyelids, and I blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. The Dean of Student Affairs sat across from me, and while her expression was uncompromising, her tone was kind enough. I didn’t like hearing what she had to say, though I knew it was coming.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to find a solution and soon, Ms. Valentine. The check bounced for your latest tuition payment, and since you ignored the situation for thirty days, something has to be done now. If I don’t have some sort of resolution within the week, I’m going to have to expel you.”
I nodded, shifting in my chair with shame and embarrassment. I never would’ve turned in the check when my father mailed it if I’d suspected it wouldn’t go through. The possibility that it would bounce should have at least occurred to me, since he was terrible with money and always prone to wild spending sprees, but I had been naïve enough to think that my future would’ve been important enough to him to ensure the tuition check was covered.
“I really wasn’t trying to ignore it, Mrs. Ross. I didn’t find out until I got the email in my student account yesterday morning. My father didn’t tell me.”
Her uncompromising expression softened, and her look took on an edge of sympathy. “That’s understandable, and I feel for your situation. I have a list of scholarships that you can apply for, but I have to be honest and tell you they won’t be processed in time for the payment that’s past due. I have no doubt you can get at least some of them with your grades from high school and your extracurricular activities, but they won’t be something you can rely on to pay for this semester. And unfortunately, you’re far enough into the academic year that we can’t just issue a refund and drop the classes. Since we’re halfway through the semester, if you can’t sort this out quickly, they’ll be listed as withdrawals on your record. That means they’ll affect your grade point average. Which in turn, affects your ability to get any scholarships.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and swallowed the lump in my throat. I studiously ignored the buzzing of the phone in my purse as I took a deep breath. “Is there some kind of payment plan? I could get another job.”
Somehow. I already had two part-time jobs alongside attending school full-time, but did I really need to sleep anyway? I can sleep in four years, after I graduate.
Mrs. Ross shook her head. “I’m truly sorry, Ms. Valentine, but you are already on the payment plan. The most we can do is break tuition payments into thirds, with the final third needing to be paid at least a month before the term ends. Even that payment is coming up. You have the second installment due, plus penalties for the returned check, and then less than a week after that, your third installment is due. We won’t be able to accept a check in the future either. The funds must be a cashier’s check or some other certified method, or you could also pay via credit card.”
It was getting hard to concentrate on what she was saying. My phone briefly stopped buzzing, but now it started again. The sound was drilling through my head, making the headache that started the previous morning, when I learned how bad the situation was, that much worse. When I called my father, he’d been apologetic, but he also brushed it off. “I’m telling you, kid, I’m on the next big thing here. Payout will be soon, and I’ll have so much money I can prepay four years of tuition for you.”
Good ol’ Dad, the eternal optimist and infernal idiot. Despite the pang of shame at the disloyalty, I had to admit it was merely the truth. He lived in his own little world, where things like tuition payments didn’t really matter.
Somehow, I managed to block out the annoying buzzing of the phone against my leg. “I see what I can do. Thank you for your honesty. I really needed to know my options.”
The dean pushed a stack of papers toward me. “Let me be blunt, Lindsay. If you can’t come up with the remaining two-thirds of the semester’s tuition, please, for your sake, don’t bother paying the second installment. You’ll just be throwing away your money if we have to expel you anyway. Perhaps you should look into community college. It’d be much easier to afford, and you might still be able to get some scholarships if you apply before these grades register on your transcripts. And then eventually you could transfer back, if you wanted.”
I nodded, feeling the need to bleed to blink rapidly again. “That’s good advice. Thank you.”
After gathering the papers and hurrying from the office, I rushed down the hallway to the nearest bathroom. Once inside, I closed myself into the stall and allowed silent tears to flow freely down my cheeks. It was a habit I’d gotten into during childhood, when I realized that tears distressed my father, who had no ability to cope with them. He’d often end up crying alongside me, and tell me all about his sad and miserable life. At some point, I learned to hide my negative emotions from him—to protect him.
And what good had it done? He’d certainly never made much of an effort to protect me. Sure, there’d been food on the table most of the time, and usually a place to live, but that had been it. No birthdays, and no Santa at Christmas. Just broken promises. Sure, I had babysitting for the occasional little thing I might have wanted, but it still hurt. But beyond gifts, it would be a crap shoot whether or not the electricity would be on from month to month, depending on whether Dad had a hunch on the horses, or somebody convinced him to buy in on an MLM scheme. There were probably a hundred financial failures that followed in his wake, yet he never seemed to learn from a single one of them.
And apparently, he never learned not to send a check he couldn’t cover to Columbia University to pay for his daughter’s one shot at a real future.