I couldn’t help but to press my lips together so I wouldn’t smile at that.
“It’s amusing even if it very much isn’t,” Dad murmured.
“I’m not laughing at Blake. It’s just…Chad,” I explained.
“Yes. It is just…Chad,” he agreed.
We shared a look, and I felt that look straight to the heart of me.
Having that moment with my dad.
His expression shifted again, and he said, “And it could be that you came home with a handsome gent on your arm who so very much loves you and now I know I have to give up both of my girls when I don’t even really have them in the first place.”
So very much loves you.
Give up both of my girls.
I reached out and grabbed his hand. “You have me, Dad.”
He wrapped his other hand around mine so he was holding me with both. “I knew that, yesterday, when you had words with your mother, and it meant the world to me, Alex.”
“Maybe I didn’t try either. I’m an adult now too,” I noted.
“You won’t be taking that on,” he decreed.
“Dad—”
“Let’s just begin from here, shall we?”
I stared into his eyes.
They were the green of mine, not the brown.
The green.
He was part of me.
I didn’t remember crawling into his lap.
But I did remember him sitting at that writing desk. I remembered him buying it. I remembered it being set up. I remembered him being across the room from me, him doing his work, me reading.
No, he didn’t reach out.
But he didn’t desert me.
“We shall,” I agreed.
And another shift.
Gratitude. Relief.
And something a lot deeper.
What was simmering inside me warmed and settled.
God, I had a dad.
No.
I’d always had one.
“To that end, I must ask your advice about your sister,” he announced.
I blinked.
He kept going.
“My kneejerk reaction is to refuse to pay for what’s left of this debacle and donate what’s left of her trust fund to your Trail Blazer organization.”
I blinked again.
“Though my conscience is not following along with this thought,” he concluded.
There was a reason for that.
“You need to pay the bills,” I informed him. “You need to walk her down the aisle. You need to stand by her side. You need to keep a tight rein on her funds so she doesn’t squander them. And if she doesn’t pull it together, you need to shift them to a trust where she’ll never have full control of them, you’ll either manage them, or someone you trust will. But the next time she makes a mistake, you need to let her dig herself out from under it, Dad. No matter how embarrassing it is to her or the family.”
He knew I spoke truth, which was why his lips tightened and his nod again was curt.
“Can I ask you something?” I requested.
“Anything, love,” he answered.
“What did you mean when you told Mum she dropped all pretense yesterday?”
With both of his, he gave my hands a squeeze, let me go and sat back.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this as a preamble.
“I sense there’s no love lost for either of us with your mother, which upsets me in your case, but nevertheless, it’s true.”
I stretched out my lips.
He watched and his twitched.
“Even so,” he continued, “it makes me uncomfortable to speak ill of her directly to you. However, I very much understand why you’d wish to understand.”
It was my turn to nod.
And that was when Dad told me the story.
A story I’d always wanted to know and buried that desire, but that wasn’t the reason why I never asked.
“Your grandfather, your mother’s father, who we were all very fortunate lived an ocean away so that he could not interfere with our lives very much before he passed…” Dad paused and assured, “I’m not being unkind. He was truly a callous, autocratic man, and there would come a time when I would realize I should have paid much closer attention to him.”
This preamble was even worse.
Dad continued sharing.
“However, he was also both a very modern man and a very old-fashioned one. He understood that American money was what it was. Money. That bloodlines need to be diversified. That the world was getting smaller and smaller. As such, he decided who your mother would marry, and that would be me. She was given her directive, and she set her sights. She was immensely beautiful, had wonderful manners, and although I’d traveled quite a bit, and an English rose isn’t exactly mysterious, she seemed that to me. I was hoodwinked. However, I wouldn’t know this until she was carrying Blake. It wouldn’t do for me to discover it before the stake was thoroughly claimed. Although the woman I married was well-traveled, cultured, stylish, all the things she still is today, she was also affectionate and adventurous. She was a good listener, or so I thought. She had a sense of humor.”
He sighed.