The Perfect Holiday

And then I walk away – always.

I never f*ck the same woman twice.

But she seems to be different.

Those s*xy eyes, tiny waist and breathtaking curves make me break all my rules.

I want to own her pleasure – forever.

But first I have to win her trust.

They say relationship is not a bad thing after all, is it?

CHAPTER ONE: Katrina Donovan

I never thought that four little words could have such an impact on my life. I mean, if you had told me yesterday, or this morning even, that the plans I had so carefully laid out for my future would disappear on the turn of a card I would have said you were crazy. Then again, I was Tommy Donovan’s daughter, and Tommy Donovan quite possibly had the worst luck of any gambler east of the Mississippi.

He and I lived in a tiny apartment above a seedy bar because he had gambled away everything we had owned after my mom died of cancer ten years ago. I remember coming home from school one day to find a rented moving van out front of our nice suburban home, and him stuffing our belongings into it at a harried pace, as if we had to leave as quickly as possible because of some evil that was headed our way.

I stood there in my little school uniform with my books clutched to my chest, asking what was going on. He just told me to get in the truck and be quiet. To this day, I don’t know what exactly happened or why we had to leave so quickly, other than he had lost our home and most of our possessions playing cards. I thought his gambling days were over because we had nothing more to lose. I guess I was wrong.

“They are gonna kill me,” my father said quietly, like he was talking to himself, or someone other than me.

I glanced up from the other side of the folding card table we had wedged into one corner of our kitchenette and frowned at him. For a moment, I thought I’d imagined his voice because I was so lost in my own thoughts. We rarely talked anymore, even on Sunday, the one day when we sat down to eat together. My mother loved our Sunday family dinners and always refused to let anything interfere with them, even my father’s bad habits or addictions.

“I don’t ask for much, Tommy Ray Donovan,” I recalled her saying, though I couldn’t recall the sound of her voice. She was Irish, and her voice had a lovely lilt that I hoped would be mine someday. “You don’t have to attend church, but you can at least sit down for an hour and eat with your family.”

I never got her Irish lilt. My voice is husky and my tongue is sharp like everyone else’s in the neighborhood. Sunday dinner is not as big a deal as it once was. Now we just go through the motions to honor her memory, I suppose, though many Sundays my father is gone before I got out of bed and doesn’t return until time to open the bar for lunch on Monday.

We had never been close, my father and me. I was a mama’s girl and he preferred the company of his gambling buddies to his family. Now, we simply shared a living space, not a home. We rarely talked because neither of us had much to say to the other. It was as if it had all been said and there was no need to say anymore. We were just biding our time until I could get into a good school and start pursuing my own dreams and leave my old life behind. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever see my father again after I went away to school. Sometimes I wondered if

he would survive without me or simply drink himself to death without me around to mother hen him all the time. If that happened, I wondered if I would even care.

I watched him for a moment without saying a word. His head was down. He seemed to be mumbling to himself. He was picking up the food on his plate with a fork. He hadn’t eaten a bite of the meatloaf I’d made, or the instant mashed potatoes that I’d slathered with butter and salt. Granted, I would never win an award for cooking, but we allowed ourselves the luxury of meat once a week and he usually devoured whatever I put in front of him like a starving man, then ask for more before I could take a bite. I knew something had to be seriously wrong if he was poking the meatloaf with his fork rather than shoveling it into his mouth.

“Is there something wrong with the meatloaf?” I asked. I had allowed myself a small piece and thought it tasted fine, or as fine as my version of meatloaf could taste. I wasn’t much of a meat eater, which worked out well since we could rarely afford meat. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t poverty-stricken or starving, but money was always tight, even though the bar did a good business most nights. I knew my dad pocketed a lot of the cash that came through the till and that was okay. It was his business and his life. I planned to be out of there soon anyway, with or without his help.

I picked up the bottle of ketchup and held it out to him. “Do you need the ketchup?”

“No,” he said quietly.

“Then what is it?”

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked, sounding irritated.

“I guess not,” I said, setting my fork aside. I took a deep breath and held it as I put my hands in my lap and balled them into tight fists. I was getting the feeling I’d had that day I came home to catch him packing the moving truck. Something bad was coming our way again. I just knew it. I braced myself for the worst.

“They’re gonna kill me,” he said quietly. He put down his fork and pressed his palms to the table, one on each side of his plate, as if he was trying to keep the table from floating in the air. He looked up with tears in his eyes. “They’re gonna kill me. And there’s nothing I can do.”

I shook my head to make sure I was hearing right. I let my eyes go around his face for a moment. I guess I didn’t pay much attention to him anymore because it was as if I was staring at a stranger. I hadn’t noticed how old and worn out he had become. He was only fifty-seven but looked to be closer to a hundred. His once pleasant face was pudgy and red from the drinking. Little blue veins mapped the skin beneath his eyes and across his thickening nose. His skin had an ashen pallor, like a man who had not seen the sun for a very long time. He had put on weight and was losing his hair. And he had big tears in his eyes. That was the thing that caught me off guard and told me that something was wrong. I’d never seen my father cry. Not even when they were lowering my mom into the ground.

“Who’s going to kill you?” I asked with a little disbelieving smile on my face. My father wasn’t a kidder, but I thought, surely, he can’t be serious. His expression told me he was. “Jesus, Daddy, what have you done?”

He took a deep breath and let it shudder through his body. When he took his palms from the table they left a perfect outline of sweat on the surface. He rubbed his hands together and avoided looking me in the eye.

“I have debts,” he said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “I owe people.”

“What kind of debts?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting him to confess out loud. I laced my fingers together in my lap to keep my hands from shaking. “Daddy, what debts and what people?”