Page 70 of Wright Kind of Trouble

His eyes darted to me. An apology in them. Even though he had no reason to apologize. But he must have known how bad this was as well as I did.

“I know your father,” Owen said, stepping forward and offering Chase his hand. “Arnold, right?”

Chase shook his hand automatically. “Yes, sir.”

“Hmm,” he said, assessing the situation.

“Well,” my mom said, as if she could sense the tension in the room, “why don’t I get drinks? We could…we could sit and have a chat. I’d love to get to know you.”

“Chase can’t stay,” I said at once.

My hackles were up, and I was half ready to bare my teeth at Owen. I didn’t want to be in the room for another minute with him. I didn’t want to see what catastrophe he was about to wreck through my life.

But it was coming.

And I was his daughter after all.

I knew what I had to do to fix it.

“Correct,” he said slowly. His eyes swept to mine again, a question in them that I couldn’t answer.

“Actually, Mom, why don’t you stay here with Chase? I need to talk to Owen alone.”

“Uh, honey, are you sure?” Mom asked.

“Of course.” I pulled Mom into a hug. Poor, helpless Mom, who just wanted the narcissist to love her. “I’ll only be a minute.” My eyes cut to Owen, as sharp as a knife. “Right?”

Owen smiled, an opening gambit. “Just a minute, love.”

Chase put his hand on my wrist. “Harley…”

I shook him off with a smile. “I’ll be right back.”

I could see he wanted to disagree, but I couldn’t right now. I had to be strong enough to withstand Owen Wright.

Then, I stepped into the kitchen with my father.

I hadn’t seen the man on purpose in years. I despised his stupid, lying face and his ridiculous, deceitful mouth. West might have been the one to confront the rest of our family to discover the truth, but I was the one who had found out that Owen had a separate family in the first place. And I wasn’t like Whitt, who had believed the best in him. I knew that he only had a race to the bottom.

“It’s good to see you.”

“What do you want?” I asked, cutting him off. My eyes were cold, and I stood my ground against the man who had made me this hard.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What. Do. You. Want?” I bit out. “I know you have a price. What is it so that you don’t tell everyone?”

“Now, Harley, why would you want to keep your relationship a secret?”

“I am not here to talk about Chase with you. Clearly, you know who he is. You know the Sinclairs relationship with our family. You know that the Wrights hate them.”

“And you don’t want anyone to know,” he said as if he hadn’t clocked it the minute he saw Chase.

“So, what do you want?”

“A relationship.”

“No,” I said. “You can’t negotiate with ambiguity. Someone taught me that.”

---