Page 54 of Tempted By the Bosshole

“I’ve been looking for you for a year,” Isabella cuts in. She doesn’t sound angry or even accusatory. She sounds hurt. “A whole year! You never once reached out to me, just like you didn’t when I was a teenager.”

I pin her asshole of a father with a glare. “Do you hear that? Do you hear what you did to her? You abandoned her when she was a kid and?—”

“Because I had cancer!” He sighs. “A frontal lobe glioblastoma. I…thought I was going to die.”

Isabella gasps, hand pressed over her open mouth, obviously stunned and reeling.

I glare at him suspiciously. Is he lying for sympathy?

Doug doesn’t flinch or look away.

Oh, shit. Maybe he’s telling the truth.

The implications of that… Fuck, it changes everything.

“Once I found out my insurance company wouldn’t pay for a treatment the FDA hadn’t approved yet, I took the money from our business account and split. I’d found a doctor in Brazil who had a good success rate with curing this kind of aggressive cancer. I had to act fast. And I had to pay in cash. I almost didn’t make it.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” my wife demands.

That’s my question, too. We were business partners. I thought we were friends.

Doug sighs. “Diana told me a few weeks before I left that she wanted a divorce, so I couldn’t ask her to take care of me. If she didn’t want me anymore, I didn’t want her pity. And you were too young to handle a potentially terminal illness. I thought a clean break would be easier for you to process than slowly watching me die.”

In his shoes, would I have made the same decision? I don’t know.

“Diana asked you for a divorce because you were sniffing around Julia,” I point out.

“I wasn’t. We were friends. Just friends back then. She knew about the cancer because she came into the office looking for you the day I got the diagnosis. I was at my desk, losing my shit, and I blabbed. She promised she’d keep my secret and helped me hash out a wellness plan. She was my support system over text and email during treatment and while I recovered. It wasn’t until I came back stateside years later and long after my divorce was final that something more happened between us. Izzy had just left for college, and I was finally getting back on my feet. I showed up to your house to repay you the money I took, but Julia answered the door. We started talking. There was a spark. Things…happened. I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this after I grew up?” Isabella demands.

“I didn’t know how to bridge the gap between us. Once I was out of the woods medically, I’d missed holidays and birthdays, crushes, tests, and teenage rites of passage. I didn’t think I had the right to just appear out of nowhere and be Dad again. You seemed to be doing all right and”—he kicks at a rock in the driveway—“I thought I’d just be in the way.”

“Even when Mom died?

“I should have asked if I was welcome, not assumed I wouldn’t be. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

“What about this last year? You just dropped off the face of the earth again. Never mind you’d promised to pay for my school. I took out student loans?—”

“The cancer came back. I had to return to Brazil, and I needed the cash for more treatment.” Doug sends her an imploring stare. “That’s why my hair turned so gray. The last year has been rough.”

Holy shit. I had no idea what Doug endured. Still, he picked himself over his daughter. Yeah, life or death versus money, but Isabella wasn’t a child anymore. If he couldn’t part with his green, at least he could have given her the truth.

“Are you in remission?” she asks softly.

That’s what I love about my wife. Even when she’s been wronged and has every reason to be upset, she still cares about the people around her. Despite the crap people have heaped on her—me included—she has a big heart. It gives me hope she’ll forgive me someday.

“Two brain surgeries and more chemo later, yeah. I’m broken, but I’m alive.”

“I-I don’t even know what to say.” Her voice catches. “You’ve been through so much…”

Doug tears up. “I know you have, too. And I know I’ve largely failed as a father.” Then he shifts his stare to me. “Maybe if I had reasserted myself in your life sooner, you wouldn’t have married this bastard. He’s only using you to get to me.”

“Dad—”

“I’m serious. He sent me pictures of you two. Did you know that? Of him on top of your naked body in bed, next to your wedding dress. I don’t have to guess what he was doing to you in the name of revenge just before he snapped this picture.”

Damn it, I’ve already done my own damage. I don’t need him fucking up things with my wife even more. He’ll paint my actions in the worst possible way, and how will Isabella feel? How hurt will she be? “Doug?—”

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