Page 11 of Revenge On Her Dad's Best Friends

But the thought of saying she never wanted to see them again tore her apart.

The only other alternative was begging them to let her into their lives. Or she was going to amp up her efforts to be a menace to them if they rejected her.

What was wrong with her? Didn’t she want to be done with them forever?

“No. This is not goodbye. This is just the beginning. Let me reintroduce myself. Hello. I’m Calista, Hank’s daughter. You’re my dad’s best friends. You’re all I have now, the only people still connected to him. You’re it. And I’m not letting you out of my sight. You don’t get to get off that easy. You owe it to him to be in my life because he asked you to. And if I have to make you sign contracts, you’re going to uphold his dying wishes.” Yes, she was going to make them sign binding contracts with her.

She couldn’t not have them in her life.

“When I get a promotion at work, I’m going to call you, and we’re going to go out and celebrate. When it’s my birthday, you’re taking me to that little Italian restaurant with the gargoyles for their famous meatballs. And I’ll do the same for your birthdays. I want to see you for the holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving. Maybe even New Year’s Eve. When I feel sad, you’re going to come and see me and tell me funny things about my dad. And when I get married, you’re going to walk me down the aisle, and when I have kids, you’re going to be their—”

As if lightning charged through the whole room, the atmosphere combusted, and she caught fire, sizzling in its grasp.

Her eyes were surely deceiving her.

But she wasn’t ready for this. For them. Not like this.

Chapter Eleven

Oh boy.

Tabby had warned her they weren’t the warm, fuzzy types, and they were proving her friend right with remarkable ease.

Oh crap.

In the blink of an eye, Calista stood face to face with the three men she had just kidnapped; no, that didn’t sound right. She had in-house-napped them, pushed them into three chairs, handcuffed them, and then gagged them. That sounded more accurate.

Somehow, they’d gotten themselves released from the handcuffs—without a key,dammit, which meant they’d had to have had some sort of thin metal thingy on their person to unlock the cuffs. They removed her amateurish gags and flung them aside, and now they were staring her down.

If she thought it had been showtime before, she’d been wrong. This was it, showtime with a significant dose of showdown. But she wasn’t going to back down.

“I think it would be in your best interest if you leave right now, Calista.” Reece’s voice, calm, soothing yet tinted with a deep roughness, spiked every cell in her body until they danced along down her spine with a peculiar sensation.

“I think it would be in your best interest if you agreed to my terms. Then I’ll leave. Just agree that we’ll see each other for good times, sad times, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas—”

“Not going to happen,” Zachariah said, not bothering to look at her. His words sliced through her with such piercing sharpness that her heart sank. Why did she think she needed them? Why was the thought of never thinking about them, obsessing over them, so crushing to her that she couldn’t breathe?

She didn’t know the answers. She just knew she needed them. They were her only link to her dad. Right?

“We promised your dad we’d take care of you, and we did it the only way we knew how. We fulfilled his wishes to the best of our abilities,” Reece said, talking to her as if she were a child.

“And you think he meant remote care? Or momentary care? Is that what you think he meant? He didn’t mean any of those things.”

“It’s the best we can do.” Bradford stood at the door, gesturing for her to leave.

“Well, I’m not leaving. So I guess we’re in the negotiating phase of our relationship.”

“We don’t have a relationship, Calista,” Bradford said so grumpily, anyone looking in would have sworn she stole his caramel cups and stuffed them into her mouth right in front of him.

“Well, that’s on you three and your pigheadedness,” she said, raising her chin and letting them know it was all their fault. “Okay, how about only birthdays, Halloween, and Christmas?” She counted each one on her fingers. “We can leave the rest.”

“No birthdays. No Halloween. No Christmas,” Zach said, shooting her down.

“Why not?” She folded her arms over her chest, her stance hopefully depicting that she wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. “What is so wrong about seeing each other six times a year? It’s hardly a death sentence. And my dad would have wanted that for us.”

“We have nothing in common, Calista,” Reece said quietly.

Really? That was going to be their argument? Just as well, she brought receipts to back up her claims.

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