Page 35 of Until Daddy

Barron’s jaw clenched, but otherwise his expression remained passive. “What could you possibly want to know about that woman? She walked out on you, on us both.” Barron shook his head, but something felt off this time. He’d said the same thing over and over throughout the years—she’d walked out on them—but this time, Jamison noticed the shift of his gaze when he said it.

“Why? I mean… throughout the divorce, she never said anything?”

Barron cleared his throat. “We didn’t see each other through the divorce. I’ve told you that. She left, everything was done through attorneys. I never saw her. And she didn’t want any rights to you or visitations either.”

Well-rehearsed sentences. Jamison had taken them for gospel over the years, but the little hesitations, the tiny shift in his father’s stance now sent doubt barreling through him.

“Right.” Jamison took a deep breath. Barron wouldn’t be very forthcoming, and would opening old wounds really get them anywhere? How much good could it do Jamison as a grown man?

“Well, Garrick and I will have an answer for you at dinner.” Jamison stood from his chair and closed the folder. “I’m sure your lady friend is waiting for you.”

Barron Croft’s expression softened, as though he noticed the change in his son, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Yes. She probably is.” Barron walked around the desk, not giving Jamison another glance. “I’ll see you tomorrow night then.”

His father walked out of the office, quietly closing the door behind him and leaving Jamison in the silence of his thoughts.

* * *

Beingthe son of a multi-millionaire was cliché in Jamison’s book. He’d spent most of his adult life trying to break out of that box. He didn’t play the party boy role most of the other sons seemed comfortable playing. Even Garrick had taken his turn in that role for a summer, but Jamison had never bothered with it.

Yet, there he stood on the corner of Wells and Walton, looking at a small block of businesses his father would have to purchase in order to build his tower. Acting the dutiful son didn’t fit him well either, it made his stomach turn. A family-owned grocery store, a boutique, and an unmarked building—his father would be putting them out of business.

“Jamison.” Garrick stepped out of a cab and up onto the curb with him. “Is this the block?” he asked, looking at the same sight.

“This is it.” Jamison nodded. He pulled the collar of his coat up to fend off the chilly air whirling around them. He’d spent most of the day in his office finishing several projects he’d been ignoring while trying to make a foundation with Carissa. This was his last stop before heading over to pick her up for the evening.

“It’s not a bad location,” Garrick said, looking around and stepping out of the way of a small group of women walking past them. “I mean, it’s within walking distance of Michigan Avenue, the El, and all the museums are pretty easy to get to from here. He picked a great spot, actually.”

“Yeah. I’ll agree with you there.” Jamison stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched as a young woman, no older than eighteen, struggling with a large over-stuffed bag and a baby bundled in blankets walked up the steps to the unnamed building.

“Those could be apartments. They might not want to sell.” He nodded toward the young girl who was barely able to ring the bell located on the side of the glass door.

“I’m sure your father will figure out a way,” Garrick stated with less admiration and more sarcasm.

“He’s obsessed with this project. His way of leaving his stamp on the city.”

Garrick gave him an incredulous look. “Barron Croft will never see anything past the nose on his face. He’s an idiot, Jamison.”

“Yeah. It’s not like you haven’t told me that before. But I guess it just took seeing him as the man he is instead of the man I desperately wanted him to be.”

“You gave him the benefit of the doubt all these years. But it’s good to see you finally realize that you’re doing just fine without his stamp.” Garrick shook his head. “Stamp on the world. A hotel will accomplish that?”

“Who knows. But you know, Carissa said something the other day that made me start thinking. She asked me why I believed my father’s story about my mom just leaving us. What if she didn’t? What if he kept her away?” Jamison had been thinking about that scenario more often than made him comfortable. He’d gotten over his mother’s abandonment years ago, but the idea that maybe she hadn’t done that, that maybe she had wanted him, started to resurface.

“Carissa was probably deflecting something you asked her about, right?”

They’d been talking about her family, and she had changed the topic a few times. “We were talking about our parents.”

“Her parents aren’t worthy of conversation.” Garrick’s tone hardened.

“You knew them?”

“No. I met Carissa through Jade, and not until they were in college. But I saw the mess her mother made of her, the mess her father had put her in.”

“She said her father was somewhere in Texas.” Had she been lying to him, hiding things from him?

“He probably was or is. That asshole caused all sorts of trouble for her when he lived here. Always trying to use her to get some sort of government aid. Tried to claim he was a single dad. Once, he snatched her from her mom and kept her for a month, trying to get housing or some shit like that. When it didn’t work, because Carissa let it slip that she lived with her mom, he dropped her off on the corner of her street and drove off. From what I could tell, that was the last time she saw him. He called a lot, looking for money, though.”

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