Page 18 of Smooth Sailing

Oh no.

No way in hell.

He didn’t get to do that.

I began to walk around his desk, stating, “We’re not doing this.”

“Diana, please come to dinner,” he requested of my back on my way to his door.

I turned to him.

And I said what I said next despite the sharp pain I felt at hearing the undisguised and genuine entreaty in his tone.

“I’ll consider it, but before then, I’ll share that it wasn’t your outdated…and you’re right, wrong line of thinking that was the problem. It was that you thought like a man, not a father. You, my father, after what I went through, put me through a different kind of onslaught by taking the stance of a man, and in so doing, you protected another man, one who had harmed me. That was why I walked away and never come back.”

I had to hand it to him, once I’d said this, he looked stricken.

Okay, no.

He looked wrecked.

But I couldn’t let that affect me, because I wasn’t done.

“If you’re standing there, telling me you want to be my father, then I’ll tell you, it’ll never work, and I’m not putting myself through it, if you don’t figure out what being a father means. Now, this may seem extreme to you, but representing a man who very obviously brutally attacked a woman physically, sexually, and having a daughter, is not in the slightest bit okay. I don’t give that first shit he’s entitled to a defense. Let someone else offer it to him. You are not a struggling lawyer who needs to take cases to put food on his family’s table. Babic had a retainer with another firm, he did this, they dropped him. You picked him up. You. A man with a daughter who’s survived a sexual assault. Think on that, Dad. Think why I might have an issue with that. Think what it might mean to me that you’re defending this man. Once you do, contact me. And then maybe we’ll chat.”

“So it is about you,” he declared, and there was a hint of a smirk on his lips.

I did not forget how very much Nolan Armitage liked to be right.

I just forgot how irksome it was.

“No, it’s about you,” I retorted. “My entire life, it’s never been about me. It’s always been about you.”

His head jerked like I’d slapped him.

And I didn’t even have to commit level five (or three) violence.

This worked for me.

I walked out of his office, closed the door behind me, and looked right to Janie.

She was very attractive.

But she was so freaking young.

Too young to be put through my father’s wringer.

Taking her in, I made a decision I didn’t like, but in the end, for the sisterhood, I had no choice.

I walked to her and stopped in front of her desk.

“My father fucks all of his PAs,” I announced.

Her eyes got big.

But her face got red.

Right.

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