Page 37 of Daddy's Double Surprise

I showered, forced myself to eat a slice of toast and drink a glass of orange juice, then headed into the office to meet with Joseph and the doctors. I was on edge, probably too emotionally amped up to be professional. My mind was clouded with insecurities and anxiety; I drove on autopilot.

At the office, I bypassed reception entirely, choosing the service elevator in the back to avoid as many people as possible. I called Sunny four times, but she never answered. Jackson sent me a message saying Sunny had called in sick again, said she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to share germs. Bygerms, I was sure she meant emotions. She didn’t want to face me, and I didn’t blame her. I assumed Rick had said something, and it was only a matter of time before she pulled the plug on us.

Joseph saw me coming from the opposite direction as normal and offered a confused, narrowed-eyed expression. “Everything okay?” he asked. I grumbled a nonword in response and followed him into the conference room where Peters and Wilkinson sat at the table with cups of coffee in hand.

“So gentlemen, are we ready?” Joseph produced a manilla file folder out of the briefcase situated on the table and slid the folder across to them.

“As long as the contract is good,” Wilkinson said, opening the file folder.

I sat with Joseph across the table, gripping the arms of the rolling chair. My interest in these two was minimal now. They were pawns; we had bigger fish to fry. If we played our cards right, we were days from shutting this whole thing down.

Wilkinson signed first then passed it to shifty-eyed Peters, who sat for at least ten minutes reading over the contract. While he pored over it, I turned to Joseph and scowled at him. This was just the tip of the iceberg as far as malpractice within the company went. We needed to do a complete audit of company policy and standard operating procedure for trials.

“Have you had a chance to look into our Tampa branch and find out what went wrong there?” I could never give Sunny her friend back, but I could help ease her mind and put her worries to rest by following up with what happened and fixing it, so it never happened again.

“Not yet, but I will.” Joseph didn’t look at me as he spoke. He sat with squared shoulders watching as Peters finally signed the contract.

“You can’t just brush this aside. As CEO you’re responsible for what happens in this company.” I felt my temper rising, forced higher not by my actual anger at him but due to the unresolved emotions I carried about Sunny. Why hadn’t she answered my calls? What was going on in her mind? She went home, back to Rick’s house, and how could I know if he’d told her about me owning GenOne?

“I understand,” Joseph said, turning to glare at me as Peters shut the file folder and slid it across the table. His expression was stern and dark, like he was sending me a message I didn’t care to receive.

“I don’t think you do. A woman died because of our failure, and that should never happen.” Hot under the collar didn’t begin to describe how I felt. I was a starving, caged animal, and my prey was right in front of me.

“I do, Dr. Price, and I’m taking care of it.” Ignoring my anger, he leaned forward and collected the contracts, peeked at them to make sure they were signed, and turned toward the doctors and said, “Now, would you like to provide us with the information we requested? We need names, gentlemen.”

I chewed the inside of my lower lip in a rage, wanting to bite his head off. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Everything in me felt obsessed with getting to Sunny, finding out what she knew, and pleading with her to understand my situation. I didn’t ask for my father to dump this entire thing into my lap. I should’ve sold it years ago, but the profits from GenOne funded dozens of clinics all over this city and the state of California.

“You deal with this, and deal with it now.” I stood, tucking my tie into my jacket and buttoning it. I couldn’t sit here anymore and try to pretend I was okay. Joseph was more than capable of fixing this and if he didn’t, I’d have the board vote him out.

“Carter, please…” Joseph looked up at me, still annoyed, and I turned to walk out.

“Finish this, Joseph, or I will.” My threat hit him, turning his glower into a glare, and I left the conference room in a huff. I was irrational and out of control, and the only thing that would help me settle was to speak to Sunny. Never in my life had the fear of the future been so large in my mind that I had a hard time grounding myself.

It felt like I was spiraling again, the way I did when Hope died, and I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to talk to her.

25

SUNNY

Ilay in my bed listening to the sounds of the house around me. It was silent for a long part of the day while Mom was out with her friends shopping and doing lunch. Dad was at work, where I should’ve been too, but my heart was too broken to see patients. I’d spent the day in bed searching ads in the real estate section for apartments in good neighborhoods and crying.

My plan to stay here in LA didn’t feel right anymore, and all because of one sentence my dad blurted out in anger as I stormed out of that restaurant the other night. I was supposed to be happy to put down roots here, start a family with Carter maybe, but a haze of uncertainty clouded every thought I had now.

“You weren’t supposed to tell her!” I heard Mom shout, pulling me from my thoughts, and I figured she was angry with Dad for blurting out that jibe about the baby. She promised not to say anything until she was forced to. I was furious with her, but I understood at the same time. They were my parents. He was bound to find out at some point, though I’d much rather have told him myself.

“Melanie, you’re being ridiculous. She had a right to?—”

“Stop it. Just stop it,” Mom snipped, cutting him off. The voices were muffled, several walls separating us, but I knew the angry tones. I’d heard other fights between them, multiple times. I knew it was part of life. You can’t live with someone for decades and not get on each other’s nerves now and then.

The arguing went on longer than I liked, so I pulled my pillow over my head and tried to drown it out more completely. Was that what this was between me and Carter? A fight? Things were tense and odd, but he hadn’t seemed like that. I was the one to walk away, not answer his calls, and call in sick to work. I was the reason there was this painful distance between us.

That realization didn’t help me at all, though I knew I could fix it by just taking an Uber over to his house and talking with him. My insecurities about the baby and about what Dad meant when he said there was some sort of connection between Carter and Kira that I had missed were the things driving the wedge between us. I needed answers, but I was afraid to have them.

I didn’t even hear when Mom knocked on the door, but I felt her hand on my hip shaking me. I jolted in surprise, then turned over and shoved the pillow under my head. My phone lay on the mattress running the battery dead as my search for an apartment stalled.

“I’m so sorry, Sunny,” Mom said as she sat on the edge of the mattress and rested her hand on the side of my knee. I lay curled in a ball looking up at her. My chest was full of anger toward both her and my father, but I needed comfort. It was such a conflicting feeling to want comfort from the person who hurt me.

“You told him…” The words were hollow even though there was a torrent of emotion behind them. She needed to know how outraged I was.

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