Page 10 of Single Dad Christmas

Louisa thought of her sister, grateful to have something tangible she could reflect on, something to tether her to the real world and her life outside of Noah. A man she’d met only that morning, and was suddenly occupying a tremendous amount of her brain power.

“She’s a wonderful person,” Louisa promised. “I mean, she always was, but for Grace, the whole teen rebellion thing seemed like a compulsion, rather than a descriptive phase. 0Terrorising our parents wasnotoptional.”

“And what did you do, Louisa, while all hell was breaking loose around you?”

Louisa flushed with a hint of embarrassment at what a square she’d been. “I ignored it,” she said, though it was so much more than that. She’d studied, worked, shone when her sister screwed up, making sure she never put a foot wrong, because her parents wouldn’t be able to cope with two daughters going off the rails at the same time. Louisa’s life had been an exercise incolouring inside the lines. She had been a ‘good girl’, designated by all who knew her, from the day of her birth, right up until now.

“So I can’t really give you advice from my personal perspective?—,”

“Someone you love leaned into the whole teenage disaster thing and you had to watch from the sidelines? It sounds like you’re exactly the person to help. Are you free tonight?”

She stared at him, her insides rolling. “Tonight?”

“For dinner.”

It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t a date. He was her client, and he was asking for help with his daughter. Technically, this fell into the job description, didn’t it? Her role was to make their clients happy, however she could, and Noah Fox clearly wanted to talk about his daughter’s rebellion.

“I—yes. I can do that,” she agreed, even before she’d decided she would.

“Great. Give Rose your address and I’ll come pick you up. How’s eight o’clock?”

A little later than Louisa usually went out, these days. Then again, she’d been a total hermit for at least the last six months. Before leaving Ares, the press attention had reached fever pitch, meaning she’d spent the northern hemisphere summer between the palace and her flat, barely braving even a trip to the supermarket. After they’d broken up, she’d been running away, and running away was just easier to do when you didn’t make friends or connections. Every night, she went back to her empty flat, ate a microwave meal with a small glass of wine, then curled up on the sofa and fell asleep whilst watching re-runs of ER.

Hardly the stuff of single-girl excitement.

Technically though, she was nursing a broken heart. Or at least, she should have been, never mind that she didn’tfeelheartbroken, having left Ares, so much as shell-shocked at howwildly her life had veered off the course she’d presumed, up until around six months ago, it would take.

“Louisa? Eight okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Yes. I can do that. I’ll see you then.” She just wished her voice hadn’t sounded so husky!

“I don’t need a damned babysitter,”Taylor stamped her foot for good measure.

“Language, Taylor,” he said, sharply.

Taylor’s laugh was cruelly mocking. “Damn, damn, damn. God, Dad, you’re such a loser. It’s not even a swear word.”

“In my house, it is. I don’t want to hear it out of your mouth again, young lady.”

Young lady? Young lady? What was happening to him? He felt wound up tighter than a coil. He felt fit to burst. He felt like Taylor had called him, a loser.

“For fu?—,”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he snapped, and for once, Taylor listened to him. But she slammed her hands on her hips and glared at him as though she wished he’d shrivel up and die. He couldn’t remembereverfeeling this way about his own father and stepmother. He’d gone through the teen years pretty much without incident. A few cracks in his voice, a heap of extra inches in height, he’d started to fill out his frame and get hair on his legs and in all the places grown men had it, and then, bam. He was done.

It was very easy to imagine that Taylor got this rebellious side from her mother.

“I’m fifteen years old.”

“I’m aware of that. I was in the hospital the day you were born.”

She rolled her eyes. “Gross.”

His nostrils flared as he tried to contain his temper. “Kristen is not your babysitter. She’s my housekeeper.”

“Oh, and there’s some urgent laundry matter she needs to attend to at seven thirty in the evening? Doesn’t she have a life of her own?”

“Keep your damn voice down.”

---