Page 2 of Break Me, Daddy

At the hospital, he parked, silently cursing the number of cars filling the parking lot as he ran for the emergency room doors. A rather frazzled-looking nurse glanced up when he approached the front counter.

“I’m looking for Francesca Legare.”

“Family?” the woman asked, tapping the information into the computer.

As a rule, he didn’t make a habit of lying. But his babygirl had asked for him, specifically, and he’d be damned if he let a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit keep him from her. “I’m her Daddy.”

There. Not technically a lie. Nobody needed to know exactly what kind of Daddy he was. And if the nurse was put off by the term, it didn’t show on her face as she took down his information before finally giving him a visitor’s badge and pointing him in the right direction.

Heart threatening to pound out of his chest, he made his way up to Frankie’s room.

And stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her, looking so small and frail in the oversized hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark against her unusually pale cheeks.

Oh, baby. What the hell happened to you?

Forcing his feet forward, he stood beside the bed, forcing his own chaotic emotions down as he took her hand. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing the deep brown, glazed with sleep. Or possibly whatever medication they had her on.

“You came,” she croaked out, her voice hoarse.

“Of course I came, little siren. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”

He’d hoped to make her laugh, but to his horror, tears filled her eyes, slipping down her cheeks. Cheeks, he was noticing now, that seemed a little too sharp, a little too hollow. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know who else to call. I fucked up and now I don’t know how to fix it and everything is ruined and I just… I need you, Daddy. Please.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gathered her in his arms as sobs racked her body. “Don’t worry baby. Daddy’s here. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. Together.”

He held her as he cried, and the thought flitted through his mind that he’d finally gotten what he wanted. His babygirl, back in his arms.

Immediately on the heels of that thought came a question that made his blood run cold. Yeah, he had her back, right where she’d always belonged.

But at what cost?

Chapter1

Frankie

Francesca Legare was raised for one thing and one thing only.

Excellence.

Whether it was school, extracurricular activities, or how she presented herself to society, her family expected nothing less than perfection.

And her parents modeled the same excellence they demanded of her. Francis Legare had followed in his own father’s footsteps, taking the business world by storm from the moment he’d stepped off his Ivy League campus and into his first job at one of the many Legare holdings. Delphine Legare was not only the most stunning woman this side of the Mississippi and an heiress in her own right as the eldest daughter of the Ashford family, whose money was even older than the Legares’, but she was also smarter than most men gave her credit for. She often held her own in conversations regarding culture and world politics, conversations she could have in five different languages, without a single stutter.

Then there was Frankie herself. While her father would have loved to see her take over for him as the head of the Legare empire, he’d sacrificed that dream to support Frankie’s desire to be a doctor. But only, of course, if she excelled in her field. She would either be the best damn surgeon the world had ever seen, or she would be nothing.

As it turned out, she was nothing.

Laying in the hospital bed where she’d spent a rather restless night, she stared up at the cold, colorless ceiling. Once again, she’d let the stress of life overwhelm her until she crashed and burned.

Delphine would never let herself fail the way Frankie had so many times. Her gorgeous ice queen of a mother would simply hold her head high and get shit done, no matter if she was dying inside.

Then again, that hypothesis assumed that Delphine felt anything at all other than greed, and Frankie wasn’t entirely sure that was an accurate assessment.

Her snort of laughter drew the attention of the giant man currently squeezed into a very uncomfortable-looking visitor’s chair beside her bed. Stirring, he rose to his feet, and not for the first time she was left in awe of how fucking gorgeous he was. Silver hair—and definitely silver, not simply gray—swooped back from a face that looked carved from stone. That same silver hair covered his chin in a sexy, stubbly sort of beard that was somehow always exactly the right length.

Of course, from a man like Holden Prescott, she wouldn’t expect anything less. She’d decided long ago that he didn’t even shave, he just willed his beard to stop growing at the exact length he wanted it and his beard obeyed.

Stepping up to the side of the bed, he leaned over, running a surprisingly gentle hand over her hair. For as large as he was, he could be tender when the occasion called for it.

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