Page 9 of Daddy's Dirty Little Secret

5

XANDER

The nine iron felt good in my grip and the swing was smooth, but the ball sailed right into a slice, taking it to the far right of the fairway. I let the club slide through my grip until the head settled on my curled fingers, and I stepped back from the tee.

“Not horrible,” Dad said, which was his way of telling me the stroke was bad. He was like that—backward compliments that were actually aimed at correcting my behavior. I was sure he had developed the habit sometime after Mom split, a coping mechanism aimed at shutting down his negative nature to preserve whatever relationship was left between the two of us.

“Yeah, well let’s see how you do. That wind didn’t help.” I walked toward the cart to stash my club and passed Gerard Millet, a potential client I’d invited to my early morning tee off with Dad.

“Don’t let it get to you, Xander,” he said, patting my arm. “This course is a tough one.”

Dad and I opted for Pebble Beach when we could, though the ninety-minute drive prevented too many midweek tee offs. It was one of the tougher courses in the state, but nicer to play thanany of the nine local courses around San Jose, and the ocean breeze was always stiff, though that had little relevance to why I sliced so badly. My mind was elsewhere.

“Look at that,” Dad purred, shielding his eyes to the rising sun on the horizon as he watched his ball sail straight down the middle. “Perfect shot, boys. Try to beat that.”

Gerard chuckled as he carried his club, ball, and tee to the teeing ground. “If only life worked so smoothly,” he said, and I turned my back to the chatter. I was tense, overly so, wishing I had some way to escape the stress of work for a while. My mind had been tangled up in thoughts of Amelia and that romp in my back seat for almost two weeks now.

“You look troubled, son,” Dad said as he slid his club into his bag. “How’s work?” He took off his glove, used it to wipe sweat from his forehead. It wasn’t that warm yet, but he was a big man, conjured a good sweat easily.

“I’m fine,” I told him, because the last thing I was going to discuss with my father was relationship status. He had zero good advice, never had a woman who stayed around long enough to call a true relationship after Mom.

“You should go to dinner with me and Candy. Maybe you’d like her daughter.” He fiddled with his golf bag, zipping and unzipping pockets with no real purpose. The way he brought up his new mistresses so casually made me cringe. I might’ve had different sexual partners often—always with protection and consent—but I never purported to call them girlfriends, and I never introduced them to my father.

“What kind of a name is that? And how long is this one gonna stick around?” My cynical view on true love never ceased to annoy him. He scowled and climbed onto the cart, both of us ignoring Mr. Millet’s two-hundred-yard drive. He joined us at the cart, cutting off our conversation and climbed in, still holding his driver on his lap.

“Let’s go, boys, I have a feeling today is going to be a good day.” He grinned and I slid onto the back seat as he pressed down the gas pedal. “It’s a beautiful morning for golf.”

“Yes it is, and a beautiful morning to talk business. So what sort of app does your team need?” Dad was schmoozing better than me, but he’d been along for the ride since I bought Next Gen off Laurence. Dad was never a self-made man, having inherited his money from his father. I was raised with a silver spoon, but I worked hard for everything I had now. After Mom took more than half of Dad’s fortune, he’d toned down his lavish lifestyle. Now that I was making my own millions, he had become a staple in my social calendar to supplement things he no longer wished to spend his own money on.

I didn’t mind. It meant his business acumen was at my disposal in instances like this, and he had a knack for knowing how to land a tricky client like Gerard.

“It’s a dating app to help pair people with their perfect match. I’m not going into specifics—confidentiality and all that—but if Next Gen presents a package I like, I may just bite.” Gerard turned the golf cart toward the fairway and accelerated. I’d already given him my personal pitch about timelines and budgets, how my team excelled in meeting every client’s expectations. We hadn’t gotten into specifics, but Gerard seemed to be the type to be more hush-hush.

“Yes, I understand confidentiality. Something my former wife clearly never caught on to.” Dad chuckled while I pinched the bridge of my nose. Bringing his past and present relationship statuses into this conversation was inevitable. He thought comparing business deals to relationships was the best way to nail a client, and for the most part he wasn’t wrong. I just hated how he bragged about playing the field. At his age, he should’ve been more mature.

“Ah, marriage and partnership…” Gerard hummed for a second. “They have a lot in common, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Dad replied, pointing out my ball almost fringing on the rough only a few meters away from where Gerard stopped the cart. “And they can be tricky to navigate. You have to trust your partner without question in both circumstances, which was the mistake I made.”

“Ah, yes. When emotions get twisted up in things it gets messy.” Gerard stepped out of the cart, and I winced as I realized where this was going.

“Pardon me,” I said, sliding off the seat. I took my pitching wedge and walked out across the fairway to take my next stroke, grateful for the escape from what was sure to be Dad rehashing how my mother just decided to leave one day. She packed her things, kissed my forehead, and left. Only when she had to fight for the millions she believed Dad owed her did she come back, and it was hell on earth to a child.

My chest was tight as their conversation faded behind me. Getting emotions tangled up in things had been something I cautiously avoided, though I did find myself lonely. As I lined up my club to make the next stroke, I allowed that sense of loneliness and isolation to weigh me down.

I judged my father harshly at times for dating so many women, calling them his girlfriend, giving them whatever they wanted, then letting them dump him for someone younger. Most times the women were my age or younger than me, often out for his money. He had his heart broken repeatedly, and in my opinion, he was too soft at times.

But regardless of how many times I’d watched that happen to him, and how carefully I guarded my own heart to not allow any of my flings to hook into my heart, I still felt like I was missing something. I wasn’t in the market for a girlfriend or any serious relationship at all, for that matter, but I did wish therewas something more, something deeper than random casual sex with different women.

The rest of the game, I made sure to focus my attention on the app Mr. Millet wanted built and the game of golf. Dad attempted to throw in his two cents every now and then, but I managed to work out what the client might need and promised him to develop a plan he could be proud of, to present it to him when he met with me and the team next week. Then I dropped Dad at home to have brunch with Candy and headed into the office.

The office was busy, most of my staff with their heads down working. I passed by Amelia’s office, but she wasn’t at her desk, and when I stepped into my office, she was hovering over my desk with a stack of files and a pen in hand. Her eyes popped up to take me in, and I could see right away she looked horrible.

“Oh, Mr. Blackwell, good,” she sighed, dropping the pen. Her other hand clutched around a wadded-up tissue, puffy nose and red rimmed eyes showing her misery. “I have that marketing packet ready for your approval. Godwin and I worked all weekend, but my God I feel like death warmed over.” She moved away from my desk and gestured.

“You look like crap,” I said, chuckling, though I meant it in the kindest way. Even obviously sick, Amelia was striking. She always had been. Her thick curves, the way her chestnut hair framed her face—I’d never been able to think of her any other way than beautiful and brilliant, though even as short as three weeks ago, I’d have thought she would nail down a handsome young bachelor.

Now those thoughts had shifted, and I wished she’d nail me down, or let me nail her—over my desk. I swept past her, but her floral perfume tickled my senses, made me remember how her body writhed against mine in the back seat of my limo. How shecame apart around me, grunted my name, begged me to do bad things to her.

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