Page 57 of Breaking Emily's Rules
“She tells me. But I don’t know anything about your life for the last few years, except that you’re former air force.”
“What else is there?”
She pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “I want to know why this school is so important. Why you won’t just take the better offer. I’m guessing you’re not exactly a high roller.”
“Simple. Money isn’t everything to me. Carrying out his wishes is all that matters.”
“So interesting that those wishes weren’t in the will.”
She had to point that out. “It doesn’t matter. I know what he wanted. He wanted for his employees to be able to keep their jobs. The buyer I have lined up wants to keep the school open, and he can do it. Why do you have a problem with that?”
She hesitated for a minute. “I think what he would really want is for both of us to do the best we can. And that means going with the better offer.”
“The better offer means that someone is going to close the airport. That means a lot of people will lose their jobs. There’s no other regional airport like this for miles. And the last thing this area needs is another strip mall.” He hoped he looked as disgusted as he felt.
“What do you care? It’s not like you’re going to settle down and live here. I wouldn’t even know that if Matt hadn’t told me. You’re going to take off as soon as this is all resolved. Aren’t you?”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to the people in this town. At this airport. They were Dad’s friends, coworkers.”
“Those people can find other jobs.”
Yeah. He didn’t like Sarah. In fact, he could fill the room with all the reasons he didn’t much like her. “Is that all you care about? The money? Do you even know or care what mattered to him?”
“Maybe I would if he’d taken the time to get to know me. But he abandoned me and my mother.”
Yeah, he couldn’t sit here and listen to this crap. “Shut up, Sarah. That’s a bald-faced lie. You obviously don’t remember him.”
“Exactly. And that’s the problem. Why don’t I?”
“Your choice.”
But for one minute, a sense of understanding passed over him. Until he’d joined the service, he’d always been a loner. Sure, there had been times he’d envied the larger families on the block—the mother who managed to be home every day after school, the kids who had enough family members to play a game of touch football at a moment’s notice. But he’d found his extended family with his comrades in arms. Maybe Sarah had never found that.
“It isn’t that he didn’t want to be in your life. He always tried to do the right thing. The honorable thing. This must have seemed like it at the time.”
Their parents hadn’t managed to make marriage work any more than fifty percent of the population could. Most of his AF buddies came home to broken relationships and kids that didn’t know who they were. Marriage was one big crapshoot and not worth the risk.
In a way, Stone already had the only family he’d ever need.
“I’m not surprised you would defend him,” Sarah said with contempt in her voice.
Stone spoke through his rock-hard jaw. “You were the one who stopped coming to see him after that last summer.”
“You mean the summer when no one wanted me?”
“Not true. You spent half your visit in the bathroom!”
“Dad barely talked to me after I told him I didn’t want to go fishing. Just stared at me like I was some kind of alien creature he’d never seen before.”
Or in other words, a teenage girl with attitude. And a nose ring, if he recalled. Did she really expect their father to know how to treat her? He’d had zero experience with teenage daughters and Sarah had gone from cute girl to hormonal teenager in one short year.
This wasn’t going to work. Not like he hadn’t seen it coming. Time to bail.
She pointed at her chest. “I’m his flesh and blood. He wasn’t there for me.”
“Look, Sarah, I get that you have daddy issues. Believe me. But this has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you. You could have called us. Why wouldn’t you tell us he was dying? You think his ex-wife and daughter might have liked to know? Wasn’t it any of our business?”
