Page 60 of Bonus Daddy
A wave of grief washed over me. No matter how many years had passed, it never got any easier. “Sort of,” I explained. “He got back on his feet, but five years later, he had another heart attack, and that was it. He’d worked himself into the ground. He never got to meet his granddaughters.”
I wiped a tear from my cheek and inhaled a cleansing breath.
“Brian and I were both drowning in our own family situations. We didn’t have time to call, let alone visit. So we broke things off, both swearing it was temporary. But then we just… lost touch.” Sadness hit me, mingling with the grief, and the tears I’d been fighting surged again. “So often, I wanted to call him. I missed him terribly. But by the time the work was done for the day, I was dead on my feet. And I always feared calling him late in the evening, worrying I’d wake the baby. So I didn’t. And he didn’t call either.” I lifted a shoulder and forced a smile. “I figured he was better off.”
“No,” Sloane breathed, eyeing Lo.
Lo gave her a look I couldn’t decipher. “When did you come to New York?”
“In my mid-twenties. About a year after my dad died. I got a job at a PR firm, and a couple of months later, I met Kenneth. By then, I assumed Brian had finished law school and had met a kick-ass female lawyer and was blissfully happy.”
Sloane snorted. “Not at all.”
They looked at one another again, exchanging some kind of nonverbal language I didn’t understand that involved hand gestures and raised eyebrows.
“What?” I asked, hit with a surge of self-consciousness.
“Nothing,” Sloane said with an easy smile.
Lo, on the other hand, wore a downright diabolical grin.
“You have no poker face, Lo,” I said.
“He’s single,” she hissed, her green eyes dancing with mirth. “Very single. Super single. Been waiting around for you to walk through the door single.” She rubbed her hands together like a supervillain.
“I’m not dating,” I said weakly. My stomach flipped like a gymnast on the uneven bars. “I’m moving to Vermont. Brian is my lawyer.”
Neither woman seemed fazed by my argument. Maybe because it lacked conviction.
It was getting more difficult to hide my feelings every day.
He had been wonderful when we were kids. Smart and kind and funny as hell. Now? Every one of those qualities had only compounded.
I looked forward to spending a handful of minutes with him each day when I picked my girls up. Made sure I fixed my makeup before walking over after work.
“Surely you feel the connection. We’re all enveloped in secondhand pheromones any time the two of you are together,” Sloane argued.
“I feel a lot of complicated things at the moment,” I said gently. “Brian is amazing, sure, and he’s helped me and my girls so much. No amount of legal fees would ever be enough to repay him. I am in debt to all of you.”
Lo crossed her arms. “You’re into him.” It was a statement, not a question.
For the millionth time tonight, my face burned.
The last thing I needed was to make this situation more complicated, but I responded honestly.
“How could I not be? He verbally eviscerated my shitty ex-husband and then had him socially blacklisted because he’d wronged me. He shows up to support my kids, and he makes me feel like I’m special. Like I’m smart and capable and have my shit together.”
“You are smart and capable,” Sloane interjected.
Head dropped back, I groaned. “I know that, but when mymarriage ended, I was destroyed. I had been for a long time, honestly. It’s taken me this long to rebuild my life. And Brian sees that. He gets it. He makes me feel like I can do anything.”
Lo clutched her chest. “Oh my God. This is it.”
Sloane put her arm around her friend, pulling her into a hug. “It’s the day we’ve dreamed of.”
“Girls,” I said firmly. “This doesn’t change anything. He’s my lawyer, and he’s way too professional to make a move.”
Sloane waggled her brows. “But you can make a move.”
