Page 32 of Don't Love Me
8
1 month later
Dinner with Daddy’s client
Ashleigh
It wasn’tthe first time I’d had dinner with one of my father’s clients. Since he’d never dated—or at least not that I knew of—after my mother died, he said it was helpful sometimes to have a hostess at these events. Someone to steer the conversation to other topics so it wasn’t all work talk. Or someone to converse with the wife of the client so that the two men could talk only shop.
Except this was like none of those times. First, this man had been invited to our house, which my father had never done before. And there was no wife.
Evan Sanderson was born and bred Harborview. Also probably considered the most eligible and attractive bachelor in town.
While his parents had retired to Florida, he remained in the family home, which wasn’t quite as large as my father’s estate, but only because the Sandersons considered anything big and flashy to be tacky.
Growing up in the family tradition, he’d become a financial broker and had eventually taken over the management of his father’s hedge fund. Although I’d heard talk he was thinking about a future in politics.
I knew he was in his thirties. He was polite, well-mannered, dressed impeccably, and I knew the watch he was wearing cost six figures.
I was also pretty sure Marc would hate him.
One thing was certain: he wasn’t someone my father was courting to invest his money with him. Which is what these client dinners were usually about. Evan did his own investing. Quite well, if the watch was any indication.
So why was he here? And why were both my father and he looking at me as if I were the investment? Surely that had to be in my head.
“You are a senior in high school, correct?” Evan asked me.
“Yes. This year.”
“Do you have plans to go to college?”
“Princeton,” I answered immediately. “It’s where my father went, of course.”
Nothing to do with Marc.
“We’ll see, Ashleigh,” my father said, pointing his fork in my direction. “You know there is no need to rush off to college. A lot of children of privilege take a gap year. Travel. Broaden their minds.”
Broaden their minds?My father was promoting broadening my mind when he’d done everything in his power to contain me here at the estate? Since when did he believe it was it okay to not go to college?
My father and I had been drifting apart, or rather I’d cared less about pleasing him in recent years, but this was like talking to someone I didn’t know. He was also drinking more than he normally did. His face was red, and his hand shook when he reached for the Manhattan George had prepared for him.
I’d never seen him so not in control. Especially in front of a potential…whatever Evan was supposed to be.
My first instinct was to tell Marc. To text him that Dad was behaving weird and there was some smooth dude named Evan sitting at my dinner table checking me out.
I had to admit it wasn’t in an older, creepy way. It wasn’t like his eyes kept going to my boobs or anything. His assessment was more like I was a thing of value, only the exact value was still to be determined.
I couldn’t tell Marc any of that because I wasn’t talking to him. Since our confrontation by the pool last month, I’d decided to play hardball. He wanted to believe I wasn’t important in his life, then I had to show him I was.
One month without a call or a text. One month for him to feel my absence. To understand what pushing me away felt like. One month for him to come to the conclusion I was important to him.
Because I was sure he would.
I hoped he would.
Maybe I hadn’t accounted for how stubborn he could be.
“Ashleigh! Evan asked you a question.”
