Page 29 of Sleepless Beauty

My dad looks at her for a long moment, clearly shocked by her words.

"Providential for what?" Phillip asks.

She huffs and looks down at her nails and then lower still at the huge cat that's currently napping on her feet. She pets him behind his ears and he glowers up at her hissing before going back to sleep.

"It was a huge help with my strategy." Fay turns to my dad again. "You were so adamant you didn't want us to live together and I always thought it was because of her." She points an accusing finger my way and I roll my eyes at her.

She shakes her head, sending her long black curls bouncing. "Now I know better: it's your fear of commitment that's kept you from doing right by me… but that's a moot point now, isn't it? Anyway back then I didn't know you had thislimitation. I thought you kept your distance because of your daughter. And then there was the fire and she was all traumatized by it and by her little friend Fiona not making it and—"

I clench my hands in fists. My body's trembling. "Flora! You self-centered bitch! Her name was Flora. Have some respect!"

Fay sniffles. "My, you are always so touchy! And rude, so very rude, calling me a bitch and interrupting me when I'm trying to answer your stupid question here…" she shakes her head like she's sorry for me.

I'm not a violent person by any means, but I really want to deck her one right now.

I throttle back the string of insults pressing against the back of my teeth. "Then freaking answer already!"

She sighs and murmurs something that suspiciously sounds like 'brat' and then starts talking again. "WithFloradead and Aurora hell-bent on playing victim through and through and wanting to never come back here, I felt I finally had my chance, Stephen. I figured I could make you see."

"So this is why you helped us find a good therapist in Chicago and offered to come to live with me," my dad muses, an expression of disgust curling his upper lip and setting his blue eyes in a deeper scowl.

"Exactly, and I almost had you. You let me stay for a few days and I just knew I could make it permanent if I could keep her away long enough."

"No wonder you were so supportive of me transferring to Northwestern," I mumble.

She smirks my way. Actually freaking smirks. "And then this guy shows up only a week after I got you out of the way with heart-shaped eyes for you. I had to send him packing, there was no other way. I mean, I could already see it in my head: you falling for him —after all, he is handsome enough if you're into big boulders like him and he did save your life—, and he helping you heal and then convincing you that you should be close to him and to your dad and friends. You moving back to Connecticut…” She turns to look in the direction of my dad again and throws her hands up. “The happy couple would settle here in Briarsville, marrying, popping little snot-nosed brats that you would love to pieces and spoil. I knew that once she turned you into a grandpa, I would be done for. Your focus would be completely taken away from me and I couldn't let it happen. I couldn't pass on the opportunity to interfere in a way that would suit my purposes and that's what I did."

No remorse, no shame, no guilt, not even a lousy fake 'I'm sorry' comes from her mouth. She firmly believes she has done nothing wrong, I can see it in her eyes. She's not 'faking innocence' she's so selfish she truly is convinced she is not to blame. Crazy bitch.

I look at her and a little voice in my head begs me not to take the obvious dig at her, but heck she deserves it and I'm too upset to be above it.

"So you did your thing —I say, moving closer to her, one of my hands held between Phillip's warm fingers— and sent me away, but there's one last thing that I just don't get, Fay. My dad still had you move back out of our house a few weeks after I settled in Chicago. It's been seven years and I've been gone just as long and yet you guys aren't married anyway. Don't you think this proves that you hurt Phillip and me for nothing? That the reason my dad doesn't marry you is another?"

She sighs and looks away. "Yes, well. I said that was my reason then, but motives change, Rory, and people change too. You should know. When I realized the reason why your father couldn't commit went beyond you, that the reason he couldn't love me was six-feet under but not really buried at all, I changed my plans."

I flinch at the brash way she’s speaking of my late mother, though she is right. If there's a reason why my dad's still alone, it's because he hasn't found a love that can rival the one he had with my mom yet. I love him enough to hope that someday he will, but I never thought for a moment that that love could be Fay. She might be slower on the uptake, but in the end, she came to the same conclusions.

But then why persevere? What does she mean by saying her plans changed?

My dad steals the thought from my head and asks her the very question that was on the tip of my tongue.

She looks at him and grins. "I realized you felt obligated toward me. You felt bad that you could not love me because you thought I loved you, so you overcompensated. A lot. Expensive dinners, presents, access to your cards, spa-days, and paid vacations over the holidays that I could take on my own while you spent Christmas in Chicago with your brat. I could do worse. I make good money on my own, sure, but who doesn't like to be spoiled on someone else's dime? And you're a rich doctor Stephen, it's not like you suffered for it."

I blink. She has managed to shock me into utter silence. Somehow I figured her reason for playing my dad and breaking mine and Phillip's hearts would be something more impressive if evil, not something as mundane as money.

My father and Phillip, though, have plenty to say.

"I feel sorry for you, Fay. You're right: my heart belongs still with my Leah, but to be the type of human who would be offended by someone else's grief, to go as far as to hinder my daughter's chance at a happy, healthy relationship and to do all of this for spending money when you make as much as I do with your day job with every poor bastard you take to the cleaners in court on behalf of your unscrupulous clients, to do all this and hang onto your hatred, your spitefulness, your littleness for seven years when you could have gone out into the world and found someone that could love you… it only says one thing about you. You are perfectly aware that you're as ugly on the inside as you're pretty on the outside and that no one could love you. So that's why you stayed. Not to hurt me, or my daughter, but to keep yourself from facing the truth. I want you gone! Out of my house! Immediately! You're on your own now. I doubt even Diablo will want to come with you."

Damn! Dadone, evil step-nothingsub-zero.

"You are despicable. I think your own explanation, your reasoning, and your so-called motives for doing this to us are the biggest insult someone could ever throw at themselves. Even if I called you every ugly name in the book, there's no way I could top that and if you had any humanity in that black heart of yours you would know. I will tell you one thing, though. I don't care who you are, I don't care how much money you have, or how many judges live in your pockets, lady, if you ever so much as look Aurora's way again, I'll forget what my mama taught me about being a gentleman and not using violence on women and I will personally throw you out of this town on your ass on the coldest night of the coldest winter we will have and drop you onto the biggest pile of snow I can find after I slash your tires and crumble your phone and credit cards under my feet and you won't fucking see me coming."

I look up at Phillip. Oh, dear. He's totally growling.

He really means it. He would really defend me like this if it came to that. It doesn't take a genius to tell that the only reason why he isn't doing it right now, is because I asked him to let this go before we got here.

I stroke from the back of his hand to the bulging muscles on his forearm, smiling at him.

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