Page 9 of Tamed

Istared gloomily at the spreadsheet on my computer screen, trying not to pay too much attention to the clock that was moving with aching slowness.

Honestly, I couldn’t wait to be done with the damn day. Not that it was going to be a bed roses once it was done since John, John and Mike still lay at the end of it.

Gee, thanks Dad.

I glanced down at my phone beside my keyboard in case I’d had any interesting texts. Interesting texts being anything from the unknown number that had first contacted me three weeks ago. It had been a voice call, a man telling me that if I wanted to know more about my mother, I was to go to the carousel in Central Park at three PM on Wednesday. Then the call had disconnected.

For two days I hadn’t known what to do about it, whether to go or not, but in the end I'd gone. How could I not? Dad didn’t talk about my mother, Juliana, who’d died having me. He’d told me her first name, but nothing else. For years I’d accepted that it was something Dad didn’t want to talk about, and that was okay.

But as I’d started to grow up, I’d gotten more and more curious. I wanted to know about her, and it had annoyed me intensely that Dad still refused to tell me about her. I’d asked Caleb a couple of times, but he’d been as cagey as Dad. Same with Atlas.

Men were the worst.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’d managed to get J, J, and M to give me some space by telling them I just needed to feel like I was on my own for a bit. They’d given me five minutes, which was enough time for me to realize that no one was going to show for this meeting. Yet as I was walking away, I’d gotten a call from the same man, telling me that the meeting had been a test of my interest, and since it was clear Iwasinterested, he’d contact me with a real meeting time soon.

Obviously, he and I had had very different ideas of when ‘soon’ was, since three weeks had passed and I still hadn’t heard from him. Dad, though, had been annoyed I’d managed to evade my security even for five minutes, and so had beefed it up. I was even beginning to wonder if he’d somehow known I’d been contacted. How, I had no idea, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to have found out. It would have surprised me not at all if my asshole dad had bugged my phone calls, for example.

Honestly, he and I were going to need to have a conversation, because I was sick of his constant interference in my life.

At that point the phone on my desk rang and I picked it up. “Isabel speaking.”

“Miss Fox?” It was Sally, the snooty secretary. Great. “Mr. Cross would like to see you at one.”

I mouthed a silent curse. “Oh, really? I have a lunch date—”

“At one, thank you.” Then she hung up.

“Goddammit,” I muttered, slamming the phone down.

Instantly, Zara’s blonde head popped up from behind the cubicle divider. “I sense trouble.” She put her elbows on top of the divider and leaned on them.

I gave her a sour look. “What gave it away?”

“Your general air of bright, shiny happiness.” She raised a brow. “What’s up?”

“Looks like I can’t make lunch, sorry.” She and I had been going to try a new deli a couple of doors down and then discuss our plans for the evening at this new club of hers. “I have to go see his lordship, a-fucking-gain.”

Zara put her chin in her hands. “Oh dear, what have you done now?”

“Nothing. Absolutely zero things. Unless in the space of the past couple of hours, he’s instituted some new rule no one told me about. I did put my mug in the cupboard slightly off-center, come to think of it.”

Zara grinned. “Just think of Friday and how you’re going to blot out the memory of his beastliness with a couple of very strong martinis.”

That was true. And the more I thought about it, the gladder I was that I’d agreed to go to this club with her. It would annoy the shit out of Dad and right now, annoying the shit out of Dad was exactly what I wanted. Though I was going to have to work out a strategy if I wanted to avoid J, J and M.

Petty of me, perhaps, but I felt petty. Petty was a country I’d emigrated to and now I was building myself a life there and it was all thanks to him.

Very mature, Isabel.

I shoved the voice away. Too bad. If Dad was going to treat me like a child, I was going to act like one. Anyway, it wasn’t as if I’d cut loose completely and started snorting coke in the bathroom and swinging from the chandeliers. It was only a couple of drinks at a club, that’s all.

A club where your friend is going to auction off sexy stuff.

Yeah, that made me…. uncomfortable. Zara had promised to tell me about it at lunch, but clearly that would have to wait.

“I guess so,” I muttered. “Tell me what the deli’s like.”

“Hey, I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring you back something delicious.”

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