Page 90 of Enemy Daddy Next Door

I hold my breath. Please let it be good. Please let this all be a good sign.

“I’m going to win the custody case. My PI found indelible proof that Veronica is unfit to be a mother. There’s no way I’ll lose.”

I gasp. “Oh, Hunter. That’s wonderful. You must be so relieved!”

“I am,” he says.

“I mean, I feel relieved, but you must – oh my gosh –”

“That isn’t what I wanted to talk about, though.”

My stomach drops again. The bad news could come at any second, like a slap to the face.

“I want to talk about us. What we are…what I think we could be.”

I grow several inches when he says that, my chest filling up with hope.

“I don’t come from love, Amy. I come from convenience and money,” Hunter says. “I don’t know if I ever really loved Veronica even. It just seemed like the next right thing to do. Especially if I wanted a family. Anyway…”

I don’t know what to say, so I just look at him, trying to stay as present and open as possible.

“I’ve been scared I don’t have room for you. In my heart. Not because you’re too much or…it’s because my father had the emptiest heart known to man. Every boy in some way aspires to be like their father. And while I detested the man most of my life, a part of me wanted to want to be like him. But he was callous. And…” Hunter stops and looks askance.

I reach out and touch his hand that rests on the small table. “Hunter, you can tell me anything. It doesn’t scare me.”

Liquid gold eyes flick into mine.

I squeeze his hand. “Really.”

Hunter’s usually intense eyes soften at the corners. A flick of a smile on his mouth. “I watched my father be cruel to my mother my entire life. I hated him for it. But it also made me not so great with women myself. My twenties were…a mess. I was fucking up left and right by everyone’s standards. Couldn’t hold down a girlfriend, slacked off at the office…I was such a disappointment to them after being the golden, only child, prepped to take over the family business one day.”

He clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. “I knew my dad wasn’t a good man. But when I walked in on him fucking his secretary in the office, I lost it. I didn’t hesitate to tell my mom. Finally, a reason bad enough to have her walk away.” His eyes glaze over. “But she didn’t. She just said that that was the way of our world. I was so mad at her. How could she accept that? Why wasn’t she mad or running out the door never to return?” His eyes turn to me. “I get it now. She had her security. She had me. And…even if she shouldn’t have, she loved my dad.”

“That must have been really hard.”

He nods. “So, I said that’s not going to be me and I walked away. They cut me off, stopped talking to me.”

“Oh my god, even your mom?”

Hunter keeps nodding. “Let’s just say I can relate to you in that way.”

My heart breaks for him. No. For us. Both of us have had all this love to give that people don’t seem to want.

“Then, I met Veronica, fucked around, married her, was about to have the family I knew I could have without my parents involved and then –” He snaps his fingers. “They were gone. Plane crash.”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t read the articles. A tiny passenger plane going down in the middle of a storm on the Great Plains.

“So, I had to come back to all of this. Run the family business. I wouldn’t have done that if Jessica wasn’t on the way. And when Veronica left, I couldn’t help but think I was just another version of my father. Cruel and –” He stops himself. “That’s why I haven’t pursued relationships until now. Has seemed safer not to get attached. Not just for me. For everyone. I’m afraid that there’s just some inherited nature in me that makes me like him. And I –”

“Stop that. You’re not that at all. At all.”

Hunter smiles meekly. “Thank you.”

“Seriously. You have a heart. A big one, Hunter.”

He stiffens his jaw to keep from getting emotional. “I’m glad you think so.”

I caress his hand softly. “I probably didn’t make it any easier to overcome that every time I’ve brought up your past or –”

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