My Favorite Girl (Playing Favorites)

1. Dan

Chapter 1

Dan

Thursday, May 13

My father’s new girlfriend

If there’s one benefit to being a Blackwood, it’s how eager every girl is to ride my dick.

There’s a girl in my bed, straddling my thighs. We met last night at my friend’s seventeenth. She’s pretty. Nice eyes and with dark hair that sits around her shoulders. Perky tits. She couldn’t wait to whip off her bra and show me. I don’t know a thing about her other than her name is Monique.

She doesn’t care. They never do.

They’re always just excited to run off and tell their friends they’ve slept with a Blackwood.

I pull her panties to the side and bring her hips in line with mine.

“Dan.” My father knocks on my bedroom door and I instantly lose the hard-on. For fuck’s sake. The one time the man chooses to come back to the penthouse and take an interest in me has to be right now, midnight on a random Thursday, when he’s ordinarily off with his new girlfriend.

Monique gasps. “Is that your dad?” Her confidence vanishes and she’s covering herself with my bedsheet.

“The door is locked,” I reassure her. “Ignore him. He’ll disappear in a second.”

“Dan.” The knocking turns impatient, matching the tone of my father’s voice. “I know you’re in there. We need to talk.”

“I’m busy,” I shout back.

Monique climbs off me. “Your dad sounds kind of mad. Maybe I should get dressed.”

I force down my frustration and pull on a pair of track pants. “No, just… hang out in the bathroom while I get rid of him.”

She scurries off into my adjoining bathroom, the knocking continuing.

“What do you want?” I answer the door.

My father, always in a designer suit and with his dark hair never a strand out of place, looks down at my bare chest then past me to my unmade bed. Monique is out of sight but he’s wise enough to know I have a girl in here with me. I have three older brothers; he knows what we’re like and doesn’t care. Probably because he’s led with such a fine example, having fucked half the women in this city without knowing their names. At least I took the time to learn Monique’s.

“Dan, I’d like to have a serious discussion with you about Amabella. Get dressed and meet me in the living room.”

His girlfriend. I’ve never met her, but then again, I’ve never met any of the women he sleeps with. I’ve never known their names unless I saw it online. The paparazzi love following my father. He’s a socialite and one of the wealthiest bachelors in New York City, along with having built a hotel empire.

Amabella is the first woman he’s kept around for longer than a month and told me and my brothers about. He says she’s a seating hostess at a restaurant here on the Upper East Side. I’m not judging the lady by her career but she seems beneath his standards, considering I’ve only known him to sleep with models.

“I have a guest in my bathroom,” I tell him. “We can talk later.”

His jaw tics, frustrated by my answer. The two of us can’t go five minutes without arguing. Tonight, however, he doesn’t push back.

He wants something from me.

“We can talk here,” he says. “I’ll make this quick. I’d like you to meet Amabella?—”

“I don’t need to meet the women you sleep with.”

“Dan.” My name is curt out of his lips. A warning. “Amabella is different. I’m serious about her. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, but I can see myself marrying her. Not without the approval of you and your brothers, of course. It’s important that you feel comfortable with the addition to our family.”

My eyebrows draw together with disbelief over every word that’s left my father’s mouth. Since when has he ever cared about our family? The man had nannies raising me and my older brothers from the day I was born. The way he coped with the death of our mother was to throw himself into work and stick his dick in everything that moved. I understand he needed time to grieve, but not sixteen years. Now he wants us to act like a family? What a joke.

“You can marry whoever you want. I don’t care and I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Dan, you will be a part of it. I’d like her to move in here. I want to focus on family and less on work. From now on, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me around here, whether you like it or not.”

Fuck this shit. I push the door shut, but he juts an arm out, holding the door open.

“What do I have to do to make you cooperate with me? Amabella is an important part of my life, and I will not have your attitude ruin my relationship with her.”

“There’s nothing?—”

“Felix tells me you’re about to get your driver’s license. I’ll buy you a car. Any car you want if it means you’ll work with me.”

The nerve of this man. Now he’s bribing me?

But the proposition makes me pause. Any car? It’s not an empty promise. My father has always thrown money around to fix his problems.

“Fine.” I can play along to get what I want. Doesn’t mean I have to be genuine toward my father and his new girlfriend.

“Thank you. You and I will be having lunch with Amabella this Saturday.”

I lift a brow. “Just us? No Felix, Tyler, or Killian?”

He straightens the lapels of his jacket. “I’d like to introduce you and your brothers to Amabella individually. Less chance for chaos.”

“Can’t wait.” My voice drags over each word. My brothers would have made this lunch bearable.

I go to close the door again, but he holds it open. “One more thing, Dan. Amabella has a daughter named Ally. She’s a year younger than you and will be joining us for the lunch. She’s a quiet girl and doesn’t have many friends. You’ll be welcoming to Ally as well, understood?”

Jesus fuck. Fine. Anything to get this conversation over with. “Sure. Me and the daughter, best friends. Are we done here?”

My dad nods and leaves. I’ll be asking for a Ferrari after all this is over.