Chapter 11 #2
My pink lemonade arrived just as my father walked in the door. His height, though not matching Callum’s, drew the eyes of the other diners, and it took me a second to notice the other man behind him. Suited and booted and heading right for me.
I nearly choked on my drink.
Dad had brought Dominic Hanswick. I eyed the exits and cursed inwardly.
On the train, I’d made a deal with myself. If Scarlet seemed herself today and didn’t give me cause to worry, I would call Dominic and refuse his offer. The deal might have been perfectly logical, providing me with a solution to my closest-held desire, but doubt had set in.
A sizable, Callum-shaped doubt.
He made my toes curl and my heart burst with life, and kissing him changed everything I knew.
I couldn’t ignore the possibility of true happiness and I had the notion that, just maybe, I could marry for love and get my sister.
An outside possibility, considering the problem with Dad, but there all the same.
I’d decided to work on convincing Dad first. I just needed to find the right lever to pull to make him listen. After all, I’d got my logical mind from him. Only mine wasn’t tainted by the experiences he’d had. Didn’t suffer the fears that made him the man he was, for better or worse.
At my side, Scarlet heaved a dramatic teenage sigh, her gaze flitting from Dad to Dominic. “Isn’t that the guy who screwed around? Why did Dad bring him?”
Mom started, her hand rushing to her chest like her mind had been elsewhere.
She rose, brushing her skirt out, and plastering a pleasant expression on her face.
She wore vintage Dior—an off-the-shoulder satin dress with a cinched waist. A former model from Los Angeles, Mom had more designer gowns than an Italian countess, and I’d inherited her taste for style.
We shared the same bone structure, though she was a natural blonde and several inches shorter than me, and I’d stopped being able to borrow her clothes years ago.
“Shoulders, Mathilda,” Mom murmured with a glance to my posture. She never used to care for things like that. She used to be fun.
Scarlet silently mocked her as Mom kissed my father’s cheek then turned to greet Dominic, and I held in a sigh. This was going to be a far worse lunch than I’d prepared for.
Over the first two courses, Dad kept the business talk to a minimum. Dominic made polite conversation, mostly with my mother, and I avoided his meaningful looks, trying to talk to Scarlet.
Named for her gorgeous, if treacherous red hair, my little sister was one of my favourite people in the world. From the moment I met her as a newborn in the hospital, I’d adored her, and being a decade older, I was almost a third parent to her.
Much the same as Callum was to his twin brothers.
He demonstrated the precise relationship I wanted with my sister.
And I was sure she wanted it, too. Scarlet had overheard Mom and Dad discussing my offer the first time I’d made it.
Mom had cautiously encouraged the move before Dad had blown up, and Scarlet’s eyes had welled when she’d recounted the story to me over a video call.
Scarlet cried about as often as I did. It nearly broke me to witness her pain.
To have one parent reject her had been hard, though she’d grown up with Dad’s behaviour, and the effects had been slow and incremental.
But to have her own mother do the same, no matter the intention—that was cruel.
Living with Dad and our mother affected her every day. One glance at our table would tell any passerby why.
Scarlet, with her glorious auburn waves, was clearly not my father’s genetic child.
And where he had a permanent dark tan, and I a medium olive skin, Scarlet was pale. More so than even Mom’s fair complexion.
Freckles sprinkled wilfully over her upturned nose and cheeks, her limbs were long and colt-like, and our mother’s high cheekbones stood out prominently, giving her a gamine look. At fourteen, she drew attention and could pass for years older—a fact she’d started to realise.
My father’s unknown roots—likely Middle Eastern or Mediterranean, though his background was a complete mystery, even to him—did not exist in her DNA, a fact that had been scientifically proven a few weeks after her birth. Though that only confirmed what everybody knew.
Near the end of her pregnancy, Mom had confessed to falling in love with a teacher at my private school. When challenged, the man had acknowledged Scarlet was his child, then promptly ran for his life, never to be heard of again. Mom had been devastated.
Dad had been deeply hurt, but he’d eventually forgiven his wife. The crying and wriggling evidence of her deceit? Not so much.
I shifted my chair toward Scarlet’s, and my life-toughened sister smiled prettily at me. “How are things?” I enquired.
Scarlet rolled her eyes as I cast a meaningful look at Dad, who was pointing out something on the menu to a waiter. The noise of the restaurant concealed our conversation, even if he had been paying attention.
“I quit ballet,” Scarlet drawled.
“Why?”
“Parent expo. Neither of them came. I lost it and threw up. It’s not worth the stress.”
Effing hell. “But you loved that.”
She shrugged a shoulder, then from the hook under the table, collected a small handbag.
From inside, she took a lip gloss and unscrewed the lid.
My sister applied the brilliant red shade at the table using her butter knife as a mirror—a poor display of manners primed to wind Dad up.
I eyed her new bag, my stomach shrinking.
It was a very expensive couture wallet. Chanel, with a gold chain, the entwined letters of the logo glinting under the restaurant’s bright lights.
The bag was not one of Mom’s.
She was stealing again?
I glanced at Mom. Under the cover of the table, she cracked a pill packet, swallowing a little white tablet down with water. What the heck?
With my thumb and forefinger, I pinched the area between my eyes. “Lottie, the bag?”
Despite my using her nickname, the one only I used, my sister kept her fierce blue eyes on Dad. She snapped the lip gloss lid into place and said loudly, “Do you like it? I’ll get you one, if you want.”
Across the table, the source of her worst view of herself, the motivation behind her every negative thought, raised his head.
Dad paused in his conversation, switching his gaze to her.
A moment passed where my little sister froze under his scrutiny, her spine straight and her proud chin tipped up in defiance, then Dad spoke and I watched her crumple.
“Mathilda, I’d like to bring you up to speed with Storm Force. You’re practically a stranger to my office these days.” His attention settled on me, and a fond smile broached his lips.