1. Chapter One #3
Hell, I’d waited twenty-one years to become the man I was always meant to be.
“It’s okay, babygirl,” I told her, meaning it. “Whatever it is, you tell me about it when you’re ready. Or not at all. Either way, I’m in your corner. Always. Okay?”
Bailey wiped away tears. “Yes, Daddy. Fuck, thank you so much. So so much…”
“God, you sound submissive,” McKenna grinned. “No wonder Tom’s over the moon for you.”
I shook my head. Now that the tough part was over, a new emotion was already stirring in my chest. One I’d never quite felt before.
Not rage. I was familiar with rage. I’d spent more than enough long nights alone in the house that was once my family’s home to understand the contours of that emotion. This was almost the same thing, and at the same time so different it almost didn’t deserve the name.
Rage was white-hot. What I felt for Debbie was colder than ice. Like an empty grave.
“This ends,” I growled, looking from one woman to the other and back. “Now.”
McKenna grinned from ear to ear. Bailey looked like she was going to throw up.
“Daddy…”
“What she did to me, I survived,” I said. “What she’s doing to you… babygirl, you don’t just do that to a twenty-year-old whose only crime was not having a safe place to stay when she was a kid. That’s fucking cruel. That’s…”
I broke off before I said what I was really thinking. But what almost came tumbling out:
That’s predator shit.
Because it really, really was.
And if I started saying that out loud about my ex-wife, I was going to hit the point where I drove to Debbie’s perfect little McMansion and burned it to the ground with her and Kevin Beaumont both inside.
“But… but my Dad,” Bailey said, suddenly looking very young. “Rick can get him out, Tom. Debbie can get him out of there.”
I was already shaking my head. “She’s never going to do that, babygirl.”
The hope in Bailey’s eyes was almost too much to take. “But she said she would! She’s going to have Rick put in the word with the parole board as soon as I land the whale—”
“I told her it was bullshit,” McKenna whispered.
I blinked. “The whale?”
Bailey looked like she’d swallowed a bug.
“I’ve been stalling her,” the blonde admitted.
“I told her a version of the truth—I’d found someone on the Sweetheart App, a middle-aged guy with a big heart and a lot of money.
” She grimaced. “I just didn’t tell her it was you—or that I’d fallen in love with you. ”
“Fuck all of this,” McKenna suggested. “We burn her down. Today. We go to the police with Bailey’s story. We let Kevin’s church know about it. Fuck, we hire a fucking skywriter to put it in the clouds over Debbie’s job—”
“And my dad stays behind bars for the rest of my life,” Bailey protested.
“She’s right,” I said.
McKenna did a double take. “She is?”
Not about Bailey’s Dad. I wasn’t sure if I wanted that criminal back in my babygirl’s life. But the other thing. “Going to the police won’t help,” I explained. “I’m guessing everything on the Sweetheart app is in your name, Bailey?”
She nodded.
“Then Debbie can point to it and say she had no idea,” I muttered. “The one thing that might sink her is those texts—if you and her really talked about scamming middle-aged guys in them, releasing them could get her in a lot of hot water and wreck her reputation—”
Bailey was already going pale. “No. She’s careful never to put anything incriminating in writing.”
I kind of figured Debbie would be. She was a bitch like that. But clever.
I thought it over. Picturing the Sweetheart app; thinking about my ex-wife manipulating a woman half her age like a puppet. Explaining the ‘scam’ so she could run it on lonely men and make Debbie money.
She intended Bailey to take the fall, I knew. Her pictures, her interactions. Doing it herself must have gotten too dangerous…
Oh. Oh shit.
“I know what we’re going to do,” I said.
Both women stared at me, waiting. “Daddy?” Bailey asked.
“You told her you have a whale?” I asked. “Someone stupid and ashamed and lonely willing to spend any amount of money necessary to get with you?”
Bailey’s cheeks burned. “Not in those words, exactly, Daddy. But the spirit of them.”
God, that really did describe the man I’d been before the divorce, didn’t it?
“Let her know things are moving forward,” I said, the wheels turning in my head.
“But that you need help to land this one. You’re young, you’ve never done this before.
She’ll believe it—the same way she’s believed you dragging your heels for weeks.
Hell, when she sees how much money is involved, she’s going to be salivating at the thought of helping you.
” I shook my head. “I know Debbie. God help me, I do know her.”
McKenna got it. “You’re the whale.”
I nodded. “We catfish the catfish. Get Debbie involved, get her in writing, if we can, get her on video admitting to the scam if we can’t. In her own words and undeniable. The kind of thing that will destroy her reputation even if it doesn’t hold up in court.”
Bailey blinked, slowly. “And then?” she asked, almost too frightened to hope.
“Then I confront her,” I told the girls. “Quietly. And I tell her that I’m going no contact with her, and you two are going no contact with her, and Savannah is going no contact with her. And that Rick is going to be free to help your dad with the parole board as much as he pleases.”
McKenna whistled. “She’s not going to like that.”
“She won’t. But if she doesn’t, I’ll show everybody exactly how the pastor’s future wife pays for her key lime pie.” I paused, the thing so much like rage flaring in my chest. “If she doesn’t do what I say, I will ruin her fucking life.”
McKenna and Bailey shared a look. “That just might work,” McKenna whispered. She was looking at me with even more fear—and longing—than she did when I called my job and told them I was going to be late without any excuses.
“One other thing,” I said, fixing them both with my gaze.
God. I was pretty sure if I’d told both of them to bend over the table and undress each other in that moment, they’d have done it with a smile. This was a Tom Cottrell neither of them had ever met before—that Bailey had only seen flashes of over the last week.
And they liked him. A lot.
“Savannah can never know,” I told the pair. “The blackmail, the scam—none of it. Ever.”
McKenna choked on air. “But Debbie—”
“Is her goddamned mother,” I grunted. “There is no version of ‘your mother did this to your best friend’ that will not break her in half. I need you to hide this even better than we’re hiding what’s happening between me and Bailey.
” Ice filled the pit of my stomach. “I’m serious. My daughter can never know.”
Slowly, both of them nodded. “Okay, Mr. C,” McKenna said.
“Yes, Daddy,” Bailey added, squeezing my hand.
After that, there was little left to say. “Alright, I need to get to work,” I told the pair. “I’m in enough trouble as it is—something tells me Brenda’s going to be pissed…”
Both of them laughed.
“Something tells me she’s not, Daddy,” Bailey giggled. “I think you might get a little bit more respect in the office today than you’re used to…”
Maybe she was right about that.
As I turned to leave, McKenna raised a finger. “Point of order,” she said.
I waited. “Yes?”
The auburn-haired coed grinned. “Wednesday. It’s happening.”
Bailey and I shared a look.
“We are not letting that woman take one single thing more from us,” McKenna said, sounding more aggressive than I’d ever heard her outside of an intense Arc Raiders session.
“You and Bailey set up the catfish thing, cool—bait the hook, get that bitch in 4K. But your Wednesday stays free.” She crossed her arms under her breasts.
“I already bought body glitter and lingerie.”
I blinked. “Glitter?”
She grinned. “You’re gonna fucking love it, Tom. Trust me.”
Behind me, Bailey snorted. “She’s not serious, Daddy. She just doesn’t want to spoil the real surprise.”
Either way, if I showed up to the office covered in glitter on Thursday, at least I’d have one hell of a story for Mark.
Shit, I was going to have to lie to Mark today, wasn’t I? He wanted to know all about the Armada.
I’m going to have to do a lot of lying if I’m going to catch Debbie out, I thought. You ready to be a secret agent, Tom?
I’d been sneaking around for over a week now with Bailey, hiding the best thing that had ever happened to me. Now I’d be doing it with an even more important purpose.
One that had the potential to change all of our lives forever.
I was halfway out of the kitchen when I heard the buzzing. Bailey took her phone out of her pocket, no doubt expecting a text from either Lina or my daughter Savannah. From the way her face went pale when she read it, I could tell it was neither.
“Speak of the devil,” she muttered.
I took the phone.
Sweetheart! The word looked almost too friendly. Checking in on our project. It’s been WEEKS! Let’s get coffee later this week, just us girls. So much to catch up on!
With a little grinning emoji at the end.
“Debbie,” I grunted. I could have ripped the fucking phone in half.
“I told you,” Bailey whispered. “She always talks in code.”
Maybe. But I’d seen my ex-wife’s smiley faces and passive-aggressive texts before. I’d been dealing with them for twenty-one years before the divorce.
And this was the first time one of them had ever looked desperate.
“We’re going to get her,” I told Bailey, feeling totally certain. “Book it.”
She smiled. “I will.”
I gave my babygirl a kiss. Then, when she protested, one for McKenna.
After that, it was time to head to work.