No one else had said anything; our interactions were the same as the day before. No one was looking at me like it was my last day on earth and I gotta figure that Mancini would at least give me my last rites or some shit or at the very least give me a running head start.
I heard them come back upstairs and into the office after seeing the women off. I didn’t get the drift that something was up until I noticed that none of them had taken their seats except my father in law who sat behind his desk. I looked around to see the others lined off behind me in a semi circle.
“Shoo buddy!” Shoo buddy is an old saying that literally means oh fuck! I closed the laptop and sat back in my chair, no pressure. I didn’t take my eyes off of him, didn’t blink-swallow, none of that. I knew that no matter what came before, even permission for his daughter to go off to school with me that this was it right here. It was crunch time.
“We have two issues on the table here son. I thought I was going to have to talk to you about the prom and your responsibilities since you’re the one taking my daughter. I thought I was going to have to set some ground rules so you’d know and understand the consequences if you fucked that up in anyway, but last night you said something about a wedding?”
“I think by now you must know that Caitlin’s not just my daughter, she’s seriously daddy’s little princess, in every sense of the word. I’m the first and only man in her life until now. I protected and shielded her, her whole life.”
His stare was dead on, no smile, no give this was Colton Lyon at his rawest. And I knew instinctively that according to how I handled myself here things could go very well or very bad for me. This moment just might decide what kind of future I had in this man’s life, which meant my woman’s life as well.
I didn’t flinch and didn’t adjust my ass on the chair. I knew what I was doing when I dropped that statement out of nowhere. It was the perfect opportunity. And though it came sooner than I’d planned, why not? Sometimes that timetable in my head is going to need tweaking here, and there, I know this. I knew it when I constructed the shit.
I’d had a few moments after going home last night though. I’d even laid in bed expecting him to come break down the door half of the night. “What is your question sir?” I felt the others shift behind me and my neck grew hot. I’m sure they wouldn’t kill me, not in a house full… Shit, the women are gone. No pressure Todd, you got this.
I felt the tattoo of her name on my chest start to itch. I started envisioning all the things I wanted us to do together, could almost feel the joy of those things
He rubbed a finger along his lip and the look in his eyes said that playtime was over. “Did you propose to my daughter?”
“Not officially, I wouldn’t do that without asking your permission first sir.” I let him digest that one.
“But… it’s been a given since I was eighteen and she sixteen that we were going to get married at some point in the future. I did ask her a couple days ago if she wanted to choose her ring or if she wanted me to do it.”
“You gave her a choice?”
“Well yeah, I figure since she’s going to be wearing it for the rest of her life she should have some input as long as it comes from Simon I don’t care.” His brow went up at that and I heard the others shift behind me.
“Do you know how much my daughter is worth?” I wasn’t expecting that. Though I knew he had money, it isn’t something she and I had every discussed beyond our plans to run her mom’s company when we graduated. And the only reason we even talked about that is because it’s something her mom had asked her if she would be interested in doing after college.
Her mom plans to pass the company to her kids and as the oldest, Caitlin will have the top seat, or so her mom had promised her. I don’t know exactly how much the company is worth since Colton has a way of keeping anything to do with his family tightly secured.
“No, I never gave it a thought, she never said…”
“I’m not talking about money son. I mean do you realize that if you ever fuck up, your life will be forfeit? Are you ready to take that chance? To make a lifetime commitment to my kid?”