Larkin turned to Darian. “Daddy, I really…”
Darian shook his head. “We just changed the color in your playroom. It’s going to stay that way for a while.”
Larkin’s bottom lip pushed out into a pout.
Darian grinned and tapped her lip with a finger. “You’re adorable, and I love you, but it won’t work.”
Larkin’s shoulders slumped.
Brylee grabbed ahold of Larkin’s hand. “I think a bed would look great right here in front of the window.”
Larkin tilted her head to the side. “A white metal one or antique brass.”
“Yes!” Brylee laughed.
“She’ll need a dollhouse,” Larkin suggested.
“And books,” Brylee said as she moved around the room.
“I’ve got a few white bookcases coming tomorrow,” Patrick said as he stood back with his hands in his pockets and let the girls design the room.
He made a mental list of the things they were suggesting, planning to order everything that night and have it delivered the next day. He wasn’t worried about not getting the room done. Money could make about anything happen, and he had plenty of that.
Later that night, he lay in bed as the images the detective got for him raced through his mind. Even with her hair cut short, uneven, and choppy, she was still one of the cutest things he’d ever seen.
His new mission in life was to rid the girl of the shadows that darkened her beautiful blue eyes. He wanted to be the person who made her smile every day, made her feel safe, and look forward to the future.
He’d never even talked to the girl, but he was already half in love with her. As crazy as it sounded, he knew she was the one he’d been waiting for, and he would do whatever it took to get her away from that bastard of a father of hers and into his home.
Chapter Three
Eve watched her father drive away from her bedroom window. She raised her hand to her cheek and flinched at the tenderness.
Her body was riddled with bruises. Most of the time, her father would hit her in places her clothes covered, so no one knew what he did. But the night before, he’d lost his temper and smacked her hard in the face. It was nothing she did. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The light bruise would disappear or be very faded by Sunday service, the only time he let her out of the house most of the time, so her father wasn’t worried about people seeing it.
&
nbsp; She set her forehead against the cold windowpane and closed her eyes, praying for a miracle like she did every day for the last several years. It probably wouldn’t happen for people like her. Girls who were bad to the core, like her father liked to say. He also liked to call her devil’s spawn.
She felt a dark despair shroud her at the thought that this would be her life until the day she died. She had no chance at a family of her own because she had to take care of her father. He didn’t like strangers in the house, so that meant Eve did everything. She even had to shine his shoes and rub his feet when they ached. She shuddered at that thought. She’d rather be hit than have to touch his smelly gross feet.
Sometimes, when she was hurting, especially after one of the beatings, she’d pray for her father to die and then feel guilty. It also made her think her father was right, that she might have a bit of the devil in her to feel that way.
A small smile came to her mouth when she thought about her younger years when her mother was alive. She’d made everything bearable. Even though her father had always been a hard man, her mother had given her hope, love, and affection. Sometimes she missed her something awful and secretly wished she’d died in the car accident with her.
Her head jerked up at the knock on the front door. She hadn’t paid attention and hadn’t seen a car pull in. All she saw was the back end of a vehicle because the overhang hid the front end. Her father hadn’t said anything about a delivery, but she knew to check just in case.
She walked to the front door, peeked through the window on the side of the door, and frowned. Larkin and Brylee stood there, grinning at her. A large man stood behind her and gently smiled at her. Eve hastily unlocked the door and opened it.
“What are you doing here?”
Larkin stepped around her and into the house.
“Wait, Larkin. My father would be so angry if he knew you were in the house.”
Larkin looked at the man and waited.