It took everything in me to inhale, swivel on my sneakers, and plaster a smile on my face. Ransom remained seated behind me. Nothing in his body language betrayed he was meeting a former president.
Dad wore cigar pants, a navy sweater, and his favorite slippers. His silver-bluish hair was parted on the side, and he was impeccably shaved, sporting a relaxed, almost teasing smile and round, vintage reading glasses.
“Hi, Dad.” I pushed the imagery of Mom playing with the dogs to a back drawer in my mind.
I didn’t really have a choice but to be nice to him. He was the person who bankrolled me.
“Sugar Pie, my dearest.” He approached, kissing both my cheeks, squeezing my shoulders with affection. “I was worried about you.”
“Sure had an interesting way of showing it.” I smiled sunnily.
He ignored the barb. “I see you’ve added to your tattoo collection since last we met.”
Two years ago, I hadn’t had the semicolon tattoo on my wrist (symbolizing my story hadn’t ended yet), the flowered Zen circle on my collarbone (to find the strength within myself), and the cloud spreading across my inner arm (because even though reality sucked—my dreams could always carry me to exciting, beautiful places).
“Oh, you know how it is when you have too much spare time.” I didn’t know if I was being sarcastic or berating myself.
“Don’t give yourself a hard time.” He patted my arm. “Nothing wrong with self-expression.”
Dad swung his blue eyes from me to Ransom and disentangled from our embrace, turning in his direction. “The man of the hour, eh? McAfee spoke highly of you.”
Ransom stood up, tucking his hands into his front pockets. “Sir.”
“Sorry you were kept waiting,” Dad apologized, keeping his gaze firmly on my bodyguard.
“So am I.”
Did Ransom just hand the former president of the United States his ass? Even I, Anthony Thorne’s flesh and blood, didn’t dare show discontent with his behavior.
“How’ve you been settling into the job?” Dad clapped his shoulder, chuckling at my protector’s sour nature. I wondered if I was invisible. If I was in some sort of a teen fantasy flick and had to find a magic potion to gain back my visibility. I imagined gulping the potion down, my legs appearing first, like in cartoons, before the rest of my body. Then the collective cries of delight and relief from my family.
“There she is!”
“We haven’t lost her!”
“Oh, Sugar Pie, don’t leave us ever again!”
Meanwhile, in reality, Ransom drawled, “Without a hitch.”
“She’s not easy to tame,” Dad said, as if I were a wild raccoon.
“I’m not easy to cross,” Ransom replied blandly.
I wasn’t surprised he wasn’t tongue-tied in front of my father, but must he treat him with the same attitude he would jock itch?
“This is great. Follow me, Ransom. I need a word. Sugar Pie, I will see you in a minute. We have much to discuss, and I’m sure you have questions for me.”
My father always said life was about priorities. Right now, he made it clear he would rather talk to the man he hired to kick some sense into me than find out what I’d been up to these past couple years. Although, one could argue, he didn’t need to ask. It was all splayed on my Instagram page and in the tabloids.
Left alone in the grand room, I ambled back to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of my mother again. I liked to feel the delicious pain as it pierced through layers of my skin until it reached my heart. The ache was bittersweet. It felt like getting a new tattoo. It made me remember that I was alive. That I could still feel.
But the bench was empty, and the dogs were gone. Bees swarmed around fat flowers, and birds continued to chirp. The world went around its day, oblivious to my heartache.
Ransom’s meeting with Dad barely took thirty minutes. Ransom returned on his own, his face not betraying a word that’d been said during his visit to my father’s office. He collected his laptop and slipped it into a leather case.
I watched him, filled with sudden, urgent rage.
So what if this man had been through a lot? He chose to channel his anger toward being an unbearable, mean-spirited man. And his ire was directed at me.He wasn’t here to protect me. He was here to ensure I didn’t screw up publicly. I was his paycheck. Hisfatpaycheck. And he’d probably spent the last thirty minutes telling my father how much of a bother I was, so he would give him a bonus.