The rest of the ride is completely silent.
Olivia
I couldn’t believe that he ruined the wedding dress like that, but what hurt me the most was how he didn’t seem to see that anything special had happened.
I should have been aware of this. I should have known this would happen. After all, he’s the same arrogant guy he always was. Nothing changed with him, but everything changed with me.
I had sex for the first time, losing my virginity, and Sasha had warned me a thousand times that I didn’t want to get emotionally attached to the first guy that I slept with.
Well, that’s what happened. It was almost instantaneous. I was already beginning to see him in a new light, to see his power and authority as… well, great things, sexy things.
Now, he’s showing his true colors.
Whatever, I just need to finish this job, collect my million dollars, and then I’ll never have to worry about money again. I can move on with my life, and he can move on with his.
From now on out, I’m just going to be the consummate professional.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t be surly.
After all, he’s paying me for my acting abilities, the demeanor I present during certain times. The agreement never stipulated that I needed to be pleasant to him when we’re in private.
The driver unloads our bags from the car, and the only thing I want to do now is go into my room and curl up under the covers, with my Kindle and a couple good romance books.
But I’m not going to get a chance.
Nancy greets us at the door. “Laura’s been asking for you,” she says to David.
She doesn’t even look at me. I know that she doesn’t trust me and doesn’t trust the reasons that I’m here, but she’s too much of a good employee to express this in anything but nonverbal cues. I can’t complain, though. After all, I am a fraud. And I sold myself for money, essentially, when you break it down. I’m not feeling great about myself right now, but I did what I had to do.
“What’s going on with her?” says David.
“She’s not doing well, since the wedding. She’s feeling really lonely.”
“Hasn’t she had her lessons today?”
Nancy nods. “But it’s not enough. She needs her father.”
I can tell that Nancy, whatever she thinks about me and David, too, for that matter, really cares about Laura.
She must, since she doesn’t seem like the type of woman to ever even so much as suggest that she’s contradicting David. And I can’t blame her.
David nods stiffly. “I was going to go to the office today.”
Laura suddenly comes running in from the other room, hugging David around his legs.
I suddenly realize that I haven’t actually seen David interact with his daughter at all. And seeing it now, it seems… strange.
He hugs her back stiffly, but I can tell by the way his body is moving that he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t quite know what to do.
What a weird thing… to be a father yet feel uncomfortable with your own daughter.
It makes me feel angry, but also sympathetic for him at the same time.
Most of all, I feel emotional pangs for the daughter, who has this distant rich father who doesn’t know how to even hug her right.
“I missed you,” says Laura, looking up at her father.
“I missed you too,” he says, his voice stiff and strange sounding.
“Can we do something today?”
“You know I have a lot of work to do,” says David, checking his fancy watch.
“But Daddy…”
“You know,” I say. “Why don’t we go to a museum or something? It’s been a while since I’ve been to one.”
Laura looks at me for the first time. Her face is… unreadable. Who knows what she’s thinking about me. For her, I’m probably a complete unknown. David warned me that he didn’t tell Laura that this whole arrangement was just for legal purposes. As far as she knows, I’m her dad’s new wife, and that must mean also that I’m direct competition for his attention.
“The museum?” says David, raising his eyebrows as he gives me a look.
“Yeah,” I say. “What if the three of us went there?”
I put some emphasis on the word “three.”
“I don’t know,” says David. “I have a couple deals that are still pending…”
“Come on, Daddy. I want to go to the museum.”
“Come on, David,” I say, poking him in the ribs gently, the way a real wife might, trying to encourage her husband to do something that’s out of his comfort zone.
“Fine,” says David curtly. “Let’s go now.”
Laura’s all smiles.
“Right now? I haven’t even changed,” I say.
“You need special clothes for the museum?”
I shake my head.
There goes my bed under the covers with my Kindle. And it’s my own fault.
Why did I encourage this?
Laura runs away from us, towards the garage, where David’s car is presumably parked.
“Why are you doing this?” whispers David to me.
I shrug my shoulders. “Just trying to fulfill my contractual obligations.”
“It was more about social obligations. No one said anything about spending time with my daughter.”
He seems upset, perhaps at the idea that I would get to know his daughter, perhaps becoming close to her.
“You don’t want me to get close to her?”
“I don’t want her to get hurt.”
“I won’t get too close.”
But as the day goes on, this becomes harder and harder to do.
After a short period of suspicion, Laura warms up to me. She turns out to be a wonderful child who can’t manage to hold a grudge against her father’s new bride for very long at all. By the end of the car ride, we’re already chatting away like old friends.
“Do you think they’re going to have dinosaurs there?” say Laura.
“You like dinosaurs?” I say, mildly surprised that a little girl would like dinosaurs. I always figured that was a common obsession of boys, rather than girls, but who am I to try to reinforce gender stereotypes?
David buys the three of us tickets, and we set off into the museum in search of the dinosaur exhibit.
Laura’s cute in her braided pigtails, rushing in front of us to see the giant reassembled dinosaur skeletons.
“She’s really cute,” I say to David, with Laura out of earshot.
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re already getting along with her better than I ever have.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She talks to you…”
“She talks to you too. You’re her father. There’s nothing that can come between that… I’ll only know her for a few short months… You’re going to be in her life forever.”
I think of my own father, who, for better or for worse, has always been in my life… usually for worse, though.
“I never know what to say to her.”
“It’s easy, “ I say. “Just talk to her like you were talking to a friend.”
“I can’t talk to her like I talk to my friends,” says David.
“This is a rare side of you I’m seeing,” I say. “You’re always super confident. You’re always in charge.”
“I know, I know. And here I am completely unable to interact properly with my own daughter…”
“It’s just something that’s… well, let me put it this way. You can learn it. You just have to loosen up a little.”
The day passes by quickly at the museum, with Laura’s high energy leading us through almost every exhibit they have.
I start to feel bad for David, who seems to leave himself out of most of the conversations that Laura and I have about the exhibits.
Laura reminds me a lot of a friend I had back in school when I was her age. She’s interested in everything, intelligent, but also shy. I can tell she wants a lot from he
r father, but that he’s not able or not willing to totally commit himself to the type of relationship she would want from him.
When Laura and I are chatting, David stands a little off to the side, surveying everything, making sure everything is OK, without directly participating. It reminds me so much of the archetypical American father, who always remains a little removed from the typical family dynamic.
But there’s so much more to him. I know it’s in there, but he’s wearing this shell, this armor of the tough, no-nonsense businessman who gets exactly what he wants all the time, no matter what.
… including me, I guess.
“Wow,” I say. “That was quite a day.”
We’re just leaving an exhibit on ancient armor that has Laura just as fascinated as she was with the dinosaurs.
“Can we go to another museum?” says Laura.
“We’ve got to go home to eat,” says David, checking his watch.
“Why don’t we get some pizza?” I say. “I know a great place just around the corner.”
Truth be told, it’s one of the few pizza places I know about in Philadelphia. Sasha took me here a year ago, swearing against my skepticism that it was by far the best pizza place in all of Philly. And she was right.
“Yeah!” says Laura.
“We should get home,” says David.
“When’s the last time you ate pizza?” I say, smiling at him the way a new wife would, coaxing him and teasing him.
David shrugs. “A long time ago. They don’t serve it much at the office.”
“Or at all those fancy restaurants where you have your business meetings.” Or at the exclusive clubs where you find your model one nights stands, I would say if his daughter weren’t right here.
“You never let me eat pizza,” says Laura.
“It’s not good for you.”
“Just this once,” I say.
I don’t know exactly why I’m choosing this small fight. I don’t know why I volunteered to come out today, except for the fact that I feel bad for Laura… and, to be honest, I feel bad for David, despite the way he treated me after our “honeymoon night.” I feel like he’s wearing another personality as a disguise because he thinks he needs to.
“Fine,” says David, and starts walking towards the garage where the car is parked.
“We can walk there,” I say. “It’s just a block.”
He nods stiffly and walks in the direction that I point. Laura and I tag along behind, chatting the entire time excitedly about what we saw in the museum.
It’s honestly fun talking to her. This could be an unexpected job perk that I never even considered. I never though I’d be the type to have kids… it wasn’t a conscious decision I ever made. It was just something I never really considered… maybe because I’d never had sex, and even I know that you need to have sex at least once in order to have children.
For a moment, I wonder to myself if the world seems any different now that I’m no longer a virgin.
And the answer is a resounding no.
The world’s the same, but something is different about me. I don’t know what it is. It’s something ethereal, something that’s impossible to define, to put my finger on.
David
“Just try to engage in the conversation,” whispers Olivia. “Seriously, you can do it.”
I just grunt at her.
But… maybe she’s onto something.
I order pizza for the three of us, and it’s delicious.
“So the Stegosaurus was your favorite?” says Olivia to Laura.
“Yeah,” says Laura, who begins reciting the facts she remembers from the museum. I don’t think they’re all correct, but it’s still impressive.
“I think I liked the T-rex,” I say. Normally, I would never try to talk to Laura like this, engaging her on this level. But Olivia really does seem to have some kind of rapport with her. I might as well try it, if it’s working so well for her. That’s something I learned running my own business—if something is working well for someone else, and you’re struggling with it, just give it a try yourself. Most of the time, if it works for them, it’ll work for you too.
“The T-rex?” says Laura, looking at me with a puzzled expression her face. She’s used to me telling her what to do, telling her she needs to study harder, not talking about her favorite dinosaurs.
“Yeah,” I say, my words faltering for a moment, until I find them. “It was so big and powerful. It was the king of the whole world, right?”
“The Stegosaurus had cool spikes,” says Laura. “And it didn’t hurt animals like the T-rex. It just ate plants.”
“That’s a good point,” I say. “It’s nice that they were just eating plants and not hurting things. I guess the T-rex had to do it, but it’s a little unfortunate.”
The rest of the meal goes stellar. Laura and I are chatting away about dinosaurs and everything else in the museum. Olivia hangs back a little in the conversation, but interjects when I’m starting to falter. But mostly she just smiles at us.
When it’s time to go, Laura goes to the bathroom and Olivia smiles at me.
“What is it?” I say.
“It’s so nice to see you getting along with your daughter.”
“I didn’t know it was this… easy,” I say.
“Why do you have such a hard time talking to her?”
“I think it’s because my own parents didn’t really talk to me.”
“What do you mean they didn’t talk to you?”
“You know, they just ordered me around, told me to do chores, do my work… threatened me.” I’m about to add “beat me,” but Laura comes back from the bathroom, all smiles, full of pizza and good dinosaur conversation.
“Well,” I say. “Looks like we should really be getting back.”
“I’m tired,” says Laura, her whole mood suddenly changing from excitement to satisfied exhaustion.
“I’ll carry you,” I say, and I scoop down and pick her up.
She smiles at me before falling fast asleep in my arms.
“I haven’t done this since she was a little kid,” I say.
“She still is a little kid,” says Olivia.
“You know what I mean.”
At the car, I lay her gently into the backseat and buckle the seatbelt. I lean down and kiss her forehead.
“Thanks,” I say, getting into the driver’s seat, with Olivia beside me in the passenger seat.
“For what?”
“For all this,” I say. “You’ve really helped me, and I don’t know why. You didn’t have to do all this. It’s not part of the agreement.”
Olivia shrugs. “I just wanted to see you two have a good relationship,” she says. “And, it’s not like this is going to fix everything. You’re going to have to work at it, but you can do it.”
I nod.
I don’t know what to say. For once, I’m lost for words with Olivia.
I guess I was kind of a dick to her, in a way.
“Hey,” I say. “Did I tell you yet about the dinner party?”
“Nope,” says Olivia, starting to giggle.
“What’s so funny? It’s just a dinner party.”
“It’s just that you’re not giving me an order,” she says. “Usually when you talk to me you just tell me what to do, and you’re not doing that now.”
I shrug. “I hadn’t noticed,” I say. “Anyway, I’m hosting it tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” she says.
I nod. “I’m inviting the judge and a couple business partners. This is the chance to show you off as my new respectable bride. And it’s my chance to show them I’m a changed man and all that.”
“You think they’ll buy that?”
“People can be surprisingly gullible,” I say.
“So who’s going to be there? A bunch of other rich guys and their trophy wives?”
“A few,” I say. “You might actually like some of them, though. My old friend, Ryan Hudson, is coming
in from San Francisco with his new wife, who I’ve never met.”
“He’s another business guy?”
“Sort of. He’s a programmer. He did it all himself, basically inventing something that earned him his money.”
“Impressive,” says Olivia, but she doesn’t sound impressed.
When we get back home, Olivia walks with me to Laura’s room. I carry Laura, and set her down on her bed. She doesn’t wake up the entire time.
“Those dinosaurs must have really tired her out,” I whisper.
Olivia nods and smiles down at Laura.
“You really like her, don’t you?” I say.
“Yeah,” says Olivia. “She’s great, and I never thought I’d be the type of person to enjoy kids.”
We leave Laura’s room, closing the door gently behind us.
There’s an awkward moment as we look at each other. I can tell that we’re both thinking about the same thing: the awkwardly silent and angry car trip back from the Poconos this morning, and last night.
My cock starts to stiffen in my pants as I remember tearing the dress off of her and plunging my cock deep inside her.
“Well,” she says. “I’m heading to bed.”
“Got it,” I say.
Down at the bar, I pour myself a light whiskey on the rocks, and sit, contemplating a painting that’s been hanging on the wall for years, one that I’ve never paid much attention to before.
Olivia
Today I actually have to go back to work, which is a real change from the fairy tale fake wedding billionaire lifestyle I’ve been leading for the last couple days.
People are staring at me when I get into work, whispering at me quite obviously behind my back. No one seems to dare to approach me. After all, to them I’m the one who finally landed David Masters, the one who was unattainable in that way.
I’m sure everyone is jealous of me. If only they knew the real story.
Whatever, I just have to keep my head down and get through this. Once I get my payment from David, I can leave this job in the dust and do whatever I want. Maybe I’ll go back to school and study something that I really want to, taking my time so that I don’t get overworked again and develop that horrible crippling fatigue.
SEAL'd Lips: A Secret Baby Romance Page 57
