Ruthless Daddy_A Romance Collection

by Emily Bishop

  “It’s complicated. I have nothing. I’ve been saving for ages, whatever pennies I can, just to find a way out of this place. It’s not like I want to stay here, just that I don’t have the means,” Olivia said, dropping to the edge of the bed.

  “Because your father has kept you here.” The anger swirled up again, and I tamped down on it. “He wants to keep you and fuck if I’ll let him.”

  “Do we even know that we’re… ready for that? We’ve got more than just ourselves to consider here. It’s been years, Eric.”

  “Nothing’s changed for me.”

  She sucked in a breath. I kissed her softly. “We’ll make it work.”

  “I can’t expect you to carry us away from here. I’ve got nothing to offer you, financially, and frankly, that pisses me off.”

  “We’ll plan this. Figure it out. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and nodded.

  The weight of the coming day pounded on my shoulders, and I made for the door. Maggie leaped to her feet, bringing her little needle-like fingers through Max’s untamed mane. Max rose up and tickled her beneath the armpits, making her loll back, cackling, before drawing her eyes to me.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said—the only words that mattered.

  “Hi, baby. We have to get going. Okay?”

  Max’s eyes burned into me, questioning. Olivia appeared behind me, her presence solid.

  She had nothing to offer me? Christ, she’d always been a safe haven and a rock.

  “No need to drive us to the barn house,” Olivia said. “I’ll call a car. I know you need to be at the funeral home as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  She strode toward Max and drummed her fingers atop his shoulder. It was a familiar pattern. Their signal to one another, perhaps. “Don’t worry. I’ll go arrange it with the concierge downstairs. You need this day, Eric. See you later.” Her eyes flashed back toward me just a single time. Seconds later, the door clicked closed behind them, leaving just Maggie and me in the cavern of the two-bedroom suite.

  Maggie blinked toward me, her smile faltering. “Will we see them again, Daddy?”

  “Definitely,” I replied.

  When Maggie and I arrived downstairs at the car, Olivia and Max were already gone. They’d apparently darted directly into an awaiting taxi, burning from Raleigh and back into the trees. As I turned the steering wheel toward the road, my heart strained. Fuck, it would be difficult to make this work.

  No money, no prospects. Spent the last of it to get here and do this. Deadbeat dad who hated me didn’t leave me shit to work with.

  It was stay in Randall or spend the last of my cash to get us all back to New Orleans. And then what? Four mouths to feed.

  But how could I go back with just Maggie, now? I couldn’t.

  And even if Olivia and I hadn’t had this fucking need for each other, I couldn’t consciously leave her here with her cunt of a father bearing down on her. Leave my son. Not a chance.

  The clock clicked closer and closer to eleven in the morning, and the funeral director, that kid Conner, expected me at one. I had to get us back to the rental, change our clothes, mentally prep for a day at the funeral home.

  I hadn’t even seen my father’s dead body yet. Had only seen a shoddy photo in the paper of the old man, from maybe five years ago. Skin had sagged beneath his eyes, becoming grey hollows, and his beard had been crooked and ragged on his face. When I’d asked where Conner got the photo, he’d mentioned that for a brief time, Isaac had taken up dating some woman who insisted he get his photo taken for the church bulletin. This had been the result. “That was a good few months before rumor has it he ripped into her.” Conner had sighed, chuckling. “Man, your old man was a trip, wasn’t he? Always telling everyone just exactly what was on his mind.”

  A trip. A trip was exactly what he was.

  A half hour later, Maggie lifted her little arms from the bath as I helped her out, handing her a fluffy towel that had come with the old rental house. Her hair hung in wet curls as she dressed in a little black dress, chattering about Max and Olivia. “Are we going to see them again, Daddy?” she chirped. “I love Max. He is so funny!”

  “Of course, baby,” I told her, smoothing her black dress down her back.

  I dressed quickly, pulling black socks over my feet and slicking gel through my hair. I eyed myself in the mirror: this thirty-one-year-old orphan. Could he truly believe he had changed? That his anger issues, his resentment—his capacity to hurt—was completely gone?

  Fuck. I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the day without losing my mind.

  I donned a black hat and walked us the several blocks toward the funeral home. As we marched past Main Street, I watched as a woman who seemed like a crooked, older version of my English teacher, and could have been given the passage of time, creak out from her front door. Her black dress whirled out from between the crack, and she bowed her head. Her whisper somehow met my ears.

  “We’re all praying for you, Eric. For his soul to reach heaven, even though he was a horrible, evil man.”

  I stopped short at the house, gazing up at her. Maggie bounced slightly, her hand dropping up and down in mine. I wanted to call out. To ask this woman if she truly thought I could be forgiven for my crimes against this shit town. But before I could, she’d ducked back into her house, her grey head bowing. Perhaps I had imagined the entire thing.

  Conner awaited Maggie and I at the front of the funeral home, his eyes watery—as if he’d dripped them with droppers so as to seem “appropriate” for a funeral day. He clapped me on the back as we entered, leaning down to Maggie to say hello. “It’s a rough day today, but we’ll get you through it,” he said, using his best drawl.

  A familiar itching started up in my fist. Christ, I wanted to shove him against the wall. Why? Why was this bringing my father’s anger, raging back into my chest? I lifted Maggie into me, and she brought her own fist against her eye, rubbing it. She whispered into my ear, wondering, “Why is he talking to me?”

  Conner led me into the foyer where that church photo of my father had been propped up on an angle, his name written in cursive beneath.

  Isaac Holzman.

  I stared at the photo, searching for an image of myself in him. And sure enough, it lurked just beyond. That angry glint in his eye—it was something I’d seen in myself, especially those first few years before Maggie had been born. I tore through my young adulthood at a blistering speed, fighting, scrappy. Unafraid of anyone, because I had lost so much.

  “What a guy,” Conner sighed, slipping his fingers through what was left of his blond hair. “You know, he really was a character.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this, so I followed Conner into the larger room, where about seventy-five seats had been set up, facing toward the coffin. The coffin was a dark mahogany, long and thick, with delicate engravings on either end. It was opened, with a pillow-like material, dark purple, wrapping around the image of a very old, wrinkled man. Stepping toward it, my tongue felt like it would fall down my throat. I had an image of choking on it, of falling to my death in the aisle at his funeral home. He would have liked that.

  At the front of the casket, I stared down at the hollow form of my father: a man I hadn’t seen in twelve years. His hands were folded over his chest, bones beneath sagging skin, rather than the weapons through which he’d taught my mother and I not to go near him after one too many brews. I wanted to lean over him. To whisper in his ear that I felt I’d beaten him. That Maggie was proof of that. But the words felt hollow in my mind, and I held them back.

  “It’s a lot to see them, for the first time. I know that,” Conner said from behind me, as if he could possibly understand.

  I spun toward him, forcing myself to make constant eye contact. Maggie brought herself tighter against my shoulder, sniffing. “It smells weird in here,” she sighed.

  It did. Like chemicals. Like death. And like the few bouquets of flowers dotting
the edge of the casket. I realized this had been something I’d forgotten to take care of, and I mentioned it to Conner. In return, he said, “In a town like Randall, you don’t have to worry about things like that. Folks around here make sure there are flowers. They make sure they send their people out good.”

  “Ha. As if anyone will come out for the old man,” I sighed. “As if.”

  But these were famous last words. As I stood at the casket at two o’clock in the afternoon, a constant stream of people from Randall buzzed in through the foyer door. I recognized the first several as men who’d boozed with my father back at the bar, when I’d been a kid.

  “Peter Barren,” I said to the first, who staggered, half-drunk himself, into me. He shook my hand, his eyes glowing a strange, almost citrus green. “I would recognize you anywhere.”

  “Your man was an old crook,” Peter said, waggling his grey eyebrows. “But Jesus, did I love him when we were boys. Strange how it all works out, doesn’t it?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to this. I’d always imagined that my father only knew Peter from the bar, from one or fourteen pours too many. But now, his eyes spoke of memories. Of good times gone by. I clapped the back of his hand as he spoke, tilting my head. Poised to ask about it, I watched as the old man cut toward my father, placing his hand at the edge of the coffin. He began to mutter to Isaac, speaking words I couldn’t quite make out. And before I could stop him, another of my father’s old drinking buddies was upon me—Hector Patterson, speaking in a similar, regretful way. “The man was a bastard. But I couldn’t have loved him more.”

  The town streamed through—with a line over fifty people and counting out the door of the funeral home. Overwhelmed, I found myself shaking hands with first an old driver’s ed teacher, who muttered that I’d “grown up into a solid, good-looking man,” and then an old neighbor from across the street, who said, “Damn, if I could do it all over again, I would have tried to take your old dad to church more often.”

  My heart burned in my chest. Beside me, Maggie was playing the part of hostess. Saying that “yes,” she was the granddaughter of Isaac. And yes, wasn’t she the cutest kid they’d seen in years? She bowed her head and giggled like any actress.

  I searched for Olivia at the back of the hall while I greeted everyone. After all, Olivia had been the only one who’d ever seen me for who I actually was: a dick, sure, but one who could love with a fierceness.

  About a half-hour into the viewing, I spotted a semi-familiar man, a ghost. He was lurking mid-way through the crowd, his shoulders broad over a large, bulbous belly. Beside him was a bright-haired woman, speaking with a high-pitched voice. I stared at the woman for a long time from where I stood still shaking hands with the old eye doctor who’d had the office downtown in the ‘90s. I’d never met him. But he mentioned, “I always saw you out on your bike. That engine. How it made my ears bleed!”

  The woman and man, the couple, seemed the perfect, conventional couple of a small-town world. As the woman chewed mindlessly at her gum, she spoke up into the broad-shouldered man’s ear, showing her manicured teeth. With another blink, I remembered her as a much younger girl. Eighteen years old and long of legs, striding out of school with Olivia. Her best friend on the cheerleading squad. Cynthia. Of course.

  Which meant that…

  Jesus. Beside her was Freddy, the ex-quarterback. The man Olivia had agreed to go to the carnival dance with. As he approached, inching closer as I worked through the crowd, my free hand grew into a fist. I remembered it. I remembered that night so clearly: how his stupid, massive hand had wrapped around the base of her back, tipping closer to her ass. How he’d spoken down to her, his voice booming out over the carnival dance.

  I’d been in the corner, burning through cigarette after cigarette. The air smelled of honey, of the newness of spring, and of the hay bales stacked up on either side of the dance floor. And my cock had ached for her, my heart had burst in my chest for her. But all the while, she’d blinked up into the ravenous face of Freddy, this massive, bulky-headed quarterback. The reason for my anger. My resentment.

  And even now, I felt that anger rippling through me. He’d been my last great Randall enemy. And now, his eyes met mine across the crowd, firm and soulless. His wife stopped chattering beside him and instead burned her eyes into me, as well. With the seconds that ticked, my heart bottled up in my ears, and the air felt heavy, like water.

  No. Now, I was Eric Holzman, son of great bastard, Isaac Holzman. And I was angry. Angry that I’d been robbed an entire lifetime with my son, Max, and his mother—the love of my life, Olivia.

  Someone would pay.

  Chapter 16

  Olivia

  Twelve Years Earlier

  “Anyway, it’s just like—you can’t say no to Freddy for the dance. And you know that,” Cynthia said as we slid our legs from our cheerleader outfits and into our miniskirts, prepping to head home. She flipped out her blonde hair, giving me one of those hefty “Oh, Olivia,” sighs. It was clear, at least in her eyes, that I understood nothing about the ways of the world, and she did. Only because she’d had sex before. But it had been with Hank, which, in my eyes, didn’t count. Hank would have done it with anyone.

  I wanted something special. And, although I’d agreed to head to the carnival dance with Freddy, the quarterback, I was pretty darn sure that he didn’t have the “something special” I was looking for.

  “I’ve already said yes, Cynthia.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I’ll go back on it. Plus, I’m more or less positive that my mother set this whole thing up, because she works with Freddy’s mom downtown. I mean, whatever. It’s not like I’ll be in this town a year from now, you know?”

  Cynthia blinked those big eyes at me. She chawed on her gum, raising a single eyebrow. “And what do you mean by that?”

  “It’s just that I’m probably going to college next year,” I sighed, buttoning up my shirt, sliding my fingers down my stomach. I eyed myself ruefully, unsure if I was even worthy enough to be wanted by anyone in class. Certainly not Eric. Eric wanted nothing to do with anyone. Hadn’t he made that clear, when he hadn’t made a peep after hearing about the dance and my date?

  Had I agreed to go out with Freddy only to get a rise out of Eric? The question burned in my mind for the first time. I wasn’t that cruel. Not that kind of girl. Spinning back toward Cynthia, I shrugged my shoulders, wanting to turn the conversation back to something more comfortable.

  “And what about you? Are you still going with Hank?”

  “Of course I’m going with Hank,” Cynthia sighed. “He’s only the second-best boy in this school. And as far as I’m concerned, everyone knows I’m the second-best girl. After you, of course. Miss Cheerleading Captain. Miss Big Titties.”

  “Whatever, Cynth,” I said. “You know I don’t care about that.”

  “When Freddy asks you to go steady with him, I know you won’t be able to say no,” she said. “You’d be crazy to. And then, before you know it, you’ll have a house on Main Street and four or five of little Freddies running around…”

  I reached across the changing area and placed my hand across her lips, shaking my head. “You have to stop,” I told her. “Seriously. I’m not all about that.”

  Cynthia yanked away from me. She gathered her things and darted toward the door, tossing her hair. “Whatever, Olivia. Sometimes you can be such a bitch. Thinking you’re so much better than everyone else.”

  Not better. Just different. But Cynthia could believe what she wanted about me.

  I followed her from the locker room, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. Up ahead, Cynthia strutted from the school and dove into the front seat of a vehicle next to Hank, that second-string quarterback asshole who’d tried to trace his finger underneath the skirt of my dress on more than one occasion.

  I paused at the edge of the sidewalk, gazing out. The pavement felt almost like the ocean, with my parents’ house no more than a half-mile away.
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br />   On cue, I heard it: the familiar purring of Eric’s motorbike. As Hank and Cynthia screeched from the parking lot, Eric barrelled in from the south end, his dark curls rustling in the wind. He cut to the side and halted in front of me.

  Immediately, everything within me turned to Jell-O, all my organs bulbous and shifting around one another. I slipped a strand of hair behind my ear. What would happen? What were we going to say?

  “Get on,” Eric finally said, his words dominant. “I don’t have all day.”

  I stabbed my hands on either side of my waist, shaking my head. “Why the hell do you think I should?”

  “Because you want to,” Eric said. Leaning toward me, his eyes alight, he murmured. “You want to be free. I can see it in every single nerve of your fucking body. But hell, you won’t give into it.”

  Enraged, I took the bait, lacing my leg over the back of the motorbike. My hands found his six-pack abs, glided over them, and then I latched myself behind him as he revved the engine. “We’re not going home, champ,” he called to me, before throttling up.

  As if I’d thought that from the start.

  Eric drove us out of town toward the forest. We bobbed left of cars, skidding in front of them, and they blasted their horns at us. As we cut further from town, I lost track of time, and I lost track of facts. No longer was I “Freddy’s date to the carnival dance.” Rather, I was a free vagabond. I certainly wasn’t Anthony Thames’s daughter. No. I was my own woman, a woman with merit and ideas and energy. A woman who could forge her own destiny.

  Eric slid the bike down a dirt path, cutting left and right through trees. Terrified he would run us into one, folding our bodies over limbs and trunks, I clung to him tighter. I imagined us on the front-page news: Beauty Queen and Bad Boy Found Dead. I imagined the photos, the questions. “How had they known one another? What was their story?” Maybe there would be a Lifetime movie about us. Maybe people would remember my name.