Chapter Eleven
Addilyn
“Aren’t you done rebelling yet? Quit that job and come home!” I held the phone away from my ear as my father’s voice boomed out of it. He was as filled with outrage as I was, but I didn’t care. He thought that he had the right to design my life, and I was in complete disagreement. I loved my father, but he didn’t own me.
“I am doing good work,” I said through gritted teeth while doing my best to keep my voice level. “I have a place to live that is my place, and I like it! I got my job myself and I like it, too. I like my life, and I’ll live it however I see fit!” Okay, so I might have been overstating how much I “liked” my job. I did like it, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. He didn’t need to know that, though.
“You ingrate of a child!” he fumed, and that’s when I clicked the phone off, ending the call. I didn’t need to listen to his berating. I’d heard it enough times already to know through and through just how disappointed he was with me.
The phone, still held in my hand rang again as “Daddy” flashed across the screen. I ignored it, letting it go to voicemail while I willed my blood pressure to drop back into a normal range. It stopped ringing, was followed by silence, and then started ringing again. This happened three times. Finally, having had enough of his obsessive behavior, I clicked answer. “This stops, do you hear me!” I yelled into the phone. “I have had enough of the badgering and I have had enough of you!”
Silence met my ear, and I thought that for the first time in my life I’d managed to get my message through to a man who only ever gave consideration to his own ideals. “Addilyn? You okay?” It was not my father’s voice.
“Harris?” I asked, practically squeaking. “Harris! I’m so sorry! I — I...” I had to think fast. I wasn’t ready to go into a huge explanation about my interpersonal dynamic with my father. “A rogue telemarketer got on my last nerve.”
Harris laughed, and I had to squeeze my thighs together because of how good that sound made me feel. “Kind of makes me wish that I was the telemarketer. You’re damn sexy when you’re mad.”
My thigh squeezing ramped up to almost a full-blown orgasm, and I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning Harris’s name.
“Let me take you to dinner. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
It was my turn to laugh. “How do you even know where I live?”
“I asked HR. Owning the company does have some perks. Pick you up in twenty?”
“Make it thirty and you’ve got a date.” I held my breath, nervously awaiting some negative reaction to me calling his invitation a date, but one never came.
“I’ll see you then.” The call ended, and I squealed. Leaping up onto my bed, I jumped up and down with the joy and excitement of being taken out on a bonafide date by a handsome man. At only twenty-two, most of my previous dating experience had been with people whose idea of dating usually meant hanging out on the couch with a box of pizza before moving things to the bedroom. Of course, my father had always tried to push well-established men on me, all of them at least ten years my senior, but I’d never been interested. His idea of matchmaking was to maneuver for maximum gain, not whether I enjoyed someone’s company or if we had something in common.
“What do I wear?” I leapt down from the bed and dashed to my closet. It was full of clothes that I’d worn for work, but I didn’t want to bring even the slightest hint of me employee, him boss into our evening out. Whatever I wore needed to be something he’d never seen before.
I pushed through my closet’s offerings and then stopped. “Gotcha,” I said, pulling out a light blue high-necked, thigh-length halter dress. I was dressed in fresh makeup and my hair pulled into a messy up-do just in time to be walking out the door by the time my phone dinged to let me know that Harris was in his car downstairs. By the time I reached the street, he was out of his car and holding the passenger side door of his midnight blue Maybach 62 open for me, making me feel like a princess. As for Harris, he was beyond handsome in a tailored suit sans tie. He looked dashing and casual all at once, and I gave him a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth before sliding in.
It was an easy, comfortable drive that took us to a small, intimate French bistro where the waiter slipped in and out of our lives, providing for all our needs without ever seeming to interfere with the privacy of our shared moment.
“By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had an investment portfolio of above 2.8 million. Then, by the end of my sophomore year, I’d lost it all and had just enough money in my pocket to take Suzanne Wheeler out for a sundae at the corner shop.”
“Oh no!” I laughed at his tale of woe because he was laughing and because his smile was so beautiful. “Were you devastated?”
“No, not at all. They were just numbers to me at the time. I had no real concept of its value. When I lost it all, my life didn’t actually change any. I just started from scratch again. I was excited, to tell the truth. Starting from scratch was like getting to go on a big adventure all over again.”
“Did your parents figure out what you were up to?” He’d probably had more money than they’d made over their entire lives at that point.
“My mom figured it out when I was a senior. I paid off their house loan and tried to make it look like it was an inheritance from an unnamed source, but it didn’t take her long to put it all together.” He took a sip of his wine. “But enough about me. I want to know about you.”
“Me? I’m boring.” I tried to dismiss his question with the wave of my hand.
“No, I’ll never believe that. Ever.” There was kindness in his eyes, but no mirth.
I played with my napkin a moment, wondering how much of a freak I should risk looking like. Then, taking a deep breath, I decided that if I was going to jump that I was going to jump with both feet and into the deepest section of the swimming pool. No holding back. Looking up, I met the gaze of his smoky, grey eyes. “I joined the mathlete club when I was in 6th grade, but because I wasn’t in high school yet, I had to have parental approval to join the high school club. So, I forged a note with my father’s signature and used all of my study-time period to attend the meeting. I’d walk from the junior high buildings over to the high school buildings and back again after the meeting. By the time I’d actually reached high school, I was president of the club. I won the regional, national and international mathlete competitions for the last three years of high school, and I earned a scholarship to go to MIT. When I didn’t want to attend the colleges my father wanted me to attend or study the subjects he wanted me to study, he refused to pay for any of the expenses, and because of how much they made, student loans weren’t available to me.” I shrugged as my smile grew. “I made it work.”
Harris looked at me with something approaching awe in his eyes. “You’re incredible. And your dad... the man is such a fool.” I had to stifle my startled laugh as I did my best not to choke on a sip of wine. I recovered, and Harris lifted my hand to his lips for a kiss. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a surprise.”
Forty-five minutes later found me blindfolded, but there was no bed to be found. Instead, I was stumbling along beside Harris as his firm, supportive arm hugged me closely to him.
“Step up... and again,” his voice rumbled close to my ear. “Now we’re going to be walking downhill... Now it flattens out. Put your arm around my waist.”
I knew that we were in a building, but that’s all I knew. He’d had me blindfolded long before we’d ever reached his secret destination, and I had a horrible suspicion that I was going to be taking off the scarf that had been tied around my eyes to find myself in the middle of a well-meaning flash mob singing and dancing I Got A Feeling.
“Stand right here. Stay close,” Harris murmured, holding me snug in his arms before gently coaxing the blindfold away from my eyes.
I gasped, then looked up, then looked all around us, turning in a circle while Harris was careful to keep me close. We were standing on a small platform in the center of a huge dome on which radiated a hundred thousand points of light. “There! That’s Delphinus!” I pointed at the collection of stars that made up the body of a swimming, celestial dolphin.
Harris had brought me to a planetarium, and there wasn’t another soul in sight.
I turned to him, now my turn to be in awe of him. “How did you do this?”
His lips pulled up at the corners into a smile as he held me close and looked down at me. “I know a guy who knows a guy.” He shrugged. “I figured that if I couldn’t take the girl to the stars, that I’d bring the stars to the girl.”
It was all I needed. I threw my arms around his neck, stretched up onto my tippy-toes and planted a big kiss on his lips. This was the best date of my life.