“I’m fine. Really.” Larkin patted Genevieve’s back for the third time to get her friend to release her gridlocked hug.

“Are you sure Douglas shouldn’t come with you into the office today?” Gen finally levered back. Tears hugged the edges of the strong, wild redhead’s eyes.

“No tears,” Larkin demanded. “And yes, I’m sure. I’m perfectly safe inside my building with Charlotte at my side.” She patted the gun that hung in the swanky purse crossing her body. “Besides, he’s meeting with Libby’s FBI friend today.”

Genevieve sighed and relented after an internal battle Larkin could only discern from her friend’s rapidly moving eyes. “I love you, stupid ass. You know that? I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you or one of the girls.”

“I love you too, you crazy ass. Nothing is going to happen to me or any of the girls.” If she said it enough, maybe she’d believe it. If she said it enough, maybe it would be true. Only one way to find out. Time to live life. She kissed Gen’s cheek and then slipped out the open car door.

“You are more stubborn than I remember.” Douglas closed the car door behind her. He stepped so close he could kiss her cheek, if he puckered his lips, but he didn’t. Good thing they were in the underground entrance. Otherwise, he’d be a popsicle by now. His warm arms wrapped around her back and pulled her close. “That gun doesn’t leave your side. Not to go to the bathroom. Not for a dear friend in for a visit. Never.”

“I’ll be fine.” Larkin hugged him back more aggressively than she ever had, proving her words false. She was anything but fine. Her heart ached. Her insides quaked. And someone wanted her dead. She kissed Douglas’s cheek and moved to step back. His hold didn’t budge. “Not you too.”

He squeezed her tighter, as though daring her to make something of it.

“I expect this much from Mar, but you and Gen are better than this.”

“We play things close to the vest, but we’re not better than caring for our …”

Her breath caught. What was Douglas to her? Gen was her friend. Douglas was her driver, but he was more. Had the years done that, or was it something else?

“Well,” he huffed, gave her one last squeeze, and then released her. “Is it so awful to have people who care about you?”

“Not at all.” She held his hand for a second, struggling to read the expression on his face. There was so much in those old blue eyes and the deep creases framing his features.

He patted her hand and turned away as though he’d known she sought answers and refused to give any.

Larkin pressed the elevator call and was surprised to find it on the underground level. She waved goodbye, stepped onto the car, and pressed the button for her office. Her back snugged up to the car’s back corner. The leather of her purse warmed under her fierce grip. She watched the floors pass one blinking set of figures at a time. When she reached the third floor, her breath held without the command.

The lights didn’t flicker past. They held the offending number. Her shoulders shook, and she hated it.

“Don’t be stupid.”

The doors opened on the third floor, which was the security headquarters, but no one was there. The place where someone should be waiting impatiently for the elevator car to carry them higher into the sky was eerily, irritatingly devoid of the person who’d pressed the call button.

It was nothing. Really. They’d just decided three flights of stairs wasn’t too much to descend. Then again, her car had been moving up and shouldn’t have stopped for a down call.

Larkin slid up the side wall. Her gaze never left the gray carpet and blank white walls. She reached out and pressed the button to close the doors. Her sweaty fingers slipped off the slick button without making it light. Teeth ground to nubs, she tried again.

The button lit from the inside and warmed hers, just a little.

Slowly, too slowly the two sides of the door slid toward one another. Five inches remained. Three. Then one. In her mind, a hand reached through the thin opening and grabbed at her. Thank fuck it was just her twisted brain. The door closed, and the car jerked into motion.

It stopped on the twentieth floor. Larkin’s grip hadn’t moved from her purse, so close to her gun. Two men she’d never seen before stepped onto the car.

The first eyed her as though she was a turkey dinner. Larkin glared. She had no time for pleasantries. There were no fucks to give on politeness. They were spread out elsewhere. Like trying to keep her alive. His buddy pressed the button for the thirty-second floor and accidentally on purpose jabbed his too friendly friend in the side. They whispered some exchange that pulled the friend’s gaze back to the front of the elevator.

She didn’t draw a deep breath until they exited. The car arrived on her floor, and she sighed. Yelling filtered through the open door. She choked on the breath.

“You cannot dictate to me, little piss-ant. Step aside.”

Rage bubbled in Larkin’s veins. She’d recognize that voice anywhere.

“Sir, please don’t do that,” Darren pleaded. “If I have to tell you again, I’ll be forced to call security.”

“Security?” her father bellowed.

Larkin drew herself to her fullest height and marched out of the elevator and straight into the middle of the tussle for her office doorknob.

“Miss Ashford.” Darren released his hold and sagged against the wall. “Thank goodness.”

“It’s about time you showed up.” Her dad’s index finger stabbed at Darren. “This little piss—”

“Felix Ashford,” Larkin growled. “Don’t you dare say another disparaging word about my assistant. You are not allowed in my office without my presence and consent. I’ve given you neither, and Darren knows it.” She turned her back on her father and grabbed Darren’s hand. More than anything, she wanted to tell him about Reagan. The two had worked closely together, but she couldn’t. “I apologize for my father. There is no excuse for his behavior. None at all. You did the right thing. Thank you.”

“The right thing?” her father shrieked.

“The next time he shows up without me being present, call Carl or Dan in security right away.” Larkin patted Darren’s hand, then released it and turned on her father. “You want in my office so badly? Go. Now.” She pointed toward the double doors. Her father removed his hand from the knob, shoved it inside his pockets, and stood his ground. He hated being told what to do, even if it was his exact goal.

After a long glare, he relented. He wrenched the handle, tossed the door wide, and stomped into her office. The lights greeted him with a flicker before burning bright. Larkin offered Darren an overly bright smile and strode after the man who’d raised her, if only a little. He paced a tight circle around her desk. His gaze studied the clean top and the wall of hidden, modern drawers behind it too closely for her comfort.

“What is so important you had to get inside my office this morning without me inside it?” She closed the door. It echoed inside the fresh confines.

“It wasn’t that you weren’t here. I just needed …” He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Your attorney won’t tell me whether you have a will drawn or its contents, if it does exist.” One of his palms slapped onto the back of her desk chair. His face drew tight with indignation.

Heat burned her cheeks so intensely, she expected to see steam rise from them any second. He had no business contacting Genevieve. Why hadn’t her friend said anything about her father’s antics? Gen had most likely told him to fuck off, and she probably hadn’t mentioned it because she didn’t want to add to Larkin’s worry.

“Damn right, she didn’t.” Larkin continued to her chair and shoved it back.

Felix gasped and stumbled back as though she’d struck him. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. Her fists were ready for a task. They were clenched so tightly they vibrated at her sides.

“You don’t understand.” Her father smoothed back his perfectly combed hair. “We must have a contingency in place. If you die, you don’t want your business to collapse. You don’t want your money to go to the state, do you?”

Larkin reached deep inside, to the core of her being, and grabbed hold of the strength that kept the world at bay. To the strength that kept her alive when she’d wanted nothing more than to meet her mother in the land of not. She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then repeated the process. Her hands loosened at her sides.

“No. I don’t, which is why my will states that the company will be sold and all my assets will be distributed equally among the charities I’ve named.” Larkin offered a salty smile. “You are not one of them. So I hope you’re not trying to kill me for my money.”

His face blanched. No way to know it if was from knowing he’d get nothing from her or from the accusation she’d made. It made a sick sort of sense. Had he killed her mother and made it look like suicide? Who was there to question him or his intentions? She was older, a little wiser, and a hell of a lot more wary.

“I’d never hurt you,” he snarled. “How can you think that of me?”

“Really?” She offered an eye roll that contradicted her mature stature and powerful position. “Because I was in the hospital. Someone burned my house down with me inside it, and the first thing you say when you see me is what’s in your will.”

“Larkin, you don’t make it easy, but I do love you.”

“And you make it easy?” Her head shook. “You order me a Glenlivet every time we share a meal. It’s the same bottle I found in my mother’s arms, her dead arms, when I was thirteen.” She braced both hands on the back of the chair and breathed deeply. When had she started yelling?

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. His hand covered his mouth. “I didn’t know. I only saw her in the … in the morgue.”

No, he hadn’t been at the house when she’d needed him or anyone for that matter. He’d been at his lover’s hideaway. She’d been home alone with her mother’s corpse.

“You won’t let me come by the house.” Larkin swallowed the emotions welling inside her. “Every time, you want to meet at a restaurant or at my office.”

“Oh, Larkin, it’s not you.”

“It’s not you, it’s me?” She let her brows hike.

“Franklin is at the house.”

Relief, the first she’d felt in a while, washed over her. Felix sat across from her in one of the two chairs on offer. She collapsed into her chair and stared at him. “You should stop hiding Franklin. Stop hiding who you are.”

“You don’t understand. The world will judge me. They’ll look at me differently.”

“Fuck them.”

Her father blinked widely.

“The world judges, period. Let them, at least, judge the real you, not some affable concoction of bullshit.”

“You wouldn’t be ashamed of me?” A side of her father she’d never seen flashed in his slacked jaw and wondrous eyes.

“Only when you treat my assistant like shit. Not for loving who you love, or hell, screwing who you screw. Love isn’t a requirement.”

“I don’t know what came over me. He is just so … out and proud. It made me insane with hatred because I’m not brave enough to do it.”

“Yes, you are. We’re stronger than we know.” She slipped the purse from around her shoulder and set it on top of her desk.

“You are.” He offered her a smile, a genuine smile that warmed the blood flowing through her veins. “You always have been strong, determined, the best of us.”

She couldn’t speak without crying.

“When I heard you’d been in a fire, I freaked. I’d never expected that I could outlive you. I’d never want to, but if I did, I didn’t want your legacy to be ripped apart and auctioned to the highest bidder.”

Larkin wanted to believe that. The thought snuggled up to her jaded, jagged edges. They spurred it away. “Why did you and my mother get married in the first place?”

“Ha.” He smiled and drummed the edge of his shoes with two fingers. His gaze drifted as though off to the past. “She wanted money. I wanted a cover. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”

“Did she know right away?”

“Perhaps she thought I was a supreme gentleman. From her stories, she’d never met one of those.” He shrugged and quit drumming. “She figured it out pretty quickly.”

“Am I even your daughter?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but it flew from her lips before she could call it back. She’d thought about it a thousand times, so it was bound to come out.

Felix Ashford shrank back against the chair. His shoulders hunched. If he gave her nothing more, it was an answer in itself.

He sat forward and found her gaze. “I raised you. You are my daughter, whether we share blood or not.”

The good memories washed over her. Him reading her favorite books over and over again. Them playing dress-up and tea party. The balloons he brought her for every birthday. The memories doused her fear and rage in contentment. It had been good … before her mother died.

“Do you know?” Larkin asked.

“She never said. I never asked because it didn’t matter. She gave me you and let me be your father. I used to be a good one. I can be again.”