“Tell me you’re excited, Low.”
Internally, I sighed. “I’m excited, Dad.”
He scrutinized me with his gaze and one heavy brow slanted in disapproval.
“What?” I questioned. “I said I’m excited.”
“You’re not acting excited.”
“How many times do you think we’ve said excited in the past two minutes?” I asked, hoping that I could redirect the focus away from my lack of excitement to see yet another Broadway show with my father. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved them, but this was the third show in the span of three weeks that he’d begged—and all but forced—me to see with him.
And since my mother and Jean-Pierre had never been big fans of musicals, I was my Dad’s go-to gal for everything bright lights and show tunes.
My mother and father—a complete anomaly—were literally the happiest divorced couple on the planet. They’d thrown in the towel on their marriage when I was eight years old, and they’d been best buds ever since.
Hell, my father often tagged along on trips with my mother and her second husband of sixteen years.
My stepdad, Jean-Pierre, was an American transplant from Paris and the apple of my mother’s eye. Yes, he did have an accent. And, yes, it probably did sound extremely sexy to any American woman who wasn’t his stepdaughter.
The only downfall of my parents’ divorce and my mother’s marriage to Jean-Pierre was that they weren’t fans of musicals.
Thanks for nothing, guys.
“Don’t act so crabby, Low,” my dad remarked. “Kinky Boots has won every major Best Musical award, including a Tony. Anyone sitting in your seat right now would be excited.”
“Don’t forget the Laurence Olivier Award,” I added sarcastically. I’d heard more about Kinky Boots from Dad over the past week than most of the cast probably even knew, and they acted out the show six nights a fucking week.
“Exactly,” he agreed with a giant grin. It was safe to say his sarcasm radar was off-kilter. Blame it on the Kinky Boots, I guessed.
He glanced down at his watch, and his smile grew wider. “Only thirty minutes until show time.”
My dad had always been one of those people who arrived everywhere way ahead of schedule, and it was a serious pain in my ass, especially tonight. I understood getting somewhere on time, or even five to ten minutes early, but holy mother of egg rolls, no one needs to get anywhere with an hour’s worth of time to spare.
Mmm…egg rolls…those would be so perfect right now…
I glanced inside my giant purse—which probably wouldn’t fit the dimension requirements for carry-on luggage with Delta—and rummaged through my snack pocket. Fuck yes! A small bag of M&Ms and a snack-size bag of Lay’s potato chips. I knew exactly what I would be doing for the next thirty minutes. It definitely wasn’t egg rolls, but it would do.
My father glared the second my fingers touched the chip bag, the edgy rustle of plastic like a gunshot in the relatively quiet room. It sounded like heaven in the form of snack food to me, but obviously, my father thought otherwise. His gaze tracked down the source of the noise like a goddamn homing device.
“Low,” he chastised.
“What?” I whispered back. “I’m hungry, and it’s not like the show has started. We have at least another thirty minutes before the lights dim and someone starts belting out show tunes.”
“It’s not show tunes, Harlow. It’s Broadway,” he added on a sigh. “And do you remember who helped write this award-winning show?”
“Cyndi Lauper,” I answered. With the way my dad had beat that information into my brain, there was zero possibility of me forgetting it.
“Exactly.”
The words Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Eat Potato Chips were on the tip of my tongue, but I decided to take it easy on him. The man enjoyed his Broadway shows, and even though I’d always had a tendency to bitch and moan when I got dragged along, I loved my dad. Seeing his smiling face during the shows and hearing his excited chatter afterward was always worth it.
I wasn’t always a hard-ass. Just on occasion. Most of the time I was a real fucking softie at heart, especially when it came to the important people in my life.
“No snacks until intermission.” My dad gave me the look. You know, the one parents give their eight-year-old kids when they meant business.
“You do realize that I’m twenty-nine, right?” I questioned, and he smirked.
“Yeah, but you’ll always be my little girl, Low,” he responded. “And right now, I refuse to sit by and watch you disgrace this theater with greasy potato chips.”
I bet Cyndi Lauper’s dad would let her eat potato chips before the show…
It was in moments like this I’d wished my parents would’ve stayed married longer and at least birthed me a sibling to share the brunt of their meddling. Some days, being the only child was a real pain in my ass. Other days, it was fantastic, but days like this, when all I wanted to do was eat potato chips before Kinky Boots, it was a real drag.
“Excuse me,” a sophisticated older woman whispered toward us. “Do you mind if I slide in?” she asked and held up her tickets. “My son and I have those two seats in the middle.”
“Of course,” my father answered immediately and hopped to his feet to let her pass through the small aisle. I followed his lead, albeit a little less gallantly, as I shoved my potato chips back in my purse and awkwardly stood out of her way with my bag pressed to my abdomen.
“Thank you,” she said with a soft smile and sat down in the empty seat beside my father. “I had hoped to get here earlier, but my son is always running a few minutes behind.”
My father glanced at the empty seat beside her, and she chuckled nervously.
“He’s answering a quick work call outside the doors,” she explained. “I swear, my Scotty doesn’t get a minute’s rest with his job.”
“I feel the same about my little Harlow,” my dad said with a soft smile. “It’s like pulling teeth to get her to go to a Broadway show with her dad.”
Little Harlow? Jesus Christ.
“Considering this is the third Broadway show we’ve seen in the past three weeks, I call baloney, Dad,” I chimed in. He chuckled, but his eyes never left the woman sitting beside him, and oddly enough, her gaze never left him either.
I glanced back and forth between them while they made small talk about the weather and then moved the conversation along to their favorite Broadway shows. Seeing as they didn’t know each other from Adam, I was a bit shocked by how easily their conversation flowed, and the fact that my father was actually showing interest in chatting up a woman.
For the past decade, the man had seemed content to stick to his routine, never once seeking out female companionship, apart from his time with my mother and Jean-Pierre.
“I’m Nicole, by the way,” she said with a shy smile, and my father grinned in response.
“It’s nice to meet you, Nicole. I’m Bill.”
Surprisingly, the next twenty minutes continued that way. The two of them chatted, while I sat back in my seat, daydreamed about my goddamn potato chips, and counted the lines of the ornate ceiling mindlessly.
It was only the sudden movement of Nicole hopping to her feet that pulled my attention away from my snack fixation. If you ever want someone to want something so badly they can hardly breathe, tell them they can’t have it.
“Oh! Scotty! Over here!” she whisper-yelled toward the main aisle, and my gaze followed her line of sight.
A tall, dark, and handsome drink of a man—at least that was how he appeared from my current shoulder, back, and tight ass view—stood a few feet away from my seat scanning the room across from us. The sound of Nicole’s voice did as she intended, though, grabbing his attention and turning it—and his body—toward us. Familiar chocolate brown eyes flashed with recognition when he finally spotted Nicole, and I nearly fell out of my seat.
Holy shit. It’s Scott Shepard.
What were the fucking odds?
“Scotty,” Nicole whispered again, for what purpose, I didn’t know and didn’t care. I was too busy hyperventilating. Dr. Erotic grinned as he strode toward our aisle.
The chances were fifty-fifty, whether he would give us his back or his front for the theater aisle shuffle, but as he got close, turning to the side and rearranging his feet to slide in, I knew I’d lost the odds. Fuck. He’s giving us the face.
Holy moly, I could not believe Scott Shepard’s mother was the one who’d been chatting with my father for the past twenty minutes.
I should have bought a fucking lottery ticket.
I did my best to shield my face with my hand, but my father was no help. Nudging me to stand up and let Scott into our row, he had no idea what a terrible fucking job he was doing of covering for me until it was too late. Even then, he didn’t really know what a clusterfuck he’d created. But I knew. Boy, did I know.
“Excuse me,” Scott said as the front of his body got close enough to heat the front of mine. It was nothing more than a polite statement to apologize for such an intimate position, but when his eyes locked with mine, recognition instantly set in. It took a moment for his mind to catch up with his eyes, but when it did, a slow, easy smirk kissed his lips. I wasn’t sure if it was all in my head, but it felt like it took him a tremendously long time to move on from me to the empty spot beside his mother.
“Scott,” his mother said the second his extremely fine ass touched his seat. “We have the best seat mates tonight.” She tossed a soft smile directly at my father.
“It appears that way,” he responded with a grin and a brief, and surprisingly not violent, glance in my direction.
Relief set in when it appeared that he might have just recognized me from my stint in his ER and hadn’t yet realized I was, in fact, the gossip columnist who’d written a few, and slightly embellished, articles about him.
Okay. This can work, Harlow. Just play it cool and avoid saying your name at all costs.
But that hope only lasted for all of ten seconds.
“I’m Bill Paige, by the way,” my dad introduced himself and shook Scott’s hand. “And this is my daughter, Harlow.”
Ah, fuck.
It was a real fucking shame Scott was such a smart guy. If he’d been stupid, it might at least have taken him a little longer to make the connection that was sure to ruin my night.
“Harlow Paige? As in the Harlow Paige from the Gossip column?” he questioned.
Goddammit…
“Yep,” my dad answered proudly. All I could think was uh-oh. “That’s my Harlow. Are you familiar with her work?”
“It’s you?” Scott’s—now glistening—eyes never left me. “I thought your name was Frances?”
How in the fuck did he know my first name?
My eyes all but bugged out of my head. My chart. “You said you weren’t going to look at my name.”
“I accidentally saw your name, you know, when I was signing off on your file,” he responded cynically. “It’s kind of a job hazard, Frances. Or should I call you Harlow? It’s kind of hard to keep up.”
“Frances is her first name, but she doesn’t go by it,” my father kindly explained for me, somehow not catching on to the underlying animosity. “She hated that name as a kid, and by the time she turned ten, she would only answer to her middle name—Harlow.” My father’s expression turned puzzled as he glanced back and forth between us. “Wait…signing off on your file? How do you two know each other?”
“We met a few weeks ago.” Scott’s mouth morphed into a cocky fucking smirk, and I wanted to strangle him. “HIPAA violations prevent me from being able to give the details, but Harlow could explain the situation that introduced us,” he added, and I could hear the amusement in his voice. “That is, if she wants to.”
Oh yeah, I’d love to tell my father a head laceration that occurred during sex was the reason I’d met Scott. What a fucking asshole.
“Oh! Did the two of you meet at the hospital?” Nicole asked innocuously. She couldn’t see the patch of thorns she was wading into for all the blinding love for her “do-gooder” son.
“Violations?” The vein in the center of my father’s forehead started to make its debut. “What is he talking about, Low?”
I sighed. “Calm down, Dad. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”
“It sounds like a big deal!” my father said on a near shout, and concern for what would happen next made my heart rate double. “Were you arrested?”
“Jesus, no,” I answered on a whisper. “You remember the stitches on my forehead?” I asked and he nodded.
“From the bicycle injury in Central Park?” he asked, and fucking Scott Shepard cleared his throat and chuckled softly to himself.
Yes, I did tell my dad a little bit of a lie about my head injury. Just a minor story about a crazy man on a bicycle who ran into me in Central Park that caused me to fall down and hit my head on a rock.
Just a tiny little white lie.
But seriously, who would tell their father the real story if they were in my shoes?
“Was he the man who was riding when you got injured, Low?” he questioned, and I internally groaned at his ironic choice in words.
The man who was riding? Good Lord, that sounded terrible. And a little too close to the actual scenario…
“No, sir,” Scott answered, and if the strain in his throat was any indication, he was one breath away from losing himself to laughter. “I was, in fact, not doing the riding when your daughter got injured.”
My father looked at me. “If he wasn’t the one riding, then how do you two know each other?”
Fucking fiddlesticks, I needed everyone to stop saying riding before I fainted from discomfort.
“He was my ER doctor, Dad,” I explained, and this time when he looked at Scott, his mouth was curved in appreciation.
“You took care of my Harlow after she got injured by that rider?”
“I sure did,” Scott answered helpfully, an amused smirk all but sewn on to his face. “I sutured her after the riding incident.”
“Who got hurt while riding, Scotty?” Nicole asked, her voice carrying a bit too nicely. Goddamn theater acoustics. I was torn between smacking Scott in the face or finding a way to dig a hole into the theater floor in order to migrate to China. Perhaps I can use my stiletto.
Apparently, as an outsider, it was hard to follow along with us as we talked in code.
“Harlow,” Scott answered and nodded toward me. “That’s how I met her. I had to suture her riding injury.”
I was going to kill him before Kinky Boots even started if he kept saying riding.
“How did she look afterward?” my father asked. “I bet she was a bit shaken up from that reckless rider.”
Scott grinned shamelessly, his cheeks coming to life with a rosy flush as he basked in my embarrassment. “She did look a little shaken up. Mostly just angry, though.”
“You were angry?” my father questioned and looked at me. “I really wish you would have gotten that rider’s name. I’d love to call him and give him a piece of my mind. No one should be that reckless.”
“I agree,” Scott piped up again. I wanted to smack him. “People should ride responsibly.”
“You’re right.” His mother nodded in agreement. “People should ride responsibly. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be allowed to ride at all.”
Now, although I was internally dying a slow death, given the circumstances that led to this very humiliation, it was hard not to agree with that. Barron the Bore should’ve had his riding rights revoked immediately after he rode my ass straight into the ER. Although, in Barron’s pathetic defense, a few days after his bed had sliced my head opened, he did send me an apology in the form of a nice bouquet of flowers. I appreciated the sentiment, but no contact with Barron for the next one thousand years was still the plan.
“So, you didn’t get the man’s name?” Scott questioned, childishly continuing this farce of a conversation for nothing more than his enjoyment, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
“Nope.”
“Really? I would’ve thought you would’ve at least gotten a name or phone number…something…”
“I didn’t,” I snapped.
My dad sighed heavily. “You really should have gotten that rider’s name, Low,” he added in disappointment, but thanks to the dimming lights, both my view of his disappointment and the time for speaking began to fade.
And for once in my life, as the curtain started to lift, a Broadway show was my favorite fucking thing on the planet.
My least favorite thing? Scott fucking Shepard.