“You keep me plenty busy,” I replied. “What time are you planning to arrive tonight with Scarlett?”
“I can come?”
I could hear Amanda’s smile, and I couldn’t help but grin. I was a sucker for that smile.
“I’m not going to let my little girl go shopping for her eighth grade dance on her own, now am I?”
She shrieked and I turned down the volume on my phone, wincing. “You’ve got a key, so just let yourself in if I’m not there.”
“Can we get takeout?”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe.”
“And watch a mob movie like we did last time?”
I chuckled. Because Amanda didn’t have a lot of her stuff in the apartment, when she visited we usually ended up hanging out, eating takeout and watching movies. I loved it.
“No promises. I want you to swear you’ll do your piano practice before you leave. If you don’t pass the exam, your mother will move you to Zurich.”
“It’s a deal.” The piano began to chime in the background. “You hear that? I’ve started already.”
I shook my head. “See you later, peanut.”
“Love you, Dad.”
The three best words on the planet.
“Love you, Amanda.”
As I hung up, Donna walked in.
“If you’re leaving early tomorrow to go shopping, let’s do a quick walk-through of your schedule for today and tomorrow.”
I leaned back in my chair. “I see the women in my life know what I’m doing before I do.”
“Did you ever have any doubt?”
I sighed. “I guess not.” It was days like this when I felt as though my life didn’t belong to me. Having my own business was tough and took up almost all my energy, but usually the rewards of working for myself outweighed the disadvantages. Today the scales were tipping in the wrong direction. I just wanted to shrug off the constant demands on my time, to check out for a day—fuck around on the internet, go ride my bike, speak to Harper. Though I had no idea what I’d say. Apologize, maybe.
“Do we need to cancel anything?” I asked.
“No, but the meeting with Andrew and his contact at JD Stanley is at ten, and I’m guessing you won’t want to miss that?”
She was right. I didn’t want to miss it. I was hoping for a little inside knowledge about JD Stanley, the only major investment bank King & Associates didn’t work with.
“No, Amanda can hang out at the apartment until after lunch tomorrow. Do we have anything in the afternoon?”
“A meeting with Harper at three, but I can push it to next week.” As Donna said her name my face heated and the blood in my veins seemed to speed up.
I ran a finger around my collar. How was I going to approach her? Should I say sorry? She’d been just as up for things as I had, but I was her boss. I didn’t want her to think it could happen again. Maybe I should be upfront with her, tell her she was great, but it was a one-time deal. Or should I just pretend it hadn’t happened? I had no idea.
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I was the last person she probably wanted to see. After all, she thought I was an asshole.
I’d been glued to my iPhone, taking my office mobile while Amanda was in the changing room in the small Midtown boutique we were in. My fingers hovered over my emails. Should I drop Harper a note? But I had no idea what I’d say. This was why the rules of casual sex should be established before anyone got naked. But she’d been the one to talk about Vegas. Perhaps we didn’t need to have an awkward follow-up conversation to reestablish what had already been said. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and tried to avoid eye contact with the sales assistants.
“What do you think?” Amanda asked, stepping out of a dressing room.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, recoiling in shock. Shopping was not my favorite activity to do—Pandora usually bought Amanda’s clothes—but I was going to have to be involved in every shopping trip from now to eternity if she thought she was going to wear that.
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Dad, don’t swear.”
Don’t swear? She was lucky I didn’t kill someone. Someone like the designer of the dress she had on. “Take that off, right now. You’re fourteen not twenty-five.” It showed way too much skin—there seemed to be nothing holding it up and it was about three feet too short. It was as if she was wearing a towel.
“I’m not a child.”
I didn’t need a reminder she was growing up far too fast. “Yes, you are. That’s what fourteen is. And a child doesn’t get to wear dresses that don’t have arms.”
“It’s called strapless.”
“I don’t care what it’s called—it barely covers your butt. You’re not wearing it.” It seemed like yesterday that she’d refused to wear anything but a tutu. That particular obsession had lasted three months. She used to sleep in the thing. I’d laughed when Pandora had asked me to try to coax her out of it. I’d loved it. She’d looked adorable and it made her so happy—what more could I wish for? A tutu would be good right about now. Amanda glared at me. “I mean it, go change.”
“I don’t work for you. You can’t just order me around.”
I stared right back, raising my eyebrows. There was no way I was backing down on this. “If you want to go to the dance, you’ll go back in there and change.” I nodded toward the curtain behind her. “I’ll be out here trying to find something appropriate for you to wear.”
“Thanks, Coco Chanel.”
I wanted to laugh, but she needed to understand that under no circumstances would she be wearing something made for a twenty-five-year-old trying to get laid. Apart from anything else, Pandora would cut off my balls. I was going to have to get proactive.
“Excuse me,” I said to the shop assistant. “Can you show me some age-appropriate dresses for my fourteen-year-old daughter?” I’d left Amanda to pick her own outfit. That had been a mistake. I could have headed off this problem before she’d changed into anything.
“Certainly, sir,” the tall, blonde woman said. “It’s so nice to see a father taking his daughter shopping.” She smiled as if she wanted me to respond, but I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. I wanted to find a dress and take Amanda to Serendipity, where we could catch up over ice-cream sundaes and forget she was growing up.
“What about this?” The assistant held up a very short, baby-blue dress.
“Something longer,” I said.
“Dad,” Amanda called. I turned to see her in a skin-tight dress that looked like it was made of strips of horizontal material sewn together.
I strode toward her. “Get that off. Right now.”
“It has sleeves,” she said, holding out her arms.
True, but it left nothing to the imagination, clinging to her teenage body and barely covering her bottom. There was no way she was going out in public in that.
“Get it off,” I snapped.
She let out a grunt of frustration and stomped back into the changing room.
“This,” the assistant said, holding up a pink-lace dress, “is a very popular dress this season.”