It looked as though it would hit the floor when Amanda tried it on, so that was a plus. It also had long sleeves. I stepped closer. “Is that see-through?” I asked, staring at the dress. For a second, I imagined Harper in the dress. The color would suit her.
“It’s sheer, but the lace covers all the important bits, so it looks more revealing than it is,” the assistant said, dissolving my thoughts of Harper.
What was the matter with people? “My daughter is fourteen. She doesn’t do revealing, not even fake revealing.” I turned toward the dressing room. “Amanda,” I shouted. “Get dressed. We’re going somewhere else.” Clearly this store was in the market to dress up little girls like hookers, so we wouldn’t find anything here.
Amanda didn’t speak as she emerged from the changing rooms, walked straight past me and out the door into the heat. I followed her as she headed east.
“Where do you want to go now?” I asked.
“Home.”
“I thought you wanted a dress?”
“Not if you’re going to growl at the clerks and tell me I look slutty in everything.”
I sighed. “I don’t growl.”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“And you could never look slutty.”
She shook her head. “I’m growing up, Dad. You’ve got to get your head around it.”
I preferred it when Amanda screamed and cried to when she was resigned and disappointed in me. All I wanted was for her to be happy. Dressed in a burka, but happy.
“You know I love you, right?” I asked. “And I just want what’s best for you.”
She shrugged. “It’s just you totally go off the deep end. You can have a conversation with me, you know? Use logic rather than just have a meltdown.”
I tuned into the thump of my footsteps compared to the light patter of hers. “Yeah, you’re right. I could have approached things a different way.” I’d just been so stunned, but I didn’t want a relationship where we were just fighting from now until she went to college. “I just don’t want you growing up too fast, that’s all.”
“I know, Dad. But it’s happening.”
She was turning into my shrink slash daughter. “Okay, well you be patient with me and I’ll try not to have a meltdown. How about that for the terms of a peace treaty?”
“We can try that,” she said, shrugging.
We paused at the corner of Fifty-Sixth and Park. “Serendipity?” I asked.
She nodded. At least that was one thing she hadn’t grown out of. Yet.
“You going to put bricks on my head?” she asked.
I’d teased her when she was younger about stunting her growth. Back then she’d seemed to sprout a foot a month. It was like seeing time pass right in front of my eyes.
“If you had a girlfriend, this would be easier.”
I chuckled, trying to ignore the flashes of Harper’s smile as Amanda said the word girlfriend. “How do you figure?” I asked as Amanda linked her arm through mine.
“She’d tell you that those dresses looked pretty on me,” she said as we crossed the street, trying to dodge the mix of office workers and tourists coming at us from the opposite direction.
“Amanda, you’d look pretty in anything. That’s not the point. A girlfriend wouldn’t change my mind about you wearing clothes meant for women much older than you.” I liked her dressed as she was now, in jeans and a T-shirt.
“But another girl, an adult, might be able to convince you.”
“Honestly, no one would be able to change my mind, and anyway, you have your aunts, and Grandma King and Granny. And your mom. They’re girls.”
“Mom doesn’t count because she’s not here. And you’ve never listened to anything your sisters told you.”
“I listen to Violet.” I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the last time I’d taken her advice, but I was sure there was an example. “And I don’t have time for a girlfriend.” I hadn’t even had a chance to speak to Harper or to think what to say when we did speak.
“Grandpa always said you can always find time to do the things you want to do.”
My dad was a very wise man, but I didn’t appreciate his advice in this instance. Maybe because it cut a little too close to the bone.
“You could just agree to go to dinner with Scarlett’s friend.”
“What friend?” I asked as my cell buzzed in my pocket.
“You know, the one Scarlett mentioned earlier?”
I’d clearly tuned out when my sister was speaking. I didn’t remember her mentioning anyone. “I don’t remember.”
“You do. Her friend from college who used to live in LA.” She tugged on my jacket. “Please, Dad?”
“Why is this so important to you?” I didn’t understand why she was so set on me dating. Was she trying to distract me, hoping if I was dating I’d suddenly have a change of heart about the hair dye and appropriate clothing?
She shrugged. “It’s one night out of your life.”
God, she sounded like my mother.
“And I’ll do piano practice for a week without you having to ask. Think of it as the bill of rights to our treaty.”
Maybe having dinner with a woman would get Harper out of my system. She wasn’t the only smart, ballsy, beautiful woman in New York City after all. “I shouldn’t have to force you to do piano.”
“It’s up to you.” She shrugged. “Seems like a sweet deal to me.”
“A month. And you have to drop the whining about the hair dye.”
She grinned up at me. “Deal.”
Anything to keep my daughter happy—well, anything but a short, tight, or low-cut dress for her eighth grade dance.
Chapter 5
Harper
Max. Fucking. King.
I thought I’d hated him before but his assholyness had reached dizzying new heights. I stomped into my bedroom, threw the lid off my laundry basket, and started pulling out things to take to wash. I needed to channel my energy into something productive.
Okay, I had to take responsibility. I’d fucked him. I’d wanted to fuck him. And it had been great—a release, no more than that. It had been amazing, as if he’d known what I needed before I did. And he’d had all the right equipment and he’d known how to use it. But he hadn’t spoken to me since that night two days ago. Hadn’t even looked at me. We’d agreed on Vegas; I’d suggested it. But he didn’t have to ignore me.
Arrogant men should be illegal. Or sent to an island without any women on it to die of sexual frustration.
Coming to my rescue in the gym suggested he wasn’t quite the asshole I thought he was. Then seeing him shirtless, and the way he’d growled at me, like an animal? Well, I don’t know what had come over me, but any willpower I’d had just dissolved, and I’d wanted him.
But what had I been thinking? Fucking my boss was a bad idea for so many reasons. I desperately wanted him to think I was good at my job, not just know my depilatory habits. I’d worked hard for this position, and I didn’t just want him to see me as a piece of ass. I certainly didn’t want it getting out and people to start gossiping about how I was sleeping my way to the top or an easy lay.