Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,51

That this crazy thing we had led to something permanent? The very, very, very off chance.

“Ok, I better go,” Leanna said, dragging me back to our conversation. “But I wonder if your boy has seen this yet!”

As the phone line clicked silent, I wondered too. And if he had seen it, had it freaked him out as much as me? Of course, for me to find out he’d have to call me, and it was entirely possible that, even without those photos, having gained some space, he had rethought our relationship again.

Our relationship … I stared at the photo of us on the beach as if it had the answers to all of life’s mysteries. Or, perhaps, just this one.

• • •

When the doorbell rang, I thought maybe it would be the postman. Or maybe it would be the next-door neighbor, or maybe it would be … Daniel, taking a midday break from work because he couldn’t bear to be away from me. I laughed at myself for the last thought. It was none of those though. Instead, it was my father, two days early and looking more pissed than I’d seen him in years.

“That two-bit son of a bitch,” he said, storming in. “What the hell were you doing with him?”

Heat flooded my cheeks. This was so much worse than knowing those pictures were out there for anyone to see because this wasn’t just anyone. I closed the door and slowly followed him into the living room.

“I guess you saw.”

“I’m going to rip him apart.”

A vision of my father storming into Daniel’s office, of security and police and blood, horrified me. My dad should never have found out, or at least, not this way.

“It’s not his fault.”

“Not his fault!” He was raging now.

I stepped back. In the face of this fury, everything I had ever done seemed like a horrible idea. All those thoughts of love seemed tawdry, like a betrayal.

Which they were.

“Dad, I’m the one who approached him. I was curious about him. There was a job opening, and I thought, maybe I could get back at him for everything he did to you.”

The rage in my father’s face flickered and then came back full force. His mouth worked, frothed almost at the corner and I realized suddenly how like a bull my father could look.

“So you slept with him?” He was looking at me as if I were a stranger, a horrible creature. “What kind of job opening is that? Prostitute?”

I flinched. Why was that word so much worse than mistress?

“I wanted to get back at him,” I whispered.

“He used you, sweetheart.” He said it the way he had always told me things when I was a child. That patronizing adult tone, as if I knew nothing about the world and never could.

“I was planning to use him,” I protested, knowing even as I said so, that it wasn’t true, that it never had been. I’d simply been insatiably curious, and tempting fate, wanting to fill in the pieces of the history that had torn my childhood apart.

He laughed. “No, honey, I’m sorry. Your Daniel Hartmann knew very well that by sleeping with you he’d be hurting me. And by making certain the world knows? He played you.”

I wanted to protest, deny that everything was about my father. What was between Daniel and me was—

“I was excited to come up here this week, Emmy, because I had news. Finally had a good offer. Business opportunity. But I’m a felon. That’s all I am. That’s what that story in newsprint reduces me to. Tavis backed out the minute the old dirt hit the rounds.”

“You think Daniel took me to the Hamptons to be photographed just to stop you from getting a business deal?”

He nodded. I stared at my father in disbelief. “Are you sure? How … how do we know he knew?”

“My God, you’re so naïve, Emmy,” my father said, shaking his head. Embarrassment knifed through me at my father’s judgment. I wanted to hide. I’d always wanted his approval and now, this was the farthest thing from it. “But at some point you have to grow up and face the hard facts of the world. Men like Hartmann don’t ‘fall in love.’” My father spoke through his teeth, the words deliberate and punctuated by angry breath. “He planned this.”

My heart fell to knees. When had Daniel learned about my father’s plans? Had he known before?

But he couldn’t have planned my coming to work for him. That thought