start your poxy programme?” I sighed. “When do I have to sign up?”
“I’ll introduce you right now,” he said, and my stomach lurched. Torn jeans suddenly seemed such a stupid idea. I wanted to bail, say I’d come back tomorrow, at least wear something that looked like less of a teenage middle finger to an arrogant sack of shit father, but I didn’t have time. He was already on the phone, instructing someone in.
“Please,” he said. “My daughter, yes. She’s ready to meet the team, I thought you could… Thanks, right.” My stupid father smiled like the cat who’d got the cream, grinning away until there was a rap at the door. He stood, smoothed down his tie, and I wished I was in any other clothes than these. I folded my arms across the stupid slogan on my chest, and looked at the table top. “Katie,” he said as the door opened. “I’m very pleased to introduce you to the head of the Favcom internship programme. The best of the very best. Your mentor for the next six months.”
I think it was the scent. Or the size of the shadow. Or maybe that prickly sixth sense that gives you goosebumps.
My eyes moved up slowly, and my heart was racing. Thumping.
My heart knew.
Bay leaf green eyes were staring, wide, a steel jaw gritted hard. Killer angles. Tailored suit.
Those bay leaf eyes stared right at me, and I stared right back.
And I could have died.
“Carl,” my father said. “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Katie.” My father smiled at me, oblivious, entirely oblivious. “Katie,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Carl Brooks. The best of the very best.”
Oh fuck.
I’m always direct, even in the most awkward of circumstances. And these were awkward circumstances. Really fucking awkward.
“We’re already acquainted,” I said, and David’s eyes grew wide in perfect unison with Katie’s.
There it was. The familiarity I’d experienced. Not one I’d have ever pinpointed, not without seeing them side by side in the flesh, but it was the eyes. The brows. The cheekbones, too, maybe.
She jumped in before I had a chance to expand, and I watched in morbid fascination as she flustered and blustered her way through an explanation.
A shitty cop-out explanation.
“I, um, I know Rick,” she told David. “He’s a designer. We’re friends. We know each other, met online, and I met Carl, through Rick, because Rick is, um, Rick is Carl’s…”
Don’t say fucking friend. I despise it when people get all fucking wimpy and avoid calling a spade a spade.
David gave a little gesture, shook his head. “Yes, yes, Katie, Carl’s boyfriend. I know Rick well.”
Katie was a far deeper shade of pink than I’d ever seen her, even when I’d complimented her on taking two dicks in her tight little pussy.
I looked her up and down, and my professionalism was offended by the girl before me. If I hadn’t known better I’d have dismissed her as a waste of time, a sulky child, just like her sister. Her fucking sister. A self-entitled little ratbag who expects an easy ride.
Bite me, baby. Her t-shirt was faded and shrunken, and I could see at least an inch of her belly, the curve of her hips heading into the top of some thoroughly tattered denim.
She looked away from me, folded her arms, and I registered her embarrassment.
She’d a whole case full of clothes back home at ours, I’d lugged them back and forth to the car enough to know, and every single item I’d seen her in would have been better suited to the office than the mess she’d chosen to rock up here in.
David was smiling. “Well, what a small world.” His eyes met mine. “You didn’t mention you’d met my daughter, Carl. This is a surprise.”
Wasn’t it just.
He laughed a little. “Didn’t you realise? Did you two not… talk? Surely you talked?”
David wanted answers, I could tell, but direct has its limits. I couldn’t tell the guy she’d called him a blank space on her birth certificate. Couldn’t tell him that she claimed she had no father, knew no father, that she wanted nothing to do with her fucking father.
And yet here she was.
Large as life in Daddy’s office.
My office.
And lucky number twenty on my internship programme.
“I guess I didn’t put two and two together,” I said, and my eyes were burning hers.
“I’m surprised you didn’t realise, Katie,” he said. “I’ve been working with Carl for twenty years. This is extraordinary.” He handed me a batch of application