immediately makes me suspicious.
“I’m driving,” I clarify when we leave the kitchen and head into the garage.
I know she told me earlier, but I want to make sure she knows I will never ride as a passenger with her again. I don’t know who taught the woman to drive in the first place, but they should be taken out back and beaten because it wasn’t done correctly.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a driver,” I mutter as I walk toward the car. She reaches for the passenger door rather than the door to the back which surprises me, but I reach around her and open it. It’s easier to keep an eye on her up here anyway.
“Charles has high standards,” she says before I close her door. She continues when I climb in behind the wheel, “The pay is great. The benefits are excellent. All things that look great on paper, but he’s a lot to deal with.”
“You don’t call him dad?”
I open the garage door and check my mirrors before backing out.
“He isn’t my father.” The fake smile she’s been giving me since she came down the stairs disappears before she turns her face to look out the window. “He’s never acted like one.”
“You don’t get along?” I pry as I make my way out of the huge gate at the edge of the property. Despite what Wren said, I still can’t get the thought out of my head that he’s hurt her in some way. I blame the ways I imagined killing the man last night while I couldn’t sleep for my inability to accept the truth and move on.
“I don’t exist.”
Her words are flat and practiced, but I get the feeling she isn’t sharing to get sympathy. The tone suggests she’s resigned to the fact her mother married a man that shows no familial interest in her.
She’s missing a huge part of what people are supposed to have, and I’m just lucky that he hasn’t acted like a predator around her.
“Back to having no driver,” I say, because getting to know her on a personal level isn’t something I need to get tangled up in, “what’s the parking situation like where we’re going?”
I’ve traveled to New York City multiple times and driving is pointless. Walking or taking the subway will get you anywhere ten times faster, but the Blairs live so far from the city proper, that those two modes of transportation aren’t an option.
“They have valet.”
“Of course they do,” I mutter as I turn at a stop sign. “Can you put the directions into the GPS?”
She obliges, and for some reason she seems cordial this morning, talking and laughing, sharing stories and bits and pieces of her life. I know the game. She’s trying to loosen me up, trying to make me comfortable so I’ll drop my guard. What she doesn’t know is she’s never going to be able to pull one over on me. I’m too damn good at my job to fall for that kind of stuff.
Chapter 4
Remington
“You can wait in the car.”
“Fat chance,” he huffs as he hands the key over to the young valet attendant. “What is this place?”
His head tilts back as his eyes rove up the side of the building.
“I have an appointment. They’ll give it to someone else if we don’t hurry,” I say without answering his question.
People smile and say hi, placating me with false intentions as we walk across the foyer to the elevator. I ignore everyone as I usually do, and I know it makes me come off like a complete bitch, but at this point in my life, I don’t care. I don’t do fake, and even though I was chatting in the car like I was in the middle of a manic episode, I’m in a terrible mood after the brief conversation with Flynn about my parents, more specifically, Charles.
Still acting like a gentleman, Flynn reaches for the smoked-glass door of the salon and holds it open for me. I nearly tripped over my jaw when he did that in the garage. The man who used to drive for my family did it all the time, but only him and those in valet that are working for tips. I don’t think I’ve even had men I’ve dated pull open the door for me.
I hide my grin by rolling my lips between my teeth as I enter, walking to the last chair and taking a seat. The technician greets me in her native language, and I