His Forever Girl (New Orleans' Ladies #4) - Liz Talley Page 0,25
that required her to backtrack or climb over hurdles to reach her goal.
But Tess knew something about herself—she may have lived a charmed life, but she wasn’t going to lie down and flop about, bemoaning her state. She’d find a new job even if it meant going to the competition. Nothing wrong with a modern woman taking control of her life, leaving conventions behind.
And maybe she’d even get a new man… or not.
All she did know was that Graham needed to be a memory, and Frank Ullo needed to learn his daughter wasn’t a doormat.
Plugging the flash drive into the computer, Tess downloaded her resume and renewed her determination to prove to the world she could kick ass and take names.
Tess Ullo was a fighter.
GRAHAM PULLED UP to the curb in front of the house in which he’d once lived. Looked the same. Felt different.
The Orleans brick with the intentional plaster smears and the beige stucco had once seemed so modern, so very much “them.” But now it looked pretty much like what it was—a townhouse in a decent area of Metairie, crowded in like the others. Pansies lined the sidewalk. Graham only knew they were pansies because he’d planted the same flowers in that spot years ago. He wondered if Josh planted them now.
The door opened and Emily flew out, dark pigtails flying, smile as wide as sunshine.
“Daddy!” she screamed, her sneakers slapping against the sidewalk.
Graham scooped her up, squeezing tight. Two little arms curled around him. “Hey, pumpkin. Jeez, you’ve grown a foot since I last saw you.”
Emily tilted her head and grinned, one tooth missing. “I’ve been taking vitamins.”
“Oh? That’s the reason?” He gave his daughter one last squeeze and lifted his head to see Monique approaching. “Hey.”
She gave him a cool smile… as always. “Hello. As you can see she’s beyond ready for dinner with Daddy Graham.”
Daddy Graham?
“Yeah,” Emily said, waving a five-dollar bill. “Daddy Josh gave me some money for the arcade. I’m gonna play skee ball.”
“Daddy Josh?”
Monique brushed manicured fingernails across an imaginary horizon. “That’s what Em calls Josh. Easier that way.”
“Really?” Graham said, eyeing his former fiancée, wondering whether this new term had come from ease or a vindictive way to twist a fork in Graham. Monique enjoyed creating drama. It’s what made her brilliant as an artist… and nearly impossible for Graham to live with.
She lifted a shoulder and gave him a half smile. “For Emily.”
“What’s wrong?” Emily asked, her forehead crinkling as she glanced at him. Her brown eyes looked worried even as her rounded cheeks were flushed with excitement.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” Graham said, giving Monique the let’s talk later look. “Time to go.”
“I don’t have to sit in a booster anymore,” Emily said, eyeing the sedan Ullo had delivered to him that morning. “I’m big now.”
Emily had grown in the past four months. She’d always been such a tiny girl with brown velvet hair and fluffy fairy skirts. As a mature seven-year-old, she wore a T-shirt with silvery looking stuff on it and trendy teenager-looking jeans. Her sneakers had sequins on them, and the hair bow was noticeably absent. A small glittery purse hung at her side.
But he had no idea if she needed a booster seat or not—another mark against him as a father. He’d never thought to check that kind of stuff. Monique had always handed him the car seat or the diaper bag or the medicine. He didn’t even know the pediatrician’s name anymore.
This was why he’d had to come back to New Orleans.
This was why he’d had to ignore the ignoble feeling within him when he’d found out about Tess yesterday and make himself indispensable to Frank Ullo and his company.
“So you’re the new Frank Ullo, huh? Never even crossed my mind something like this could happen,” Monique said, eyeing the Toyota Avalon before lifting her gaze to him. “Highly ironic you’re working for my competition. It’s almost Machiavellian.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he said, opening the rear door. Emily climbed in, looking around the leather interior, poking at buttons. “I told you as much when we talked last month. It’s a perfect opportunity for me, doing something I’m good at. It puts me back in New Orleans. Back in Emily’s life as her father. Her only father.”
Monique narrowed her dark eyes. “Feels like you’re punishing me. Upstart was yours, too, at one time, and you’re making this personal when it’s not. You’ll take food from the mouth of your child, merely so you can look good.”