I knew I would never allow her into Naomi’s life.
This was the reason I’d been so guarded against Lacey. I was always terrified that I’d let the wrong kind of woman into Naomi’s life.
“Stop following me around,” I hissed at her. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“Just ask her!” Regina shouted at my back as I walked fast enough to lose her.
I spent the day in the office stewing. Silas tried to ask me what was wrong, but even he couldn’t get me to crack the lid.
I wanted to outright dismiss anything that Regina said to me. I knew what her intentions were: To sabotage anything good I had going with Lacey. Still, I knew she was good at following people around, and I didn’t doubt that she’d had eyes on Lacey during the cruise. The conversation she mentioned with Lisa rang true to me, as much as I didn’t want it to.
Had they signed something? I kept thinking over the most generous interpretation, and then the worst-case scenarios.
The most generous interpretation was that Lisa had basically ambushed Lacey, thrown a contract in her face, and Lacey had outright refused her.
Still, why hadn’t she told me about it then?
The worst-case was that Lacey had maybe even approached Lisa. Told her that she needed something after my contract was up. Maybe she was actually just milking me for the million bucks, and talking to Lisa was her way of getting ready to jump ship once she’d conned me.
No. I gripped my desk until my knuckles turned white. Lacey wouldn’t do that to me. I wouldn’t believe it.
The problem though was, the seed of doubt had been sown, and I needed to either decide to fully trust her and let this rest, or I’d need to confront her about it.
And I was afraid of what I might find out.
When I got home, I saw Naomi sitting on the bed in Lacey’s room. The shower was running. Naomi had Lacey’s purse on the bed, and she had removed every single thing in there and laid it out in neat rows on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Well, Geoff spilled soda all over Lacey at the library. It even got in her hair. So now she has to take a shower, and she said I have to stay on the bed. I’m not allowed to get off the bed. But her purse was on that thing there, and I reached it without getting off the bed. Now I organize all the stuff in her purse. Lacey’s going to be so happy.”
“You shouldn’t touch other people’s things without asking,” I said, frowning at her.
I was about to help her put all the stuff away, but I didn’t want to go through all the things in Lacey’s purse. I’d decided I was going to trust her. To assume the best of her, and let the whole thing with Lisa rest.
Then I saw Lisa’s business card on the bed. The Red Sun Press logo glared up at me like an evil eye.
I clenched my jaw. “Let’s put this stuff away.”
As I was putting the things away, I felt a question on the tip of my tongue. I fought every impulse to let it slip from thoughts to words, but it suddenly just fell off my tongue, and then it was out in the air, and I couldn’t take it back.
“Do you remember Lacey meeting a woman named Lisa?”
Naomi looked up at me. I immediately regretted the question. It was going back on what I’d decided to do, and it was bringing my daughter into this mess too. I hated myself for asking, but I’d hoped that Naomi could just confirm to me that nothing bad had happened.
“Umm,” she said. “She ate breakfast with us.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s all?”
“I felt a little bit scared, because that lady was talking about Lacey going away.”
“Going away?”
Naomi looked up at me confused. “I don’t know. It was grown up talk. I just felt a little sad when I heard them talking.”
I felt a vein bulging on my forehead. Every fatherly instinct in me told me to snatch Naomi up and get her out of here. To tell Lacey to pack her bags and get out of my house.
I knew my fatherly instincts led me to sometimes insane irrationality. They led me to do things that were incredibly self-destructive and short-sighted just to prevent even a hint of harm coming to my daughter.
My nails dug into my palms.