“You’ve said enough…” Jared started to growl.
“No.” Kimberly pressed her hand to his chest, her gaze never leaving her father’s. “I’ll talk to him, Jared. This can’t hurt me now. I promise you.”
She felt his denial of her facing the parent who had attempted to control her for so many years.
“Come into the living room,” she invited him warily. “It’s a bit messy right now. We haven’t gotten around to putting all my stuff away yet.”
They had cleaned out her small house the week before, but boxes still littered the living room, packed with a lifetime of memories that she couldn’t bear to part with.
Her father nodded, his gaze flickering for a moment, appearing bleak and pain-filled before he glanced away from her.
She led him into the living room, standing uncomfortably as he stepped past several boxes, still clutching the bright pink and yellow box in his arm. Suddenly, he stopped, his gaze caught by the contents of childish mementos that she had kept over the years.
Hesitantly it seemed, he reached into it and pulled free a ragged little book. Sleeping Beauty. It had always been her favorite book.
He blinked rapidly as he cleared his throat.
“I used to read this to you,” he said faintly. “When you were just a tiny thing. Every night before bedtime, you wanted me to read it to you.”
Kimberly watched him curiously. “I don’t remember that,” she said as she thought back, trying to move past the memories of his rage with her mother to the years before the fights.
He flinched as though she had struck him and carefully laid the book back in its place.
“You were very small,” he said. “Too young to remember perhaps. Here…” He handed her the box he carried. “I have a gift for you. Your birthday arrives soon and I saw this…” He shrugged, as though uncomfortable.
Confused, Kimberly took the box. This wasn’t the father she remembered.
“I apologize for the wrapping.” He cleared his throat again. “I don’t know where my secretary was yesterday. I had to wrap it myself.”
She could tell. The paper was uneven, clumsily taped, but for a moment Kimberly had to battle back a sob at the knowledge he had wrapped it himself. He hadn’t done that since she was five. And she did remember that. The uneven, clumsily wrapped box he brought her and her mother’s derision.
You didn’t even care enough to have it wrapped properly,her mother had charged, furious. It’s as clumsy as you are, Daniel.
Her fingers smoothed over the crookedly tied bow as she blinked back tears. Carefully, she untied it, laying the ribbon aside before easing open the paper in the same manner. She would save it. Just as she had saved the ballerina paper he had used so long ago.
Finally, she opened the long box and simply stared down at the contents in amazement.
“It was nothing really,” he almost snarled. “I saw it in the shop window. The doll’s face reminded me of you.”
Reminded him of her? She looked at the little tag on the long white satin wedding gown. It was a Remee, a designer original, and the face resembled her because it was her face. She had long admired the maker’s porcelain dolls but had never been able to justify the outrageous price to own one.
Long red-gold curls fell down the doll’s shoulders and back beneath a lace and gauze veil. Tiny seed pearls, satin and lace, graced the stunningly white wedding gown, and precious satin slippers covered the porcelain feet.
“Why?” She ran her finger gently over a row of tiny pearls on the long train of the gown that had been folded carefully to the side.
She looked up at him then, seeing someone she didn’t know. This wasn’t the father she had fought for so many years. The self-righteous bastard who had, on more than one occasion, all but called her a whore.
He lowered his head slowly, shaking it helplessly as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
“I’ve not been a father to you since you were five,” he said, almost too low for her to hear. “I won’t excuse myself. There is no excuse, Kimberly. I won’t make one. But I wanted you to know…” he swallowed tightly, “I always loved you. Even when I didn’t want to. When I tried not to. I loved you.”
He shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably as she lifted a slender envelope she glimpsed tucked beside the doll. Curious, she opened it, pulling the papers free. She scanned the legal documents in disbelief before looking at him again.
What the hell was going on here?
“It was always meant to be yours,” he snapped then. “If you had married a derelict from the streets, I would not have taken it from you. I married your mother for the money, I admit that. But by God, I didn’t get her pregnant for the money, nor was it an accident.”
He appeared angry, as he always did. His voice was rough, a little too loud, but this time she saw something she realized had always been there in the past. His pain.