calmly, "why don't you take a few deep breaths, and I'll explain to you why it's perfectly fine."
That hat pointed in my direction like an accusing finger. "She shouldn't have undermined you in that meeting. Anyone working in that office knows you're in charge. You run the show, and if you say that we're coming in over budget, then we're over budget."
The hands I had resting on my lap flexed for a moment. I wanted to scream at him for being such an overbearing ass, but I took a deep breath of my own and schooled my facial expression. Those cotillion etiquette classes—once I got a new teacher—came in handy just about on a daily basis. Ironically, I needed them most in dealing with my father.
"She was right."
"She was ..." His voice trailed off, and he gaped in my direction. "No, she wasn't."
I stared at him, the same steady look that my momma was so good at. Finally, I saw his shoulders relax. "I ran the numbers wrong in one spot when I was doing the bookkeeping. I forgot about one invoice that was paid when I thought it wasn't. It was a simple mistake, but she noticed, and it was perfectly acceptable for her to let me know before anything was approved by the board."
Daddy's face turned an unattractive shade of purple, which, for as handsome as he was, was not a good look for him. If I'd been able to give that color a name in a paint fan deck that they kept down at the Eager Beaver Hardware store, it would be something like Unreasonable Eggplant or Authoritarian Aubergine.
Something you need to understand about my father is that he loved me. He loved my mother. And he loved running the Green Valley Chamber of Commerce. Those three things defined him almost entirely. The problem lay somewhere buried in the first two things because he'd allowed that love to become something it shouldn't be.
Ever since I graduated with a degree in business administration four years ago, I’d been my father’s office manager, and for all four of those years, he'd systematically cultivated a work environment where I, alongside him, reigned supreme. Anyone who challenged or disrespected me was dispatched with alacrity. Not by me, of course, but by my father, who wouldn't tolerate such things.
Not that it had happened a lot, but occasionally, a puffed-up peacock waltzed into our office demanding something for their business in town, and without knowing the politics of who I was, who he was, or what families I belonged to in the Green Valley hierarchy, they'd treat me as nothing more than a glorified coffee-maker.
That man, I can hardly remember his name now, called me "Girl" and told me how he wanted his coffee fixed. No "please." No "thank you." (He had a Northern accent though, which I feel is important to the story.)
Suffice it to say, he was dropped ass first onto the concrete outside the Chamber of Commerce after Daddy cursed him up one side of the sidewalk and down the other. He decided, quite wisely, not to move his business into Green Valley after that.
But this was different, and I couldn't help but add it to the list of things that made me certifiably insane about my father.
"She undermined you in a staff meeting where everyone was watching," he said. Bless his heart, he was trying to keep his tone even because we'd had this discussion a thousand times over the past four years, and he knew my will matched his own. I just wielded mine with a lighter touch and a sweeter smile, like every good southern belle does.
"A gentle correction is not undermining, especially when I could have presented incorrect information to the Chamber board. You should be thanking her." I unfolded my hands and smoothed them down the front of my pink and white gingham skirt. "I will speak to her, which is appropriate as her superior. You will stay out of this, Daddy."
"This is my office, Magnolia, and I will not tolerate disrespect of my main administrator."
I let out a slow breath and stood from behind my desk. The surface was immaculate, my laptop closed and centered on the gleaming walnut. A small vase of pink peonies sat in the corner next to an antique lamp with an ornate golden base. But the way my daddy filled the space, he eclipsed everything about it that I loved. Because it turned the neatness, the order, the carefully