Four

Wilder

Present Day

Sarah sat on the sofa with her favorite fuzzy pink blanket over her, Belladonna tucked in close to her side, while smiling down at her phone. There had been very little smiling from her lately. I didn’t know if I should be trying to make her smile or respecting that she was mourning her mother’s death. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to be doing. We had been here for almost a month now, and I kept thinking tomorrow would be better, but it never was.

When Sarah started texting, the smile on her face remained, and I watched her, relieved to see some of the little girl that had been there before Sylvia took her own life. This month hadn’t been easy, and I felt like I was failing my daughter at every turn. I’d spent two hours on Amazon last night, looking for books on how to handle this correctly. Three books were on the way, and I intended to read them from front to back.

Sarah put her phone down and lifted her gaze back to the television. She was watching cheerleaders in pink uniforms and teenagers with green hair in some weird burst-into-song movie. I handed over the remote to her in the evenings. I rarely watched television anyway.

Her phone lit up again, and she glanced down at it and … giggled. She actually laughed. Fuck, that sound eased the tightness in my chest like nothing else.

“Who has you so amused tonight?” I asked her.

Her grin grew as she began to text. “Oaky,” she replied.

Of course. I should have guessed. Trying not to be jealous of the fact that Oakley knew what to say to make Sarah laugh, I focused on being relieved someone did. I sure as hell didn’t.

Sarah glanced up at me then. “Daphne has her on a blind date.”

I had no clue who Daphne was or why the fuck Oakley would need to be set up on a blind date. She was the kind of female who should have been snatched up by now. Some wealthy, powerful, charismatic man should have gotten one look at her and done everything he could to make her his. It was a mystery to me how she’d gone this long without getting married.

I knew Sebastian had been in love with her and proposed a few years back. Thatcher was horrified that his little brother would want to get married. I was so fucking eaten up with jealousy at the idea of her being married to someone that I almost wept with relief when I found out she’d turned him down. After that, Sebastian had run off to fucking Las Vegas to work at one of the family-owned casinos. Cleo had mentioned two other proposals. I hadn’t known about those, but it didn’t surprise me. Oakley would allow men to fall in love with her even if she didn’t love them. It was just how she was.

“Who is Daphne?” I asked, knowing it was best that I didn’t know the details of Oakley’s life. Not my business.

“Oaky’s friend from her job that she quit.”

When had she quit her job? I never asked questions about Oakley. I’d learned a long time ago not to ask. The more I knew, the harder it was to get her out of my head. But if she’d quit her job, then why had she said she wasn’t always around for Sarah because of work? Probably a fucking lie. She was good at those.

“She doesn’t have a job?” I asked Sarah.

Sarah frowned. “No. She has a job. She has her own Etsy store.”

I knew Etsy was for selling things you made. I knew I should let it go, but I couldn’t. I wanted to find the flaw in the excuse she’d told me about her work getting in the way.

“What job did she have before, and when did she quit it to have an Etsy store?”

Sarah scrunched her nose. I never asked her about Oakley. My interest was confusing her. If Oakley was going to be in my daughter’s life, I needed to know details about her.

“She worked for a company in Atlanta—uh, marketing, I think is what she did. But she had to be out of town a lot and …” Sarah paused and looked down at her phone. “And she wanted to be home more. She missed me. So, she quit and started selling things on Etsy.”

Why the fuck had no one thought to tell me any of this? Oakley had quit a marketing job in Atlanta because she felt that Sylvia was that bad off? Jesus Christ! Had she not thought to call me?! Tell me, Sarah’s father?! I tried to control my mounting anger. She’d kept it all from me. Just like Cleo.

Sarah’s phone lit up again, and her sad expression vanished. Her smile had returned. Fucking Oakley.

“She’s full of jokes tonight,” I said, hoping my annoyance didn’t bleed through into my tone.

“Daphne has been dating Tanner and wanting Oaky to go on a date with his friend Hamilton. She gave in and went tonight.”

I bit my tongue before I could blurt out, Someone needs to warn Hamilton.

I knew Sarah wouldn’t understand. She thought Oakley had hung the moon, and maybe she needed a female to look up to, but, damn, I wished she had a better one.

Sarah’s phone lit up, and she looked back at it and giggled again. If she was on a date, why was she texting her niece? It was fucking rude, and I didn’t like Sarah thinking that behavior was acceptable. She needed a role model, and Oakley wasn’t that. Even if she was making Sarah smile.

“It’s not polite to text when you’re on a date,” I pointed out.

Sarah was smiling brightly down at the phone again. “He doesn’t mind,” she said, then held up her phone to me. “See.”

The first thing I saw was Oakley sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. Even making a ridiculous face, she was gorgeous. The guy beside her was making a stupid face, too, and looking real damn happy to be doing it. They were taking a selfie together—for Sarah. How fucking sweet. The poor bastard was already walking the plank to heartache, and he didn’t even know it.

Unable to sit here and act like I wasn’t angry, I stood up and walked out of the room before I made a comment that I would regret.

Oakley had always been that girl. The one men wanted to possess. The girl they’d give up everything for. Then, there had been me. Helplessly fucking obsessed with her. Completely in love, and she’d crushed me. I couldn’t truly hate her for it. Not after Sarah. Sure, I’d gotten drunk and fucked Sylvia, who had thrown herself at me. But Sarah had come from that night.

More laughter came from the living room. I jerked open the cabinet and got down a whiskey glass. I needed a drink.

“DAD!” Sarah called out.

I dropped the ice into the glass. “Yeah?”

“Oaky said that she can come stay with me when you go out of town next week. You don’t have to hire that Ms. Maynard to come. She will do it for free, and I want to see her.”

I closed my eyes and swore under my breath.

Ms. Maynard was a former neighbor of mine who I hired to stay with Sarah a couple of times when I had to work late or the one night I was out of town. Sarah had complained that she smelled of mothballs and made her go to bed by nine, but other than that, she had done a good job.

“It’s for five days. Doesn’t she need to work or whatever she does?” I asked, trying not to sound as irritated as I was.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sarah to see Oakley. I just thought it was best that I take Sarah there to visit for a day after she settled in here. The settling wasn’t going smoothly though, and I hadn’t had time to take her for a visit. The main issue was, I didn’t want Oakley here, in my house.

“She works from home, so it’s no problem!” Sarah called out.

Picking up the bottle of whiskey, I didn’t even measure the shots, but filled the damn glass up. Fucking hell. I wasn’t going to get out of this. Was Oakley trying to piss me off? She was on a date, for Christ’s sake! Did she have to butt into our life while she was with some guy?

“SO, can she?” Sarah asked.

I took one long drink, then sighed. “Yeah. Sure.”

The loud squeal of delight that rang through the house was the first bit of joy that these walls had heard since we had moved in here.

I’d not wanted to raise Sarah in my old apartment, so I bought this house in a nice subdivision with a great school system the week after Sylvia’s death. It was a new build, and we had moved in the day after I signed the papers.

Almost five thousand square feet of living space. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a game room, living room, library, state-of-the-art kitchen, formal dining room, great room, a heated pool with a hot tub that sat adjacent to it and flowed over into the shallow end. All of this, and still, we seemed lost. Sarah was detached and sad. Me? I was fucking clueless on how to do this right. Buying this massive house clearly hadn’t been what she needed.

The padding of her bare feet running down the hallway, followed by Belladonna’s paws against the hardwood, grew louder until Sarah burst through the doorway. Her face was flushed, and the brilliant grin on it made my chest tighten. She was happy. No, she was fucking thrilled.

I’d spent a fortune on this damn house and not gotten one tiny smile from her when she saw the pool or the huge bedroom with attached bathroom that was all hers. Yet the one female on earth who I didn’t like could bring her joy. How fucking perfect. At least I would be out of town. I had promised Sarah that she’d get to see Oakley, and so far, I had found every reason for that not to happen. It wasn’t fair to her, and I knew it. The issues I had with Oakley weren’t Sarah’s fault. I had to deal with them and get over it.

As much as I hated to admit it, Sarah needed her aunt. I couldn’t be all she had. I was just Dad. She was a girl who had lost her mom. It was time I let Oakley help. Even if I didn’t approve of her, she loved Sarah, and Sarah loved her. I would just make sure not to be here when she was.