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I LED CATHERINE INTO one of the half-finished sitting rooms on the third floor, just a few doors down from the room she was working in. The air was thick with the scent of fresh paint and the lingering residue of work in progress. I closed the double doors behind us, wanting privacy from the nosy teenager down the hall.
I turned to look at Catherine, irritation making my jaw tight. “I need to talk to you about Paisley.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Paisley has a knack for sabotage. I don’t want her around the places where you’re actively working.”
Confusion flickered in Catherine’s eyes. “Sabotage? What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath, knowing I needed to share a part of Paisley’s story. Paisley was very good at looking sweet and innocent while plotting some nasty revenge. I hated to say anything that painted her in a negative light, but I knew my daughter. I knew what she was capable of and didn’t want her turning her anger on the restoration work. It would piss me off but I knew it would devastate Catherine to see her hard work destroyed.
“Paisley’s been through a lot,” I said. “She’s in a rebellious stage. A very rebellious phase. She’s here because she’s been in trouble.”
“I think rebelling is a rite of passage for a teenager,” Catherine said, shrugging.
I shook my head. “It’s a lot more than that. There was a car wreck. She totaled a Rolls Royce. She was home because there were some shenanigans at her boarding school.”
The mention of boarding school left a bitter taste in my mouth. Just saying it pissed me off. Every time I had to talk about it, my lips curled back and my body stiffened.
“If you were against sending her to boarding school, why did you do it?” Catherine asked, picking up on my disgust.
I hesitated, trying to find the right words. It was a complicated situation. “I’ve been in Paisley’s life since she was five. Her mother, Regina, and I had a whirlwind romance that turned into marriage after only four months of dating. I loved them both, and I raised Paisley like my own daughter, but she’s not legally my daughter. After the divorce, I had no legal rights to Paisley. I tried to adopt her when we were married, but Regina wouldn’t have it. Every time I brought up the idea of adoption, Regina was against it. Looking back, I think it was her plan all along. She always planned to move on to someone else eventually. She got one hell of a divorce settlement from me and remarried pretty quickly. I suspect she intends to hop from bank account to bank account. I’m a damn fool for falling for her bullshit. I believed her crap. I got suckered. This next guy will get suckered. Paisley is just being dragged along for the ride. Regina insisted on sending her to that boarding school because she doesn’t know how to handle her. She can’t seem to understand that her daughter might need her.”
Catherine’s expression shifted from confusion to understanding. “I’m so sorry, Timothy. That is so sad for her. I feel bad for her. The poor kid.”
“I love Paisley. I do. She is like my own. I was her father for almost ten years. When Regina left, she didn’t think twice about what that might mean for Paisley.”
“Did she walk out on you?”
I took a deep breath. “I was cheated on, Catherine. It was a long-running affair, right under my nose. It devastated me in more ways than one. I know that’s something you can understand.”
She groaned. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t married to Scott. We didn’t have a family. I’m sorry. That had to have been hard.”
“It was humiliating,” I admitted. “It pissed me off. She had been fucking the guy for a long time. I was so stupid I didn’t realize.”
“Hey, don’t take that on yourself,” she said. “I know what you mean, though. You do feel stupid for not realizing, but cheaters are good at what they do. They know how to hide their affairs. It’s not a bad thing that you didn’t know. You trusted your wife. I trusted my boyfriend. That’s because we weren’t cheating. Normal people don’t suspect everyone is cheating on them. It’s the cheaters that suspect there is cheating because they are guilty.”
I nodded, appreciating her perspective. “Good point. Once I found out, it was over. She barely let the ink dry on our official separation. Regina ran off the day our separation went into effect. She pulled Paisley out of school and out of the home she had been in for ten years and dragged her to Berlin.”
“Why Berlin?”
“It’s where her new husband lives,” I said. “He’s the same man she had the affair with, and coincidentally, my business rival.”
Catherine’s eyes widened with a mixture of shock and sympathy. “That’s awful! I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”
“It was a betrayal on so many levels. She planned it all. The affair, the move, the new life. I was just a pawn in her game.”
“That’s low,” she said with a shake of her head. “When she decided to send Paisley to boarding school, I offered to have her live with me. She could have stayed in the same school in New York. Regina wouldn’t have it. Paisley didn’t want to go. Regina tried to get me to pay for the school.”
“Why?” Catherine asked with shock.
“Because she’s a manipulative bitch. She tried to tell me it was what Paisley needed. I didn’t believe that for a second,” I continued, clenching my fists. “Paisley was always a shy kid. Happy to be in the comfort of her own home, surrounded by people who love her. She’s not built for a boarding school, especially one that’s miles away from everyone she knows.”
“You didn’t pay, did you?” Catherine asked, concern washing over her face.
“I refused,” I declared firmly. “I told Regina that if Paisley was unhappy with the move and she didn’t want to handle her own daughter, then she should let Paisley stay with me instead. But she wouldn’t let it happen.”
“I can’t even imagine how hard that must be for you, Timothy.”
“I know the reason she’s acting out is because she hates her new stepdad,” I said. “I managed to get Regina to let Paisley spend the summer here. She only agreed because the kid is out of control and she doesn’t know how to handle her. As usual, her solution is to send the kid away.”
“Poor Paisley,” Catherine said. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I lost my mother when I was young. Paisley lost the man she knew as her father at a time in her life when a girl needs her father.”
“I tried to get some kind of visitation,” I said with a sigh. “I feel like I failed her.”
“It sounds like you did what you could,” Catherine said. “And the fact she’s here now says a lot.”
“Regina only kept her from me to piss me off,” I said. “She wanted to twist the knife she plunged into my back. I don’t know why she’s mad at me. She cheated. She walked away and now she feels like she needs to remind me of what she did.”
Catherine sighed. “I have to say, it must be a rule among cheaters. They must have a handbook. I just received a wedding invitation from my ex.”
“The ex you just broke up with?”
“Yep,” she said, nodding. “They move on fast, don’t they? Makes you feel like you’re easily forgotten and replaced, like the last years never mattered.”
I saw the hurt on her face. I felt a sharp pang of betrayal. “Yes, it does,” I admitted. “Regina married her new husband a week after our divorce was finalized.”
She shook her head with disgust. “I don’t understand why the cheaters just don’t be honest. Why not just say they aren’t interested and then leave. Why cheat? Why drag something out? And why would they send me an invitation? Just to hurt me?”
“If only we had those answers,” I said, sighing. “It’s twisted logic, if you can even call it logic.”
“You know, in some perverse way, they probably believe they were doing us a favor by not telling us. Keeping us oblivious while they carried on behind our backs.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “At least not in my case. Regina was just covering her bases. She wanted to make sure she had a bed to jump into straight from mine. She didn’t want to risk being single and unsupported by a rich guy.”
“That’s probably true with Scott. Not that I’m rich, but he’s not a guy that likes to be alone. He’s always planning his next move. He couldn’t give a shit if I was collateral damage. The invitation is probably his way of trying to get me to beg him to come back to me. Like see, I’m a catch. You’re missing out.”
A bitter chuckle escaped me. “Yes, that’s exactly what it was meant to do. Are you going to go?”
Her laughter carried a tinge of disbelief. “Of course not. My friend Amber said I should go because they included a plus-one. She thinks I should find a date and try to make him jealous.”
“You should.”
She rolled her eyes. “Unlike him, I don’t have a bench of boyfriends that I can just call in to replace the one I lost.”
“You don’t have a guy friend you can take?”
She shook her head. “Scott was very jealous. He always accused me or my guy friends of being too friendly. I realize now he was insecure because he knew what he was doing.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said. “As your date.”
“No thank you.”
“Why not?” I asked, a little surprised she was shutting me down.
“Scott is going to see right through it,” she said. “He’s going to know it’s not real. That’ll just give him more ammunition against me. He’ll know I’m desperate and trying to make him jealous.”
“I’ll pretend to be your new, rich boyfriend,” I offered. “It won’t just be a plus-one.”
Catherine stared at me. “That’s overstepping several professional boundaries.”
She wasn’t wrong. “It’s just a few hours. Then everything goes back to normal, and you’ll have won. Is that not what you want? To get him back for what he did to you?”
A few hours with this remarkable woman didn’t seem like enough, but I pushed that thought aside.
“Fine, it’s a date,” she relented.
“It’s a date,” I repeated, turning away from her. “Wear something nice. Something that goes well with diamonds.”
I walked away, my heart beating faster than usual. What had possessed me to make such an audacious proposition? I practically begged her to let me be her date. I had never acted this way before, but somehow desperation had won over my usual composure. It almost felt like I was attempting to prove something to myself. I wanted the person that got cheated on to win. I didn’t know the guy, but I didn’t like him. I didn’t like what he did. It felt personal.
I went back downstairs to my office to get some work done. Unfortunately, my focus was lost. All I could think about was going on a date with Catherine. I had not dated since the divorce. It was true that I didn’t trust women. I didn’t trust anyone, but I especially didn’t trust women.
Catherine, however, wasn’t like the others. Her sincerity and natural beauty were disarming, her strength and resilience admirable. Maybe it was the common pain we shared that made me like her. We were kindred spirits. It was hard not to be drawn toward her.
