Sugar Daddies (50 page)

“It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t have to matter now.”

“You could have been with my mum,” I said. “If you loved her.”

He sighed again. “Love is complicated, Katie. I loved your mother so much it took my breath, but I loved Olivia, too. She was the mother of my boys, a good woman, a woman I could depend on.” His shoulders were tense. So tense. “I know you may not see them like that, but Olivia and Verity are good people. They are just very insecure, very highly strung. They have a more prickly heart. Not like your mother, and not like you, either.”

“Is that a compliment?”

He smiled. “You’ve always made me so proud, Katie, from the very first moment I saw you. I just regret you never got to realise.”

Tears pricked, but I didn’t let them fall. “This has to be slow,” I said. “I just… I don’t know how this could even work… after all this time…”

“However you want it to. You call the shots. Not like last time, this time it’s all at your pace, Katie, whatever you want.”

“I didn’t think you gave a shit last time.”

“You have no idea how much I gave a shit. No idea at all.” His words were raw and choked.

I felt awkward again, scratchy in my suit, small in the big leather swivel chair. “I’d better go,” I said. “I told Carl I’d only be an hour.”

He smiled. “I hear how well you’re doing. I check in every day.”

“I know,” I said. “He tells me.”

“He does?”

“I’d better go.” I got to my feet, held out a hand, and it felt stupid. He took it anyway. “I’m sorry,” I said. “For my part. For not giving you a chance.”

“You have
nothing
to be sorry for. Nothing. The apology is all mine.” He squeezed my hand so tight. “I’m sorry, Katie.”

My breath was sore in my chest. I nodded. Smiled. Shook his hand.

And then I pulled away, walked to the door, brushed aside a tear before I stepped into the corridor, but there were footsteps, a hand on my arm.

“Katie…” he said, and then he didn’t say anything at all. He pulled me into him, and held me tight, and I was so rigid, so scared. “I am so sorry. I’m sorry about your mother, I’m sorry for what I did, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

I nodded, held my breath to stop the tears.

“I love you, Katie, you’re my daughter. I always loved you.”

And I couldn’t say it back. No matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I wanted to believe him, wanted to believe I had a dad, and that that dad loved me, had always loved me. No matter how much my heart thumped in my chest and my stomach pained with all the hurt and all the forgotten dreams, I just couldn’t say it back.

I didn’t know him enough to love him.

Didn’t know him at all.

But maybe one day.

I wrapped my arms around my father’s shoulders, and I stayed there, just long enough to count.

And that would have to be enough.

For today.

The tears pricked again as I pulled up outside the Cheltenham office, and underneath them my thoughts were all fucked up. Sadness, and shock, and a glimmer of hope.

And anger. There was anger there.

Not at my mum, who’d done her best despite a few
wrong calls. Not even at my dad, who’d let her down and made a few wrong calls of his own. Epic style.

My anger was at Verity.

The cold steely determination in my belly turned hot, and it spat and spluttered.
Maybe if she hadn’t been so cruel. Maybe if she hadn’t made me feel so worthless, so unwelcome. Maybe then, I’d have been able to stay, just enough to get to know him, just enough to know he didn’t hate me.

Maybe things would have been different.

I sighed to myself. What did that really matter now?

I breathed out all my hurt, all my anger, breathed out all the bitterness and confusion, and fear. And what was left was me, just me, the same me I’d always been.

Except now I knew the truth.

Finally, after all this time, and all this hurt, I knew the truth.

Carl pulled me aside on my way in, but I shook my head.

“I’m alright,” I said, and brushed his hand from mine. “I’m good.”

“What did he say?”

“Lots,” I shrugged. “Nothing. Everything.”

“Want to go talk?” His eyes were so hard on mine.

I shook my head again. “I want to work, Carl. I need the headspace.”

He nodded. “Alright, Katie, whatever you want. I’m right here.”

“I know,” I said, and I did know.

I hammered the fuck out of my calls that afternoon. I was on a mission, consumed by nothing other than the desire to forget it all and fly high on the leaderboard. I chased up all my prospects, closed everything I could into an opportunity, and those leads clocked up for me. Even Ryan looked confused.

“Who put the steam in your kettle today?”

I shrugged. “Just my lucky day, I guess.”

He reached out to me, pretended to bathe in my glory. “I hope it’s contagious.”

“If this is luck, you’re welcome to it,” I said, and gave his arm a friendly slap.

I was making a coffee when Verity clacked her way into the kitchen behind me. My skin prickled. Wondering what she knew. Wondering what she’d heard. Wondering if she knew anything at all.

She appeared at my side, reached up for a coffee mug, and she was stewing, I could tell.

“Hey, Katie,” she said, like she ever made casual conversation. She turned around, leaned against the counter, looking anywhere but at me. “I know we don’t… speak.”

No shit.

“…but I just wanted to…” She sighed. “Good leads today. So many of them.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ve been meaning to say. For a while. You, uh, you sure know how to make those calls.”

I didn’t even know how to reply.

Her earrings sparkled under the florescent light, and so did her lip gloss. She was so preened, so perfect, so stylish and groomed and well-fucking-educated.

But she was nervous, a little bit hollow. She felt like glass. I could tell.

“Look, Katie, I, um…”

“You,
um
?”

She shot me a half smile, like she was crazy and she knew it.

“Ruth and Sharon and I are meeting up at Cheltenham Chase, before the event kicks off. I was wondering if you would… if you wanted to… I dunno… meet us? I have a spare trailer, if you…”

“I have my own trailer,” I said.

And she looked disappointed, like I’d lashed out and stamped on her olive branch. It felt so surreal.

She pinked up, and shrugged. But she wasn’t hostile. She didn’t attack.

“Ok,” she said. “Well, I guess we’ll see you there. Dad’s coming. Seb and Dommie, too. And Mum.”

I watched in silence as she made her coffee, dumbfounded beyond coherent speech. She dropped the teaspoon in the sink and shot me a final look before she walked away.

“Hey, Verity,” I managed, as she reached the open door.

She turned, stared right back at me.

“Thanks,” I said. “For the offer.”

She shrugged, offered me a small smile. “No problem,” she said.

Bagels were off the lunch menu today. I felt uncharacteristically nervous as I gave the training suite a final onceover.

It had come around so quickly, the end of the telemarketing phase of the internship programme. As of Monday, my group of twenty would be fractured into smaller teams, assigned to different departments of their own choosing. Some into the account management teams, some into back office support, Ryan was heading for the field sales division, shadowing one of our Northern Territory sales managers.

Katie and Verity had both opted for the marketing team, and there would be just four of them heading in that direction.

Maybe it was their shot to find some common ground, without the background noise of a busy calling regime.

I hoped so. As much as Verity Faverley had been a self-righteous, bitchy little pain in the ass for the vast majority of the time I’d known her, I still hoped they’d find some way to forge a relationship of sorts. Verity had surprised me, and as much as Katie hated to admit it, she was surprising her, too.

I’d seen it for myself, the little olive branches Verity was holding out. Little comments in the team meetings, a genuine smile as Katie claimed the leaderboard for the day, an offer of a trailer for the Cheltenham Chase by all accounts.

I didn’t push it. Partly because fragile flowers need space to bloom, and partly because I doubted poor Rick could take another round of my brutal honesty.

I’d done more than enough of that for the time being.

David and our senior management team were due at our Cheltenham office for the Friday afternoon festivities. We had champagne and celebratory cake, and a buffet from outside caterers. Hell, we even had balloons.

I suspected we’d also have a fresh round of golden envelopes, but that wasn’t my call. I’d presented the final leaderboard figures with my recommendations, but the final decision on bonuses would be down to David and the finance team.

“It looks amazing in here,” Katie said. Her smile was bright and her eyes were happy. She took a seat at her old desk. “I can’t believe this is the last time I’ll be sitting here, it’s come to feel so comfortable, you know?”

“You can always come back and pick up the phone, for old time’s sake. It’s only over if you want it to be.”

She shrugged. “I dunno, Carl. Maybe I’ll lose my touch.” She looked up at me. “Maybe I’ll be a marketing whizz instead, have you thought of that? Maybe I’ll join Rick in his little design empire and have my own ads up on the kitchen wall.”

I put my hands on her shoulders, gave her a squeeze. “The world is your oyster, Katie. Nothing would surprise me.”

“We could give ourselves a cool funky name.
Kat-rick
, it’s a bit like hat trick, no? Three in a row. That could be us.” She laughed. “You’d have to join then, though.”

“Unlikely.” I smiled down at her. “Anyway, Rick would want something abstract. Indigo Trout or some crap like that. You know what he’s like. Any excuse for a hip rebrand.”

“I like Kat-rick.”

“So do I,” I said, and tipped her face up to mine.

“Smooching in the office is a no-no, Mr Brooks, very unprofessional.” Her eyes mocked, but her lips were open.

I leaned in further, until I could feel her breath, and she blushed.

“Carl, seriously. What?”

“It’s a celebration,” I said, and kissed her.

I kissed her like we weren’t at work, like it was just us, alone, like it had become so natural to do. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me close, and moaned into my mouth as I moaned into hers, and it was perfect, so perfect.

But it was a mistake.

A cough from the doorway doused us with cold water, and my eyes crashed into the stare of Evan Michaels, Finance Director.

“I apologise for the… interruption,” he said, and there was a barb in it. “I was hoping for a word, Carl, about next month’s projections.”