Kelly Jamieson - Crazy Ever After

Parker’s daughter.

How many times in the past had he reminded himself of that? Too many to count, dammit. Who she was and how old she was had been enough to give him the strength to resist her powerful allure. In the past.

He looked at her again as she walked toward them. She was twenty-four years old now. Not a teenager. But she was still Parker’s daughter, and he’d made that promise to Parker, a promise he had to keep even though Parker wasn’t with them anymore. He had to keep his distance. Had to.

“We’re just having a drink before dinner, Samara,” Dayna said. “Would you like something? Sherry? Glass of wine?”

Samara blinked then looked pointedly at the bottle in Travis’s hand. “I’d rather have a beer.”

Travis raised a brow. Funny how he’d known her for ten years and felt he knew her so well, but he didn’t know she liked beer. Who would have thought?

Dayna went to get one for her, and Samara followed her, her silly sandals making soft thwapping noises as she padded across the plush carpet. The sound drew his eyes to her feet again then to her slender ankles and slim, pale-gold calves and...shit. He felt himself getting hard, cursed inwardly, and closed his eyes. Just looking at her feet and calves was fucking turning him on.

When he’d met Samara, she’d been fourteen years old, tall and gangly, with braces, freckles and stringy red hair. He’d barely noticed her the first few times he’d visited Parker’s home. Then one day the braces came off, and he’d been taken aback by her stunning smile. Had she never smiled when she’d had the braces on? Suddenly her body had changed too, with full, bouncing breasts he couldn’t help but notice. Hey, he was a guy. The day she’d brought her first boyfriend home for dinner, he’d been unaccountably irritated, especially when he’d walked in on them necking in the living room after dinner.

Her hair had grown longer and thicker, satiny-smooth and richly colored. One day he’d been completely nonplussed to realize she was a gorgeous woman with a smile that lit up a room and eyes that dazzled him into a stuttering idiot.

When he’d started to fantasize about her, the horror made him actually avoid Parker’s home. He’d felt like some kind of perv, a twenty-five-year-old man hot for a teenage girl. But he couldn’t stay away forever, and he’d steeled himself against the torture of being with her.

He’d thought she was spoiled rotten, indulged by her wealthy parents and given everything she wanted. The contrast between her easy, pampered life and his own miserable, scrabbling youth made him a little nuts if he thought about it, but she made him laugh and entertained him with the way she loved to argue, especially with her father. She was confident and smart, yet never obnoxious or rude to her parents. She just tested them at every turn. Jesus, one time she’d actually had the audacity to challenge her father, and Travis for that matter, on whether fair trade was really the solution to problems in developing countries.

Damned if her arguments hadn’t made sense and had merit. She’d claimed fair trade led producers to increase production, which benefited some producers in the short run, but in the long run would push coffee prices in world markets even lower. Ultimately, it would make things worse for the majority of coffee producers. She’d even outlined her theory that artificially raising the price of coffee to earn farmers better money would actually remove motivation for them to learn new skills and to focus on education for their children, which was really the key to a better future. Reluctantly, he’d been forced to admire her brains as well as her growing beauty.

He focused on her now, taking a seat in a chair far away from him, lifting the glass of beer to her lips and crossing one slim leg over the other.

“So, I guess you didn’t have time to come to the office,” he commented. Even as the words left his lips, he knew he was provoking her. Christ, he might as well have stuck out his tongue and said “Nyah-nyah, I was right, and you were wrong”

Her eyes narrowed. “There was a lot to do.” She downed half her beer, and he lifted an amused eyebrow. “What was happening at the office?”

Travis tipped his head. “I was just telling your mother about it. It was a bit chaotic, but I think I got things settled down and got a plan in place.”

“What kind of plan?”

“Public relations. I met with Matti and David. We’ve sent emails and instructed every district manager and store manager to hold staff meetings tomorrow and gave them the announcement to make. We have to put out a press release about Parker’s death, reassure our suppliers and customers and business partners that everything will go on as usual and reassure staff that they’re not going to lose their jobs. We’re going to put a big photo of Parker in the lobby at headquarters tomorrow. We haven’t finalized anything yet, but we talked about a linkup with the memorial service so we can broadcast it to L.A., San Francisco and New York. We’ll likely do a special issue of the newsletter for staff.”

“Oh. That sounds...good.”

“We talked about the memorial service too. There may be some things you haven’t thought of. We think there are a few people you’re going to have to ask to speak.” He reeled off a list of names, prominent business people from across the country.

“Oh, lord.” He could see she hadn’t realized the magnitude of all this as she nibbled her bottom lip. Her eyes met his, and he sensed she was on the verge of asking him for help. He knew how hard that was for her.

“I can call them,” he offered as casually as he could.

He waited for her to refuse the offer as she sat there thinking about it. He was about to tell her that it wasn’t a weakness to accept help from someone, but then she gave a tight little nod. “Okay. Thank you, Travis.” His heart expanded a little in his chest, and he again resisted the urge to say “good girl”, knowing how much that would piss her off. She changed the subject. “Did you talk to anyone in Matagalpa?”

He went with it. “I talked to the hotel. They’re shipping back the stuff that was in his room. I told them to express ship it so it should be here in a day or two.”

“Oh.” She pressed those pretty lips together firmly. “Tomorrow I’ll come to the office with you.”

Was there any point in arguing with her? He had no idea what she thought she was going to do, but trying to tell her not to come would just make her dig her cute little heels in. So he said nothing.

Dayna interrupted his thoughts. “Don’t forget we’re meeting with Reverend Foster tomorrow. He’s coming here at ten o’clock.”

Samara sighed. “Oh, yeah.”

“And we need to make plans for the party after the funeral,” Dayna continued. “We’ll need to find a caterer that can do it at such short notice. I think we’ll have to hire bartenders and waiters. And we have to get that obituary done tonight. It needs to be faxed to the newspapers tomorrow. Oh god.” She laid her hands on her cheeks. “So much to do.”

“Communications can do that for you,” Travis offered.

Samara opened her mouth as if to protest, glanced at her mother and the overwhelmed expression she wore, then closed it. A shadow flitted across her pretty face that made Travis regret his earlier digs. She turned back to him. “Travis... will you do the eulogy?”

Holy shit. Travis’s brows lifted. “Uh...me?”

“Of course, you.”

Travis met Dayna’s eyes, and she gave a small nod. He looked down at his beer. After all he and Parker had been through together, that kind of choked him up. He swallowed. When the tightness in his throat had eased, he said, “Of course.” How could he refuse when Samara looked like that, momentarily vulnerable and sad, then trying to be strong? When she was Parker’s daughter? He cleared his throat.

“And you’ll be an honorary pallbearer,” Dayna added.

His chest ached. “All right.”

Parker’s death was becoming more and more real every moment. They were talking about his funeral, for Chrissake. He rubbed his face, his chest aching.

Ava appeared in the door. “Dinner’s ready,” she announced. “I set the table in the breakfast room again.”

“Thank you, Ava.” Dayna rose and set her empty glass on the bar. Travis and Samara held onto their drinks as they all went for dinner.

At least a dozen large flower arrangements had arrived at the house that afternoon while they’d been out, and Dayna gestured to a stack of envelopes on the console table in the hall.

“You can help me open those cards after dinner, Samara.”

Samara nodded.

Nobody was sending him sympathy cards, Travis reflected with wry humor and a faint ache in his chest. Yet he’d miss Parker as much as anybody.

“I talked to Wade,” Dayna said as they took their seats. “He’s going to come over first thing in the morning to go over the will.”

“Will it be like in the movies?” Samara asked, laying her napkin over her knees. “Will everybody be tense and then pissed off at each other when they find out they didn’t inherit anything?”

Travis grinned, and Dayna laughed. “No. I already know what his will says.”

Samara nodded, and Travis started filling his plate. He hadn’t thought at all about Parker’s will or his assets, including his shares in the company. “So it sounds like you’ll have a full day tomorrow too,” he said to Samara.

“Yes! More fun! Wills and funerals, I can hardly wait.”

Dayna bent her head to hide her smile with a faint shake of her head.

“I’d so rather be at the office,” Samara continued.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You have enough to worry about here. I’ll take care of things there.”

“I want to handle things.”

He looked at her sitting around the corner of the table from him. Again tonight she was just playing with her food. She was slim to begin with—she couldn’t afford to lose any weight. “You need to eat,” he told her, nodding at her plate.

She blinked. “I am eating.”

He laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re pushing that food around on your plate, just like you did last night.”

She laid her knife and fork on the plate, rested her hands on her lap and gave him a heated you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do look up through her long eyelashes.

“You’re too skinny,” he added, and her eyes widened.

“I am not skinny!”

He raked his gaze over her. She looked hot as hell, but it was better to insult her than to let on how goddamn gorgeous he thought she was. Her cheeks grew pink under his appraisal. He shrugged. “You look skinny to me.”

Her lips pressed together, and her eyes flashed gold sparks. “Well, thanks so much. Good thing I don’t give a shit what you think.”

“Samara!” Dayna’s eyes moved back and forth between them, her mouth open. “That was rude!”

Samara brushed her long bangs aside. “I’m being rude? I’m not the one making rude comments about how bad I look.”

Travis sighed and opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could, Samara rose from the table and tossed her napkin down. “You know, since I don’t seem to have much appetite, there’s not much point in me sitting here.” She left the room.

Travis met Dayna’s gaze and grimaced. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have pushed her buttons.”

Dayna looked back at him searchingly. “No, you shouldn’t have,” she agreed, her voice soft. “You know how contrary she can be. And she’s not exactly in a good place right now. This isn’t a good time for any of us.”

Dayna’s patience and understanding made him feel like shit. “I know.” He looked down at his plate, his appetite gone too. “I’ll go talk to her. After dinner.”

Dayna nodded slowly, still looking at him quizzically. So much for the avuncular keeping-his-distance plan.

Samara stalked through the den and outside onto the patio, far enough away from the kitchen that they couldn’t see her, a string of curses trying to escape her mouth. Damn him!

Why did he get to her so much? Why did he refuse to see that she was an adult now who could help with the business? Why had his comment about how skinny she was hurt so much? Why wasn’t she over him? This was ridiculous!

She couldn’t stay here. Not with them.

She sank down onto the wicker swing, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The thick cushion absorbed her weight, far nicer than the one that had been there when she was a child. She gave a gentle push with both feet and started rocking, the movement rhythmic and calming. The cool night air brushed over her bare skin with a touch of dampness. The quiet and peace settled around her, the only noise a faint squeak of the swing and a distant chirruping of crickets. After a few moments, her heart rate had slowed, and her breathing evened out. She sighed.