He hums and glances over at me before pulling his chair close to his desk. Arms resting on the desktop, he says, “I’m prepared to walk out the door with you. I actually think we should go in there and lay that on the line for him. We will both leave the firm. He needs a rude awakening.” He rubs his temples. “I still can’t believe he did that to Kendall. If he did anything close to that to Theresa, I would have lost my mind.”
“Well, I have officially lost my mind, and losing Kendall is not an option. I need to make this right, no matter what the cost. I have to hope she comes around and sees we are meant to be together.”
Logan smirks and laughs.
“What?” I stare back at him.
“You’re smitten and determined. It looks good on you.” He laughs some more.
“Asshole…now what?”
“If he truly wants to see us happy, then we need to make our own decisions without him interfering. Mom hurt him, but heneeds a different hobby than controlling our lives, thinking he’s protecting us from getting hurt. Now we make our own threats to him; he will not like it, but it’s the only way. He’ll make the decision. We know where we stand.”
“Come on, he must be at the office by now. We’re not giving him a heads-up.”
We both hop into our cars and drive to the office in record time, park, and walk in. I hear his voice the minute I walk down the hallway.
I knock on the doorframe of Dad’s office with Logan right behind me. “Do you have a minute?”
“This must be serious if you both are here,” Dad says, leaning back in his chair and gesturing for us to come in.
I resist the urge to shake my head, doing my best to keep emotions out of the conversation as much as possible. “It’s important,” I say flatly.
He points to the chairs in front of his desk. “Come on in and close the door.”
We take a seat. I’m glaring at him right before I say anything.
“I suspect you heard about my visit to see Kendall, and that’s why you are here?” Dad asks, his voice giving nothing away, sounding almost bored.
“Yes, exactly,” I say curtly. I want to hear it from his own mouth. “But why?” I place the contract and the torn-up check in a neat pile in front of him to make a point.
He sighs. “I’m protecting you. It’s as simple as that. Look what happened with Maggie; she broke you. I thought you’d never give another woman the time of day. But I was wrong.”
Shaking my head, I say, “I don’t need protecting, Dad.”
“When I overheard your conversation with Logan, I thought it would be best to make an offer.”
Logan jumps in. “I’m not sure what part of the conversation you heard, but it’s not your job to protect us. And it sure ashell isn’t your place to threaten and intimidate people, especially those we care about. Can’t you act like a normal parent? Just ask us what’s going on. Let us make our own mistakes. Instead, you take things into your own hands, thinking you’re doing us a favor, but you aren’t.”
“She’s not right for Dane,” Dad says with confidence. “People are talking.”
My heart rate is picking up, so I breathe before saying, “People always talk. Did you ever consider verifying the information before using it against Kendall? For the record, I went down to the town hall on my own. She never asked for my help.”
“Does that even matter? You still did it.”
I shake my head, about to get up and walk out the door before we can even give him the ultimatum.
“Bigger picture, you don’t have the right to threaten and intimidate Kendall, and then to top it all off, you tried to pay her off,” Logan says, straight-faced and with no emotion. “You have a serious problem, and we will no longer sit back and let you run unchecked.”
I then say, “She’s exactly right for me. You don’t even know her, only what you overheard and what gossip is around town. Did you even think of talking to Gram about what you heard? She knows everything in town.”
“No,” my father says almost petulantly.
“Well, think about this…Gram was planning on setting us up, but things fell into place for us all on their own. Kendall is Gram’s stylist and has been since the salon opened. Did you even think about anyone else but yourself when you decided to make a power move?”
He doesn’t have a quick comeback to that. He scratches his jaw, probably thinking of a way to weasel out of this. All he can come up with is… “Dane, she has a lot of baggage.”
I throw back, “Don’t we all!”
