“We’ll just see about that, now won’t we?”He started toward the door, and Ivan had had enough.Shifting into his great beast, he stood in front of the door with his fur standing up on end and his teeth bared.He wouldn’t get past him without a fight, and Howard wouldn’t live long enough to talk about it when he attacked him.“What do you think you’re doing?I’m not going to allow you to treat me this way.I said that I was going to talk to my daughter, and I’m going to do that now.Get out of the way before I have to hurt you.”
He stood his ground.Seconds before he was ready to attack, he heard the door behind him open, and there was Sen.He could smell her and her anger, too.Before he could guess what she was going to do, she put her hand in his fur and rubbed his head.It was all he needed to be calmed.
“What’s the meaning of this, father?”Howard said that he wanted to talk to her.“I was taking amuch-needed nap when I heard raised voices.My hearing is a great deal better than it used to be, so I heard every word.I need to rest, and you’re out here threatening my husband.What’s the meaning of this anger that you have right now?”
“Your husband wouldn’t allow me to talk to you.He, well, he never mentioned that you were taking a nap.”She called him a liar, and he looked angry again.“Now see here.I’m your father, and you’ll not take that tone with me.I have a business that you’re going to be running when I’m no longer able to run it, and it’s time to get you acquainted with the people who work for me.Now that your mother is out of the picture, you can come and go as I please and get this taken care of.”
“No.”He asked her what she meant, and she told him that she was happy with the businesses that she had to run for her uncle.“He left me with enough money that I don’t have to work, but I plan on working until I don’t want to anymore.It sounds like whatever you have planned for me is going to take me from my job and my new home.I don’t need the extra pressure that you’re going to be putting on me.”
“It’s a very profitable business, and I demand that you come with me to learn it.I’m not kidding you right now, Serenity.You’ll come with me now and learn everything that you need to so that you can be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.”She told him she already was wealthy beyond anything that she ever dreamed of.“Well, you can’t ever have enough money.That’s what I told your uncle when he was telling me that he was going to retire.Retirement is for the old and poor.You’ll come and learn my business so that when I’m ready to turn it over to you, we can both still make a great deal of money.”
“No, I won’t.I’m going to go back up to my bedroom and take a long nap.You’ll just have to deal with me not doing what you want on your own.And you ever talk to Ivan that way again, I’ll have nothing to do with you.Do I make myself clear?”Howard said she was being unreasonable.“Perhaps.But you’re the one making demands right now on my time when I’m so exhausted that I want to lie down right here and sleep.Go away and don’t come back until you can remember your manners.”He didn’t take his eyes off of Howard when he heard the door behind him shut.
“Well, that fucking bitch.”Howard’s face was red; he was so angry, and when he took a step toward the house, he growled low in his throat.Howard didn’t move.“You’re going to stop me, aren’t you?If you do, there is hell going to be paid.Hell, she’d not have this money to buy this house without me around her uncle.Who does she think she is, treating me this way?I’ve been waiting for a long time for her to be free of her mother, and now she does this to me.I just don’t believe it.”
There was nothing he could say to the man, but he did watch him.They’d formed no connection the two of them so he couldn’t speak to him.The only thing he could do was to keep an eye on him so that he would not try to get into the house.Ivan would kill him if he tried.And right now, it was iffy if he didn’t kill him anyway.He didn’t know what was going on with the older man, but he didn’t trust him at all.Not anymore.There was something wrong with him.Or perhaps it had been there all along, and he’d kept himself in control.Whatever the issue, he wasn’t going to get past him and to his mate.
~*~
Howard was sick to his belly when he made his way to his hotel.He’d been holding his temper for so long that he felt like it was a part of him.Now that Debra was out of the way, Serenity should have wanted to spend her time with him.It was the very least she could do since he was her father, damn it.And that man getting in the way, Ivan made him pissed off because he was cockblocking him from his daughter.Well, that wouldn’t last, damn it.He’d take care of him right away.
He’d been nice, hadn’t he?He’d waited for his turn to spend with his daughter.He’d not even had a fit when she said that she was getting married.A husband working would give her more free time to hang out with him.Howard had thought that Ivan would be manipulative enough for him to get him to do what he wanted.This wasn’t turning out the way that he wanted it to, and he was going to have to show them both that he was the one with the money and that what he said was the way things were going to go.No more of this napping because she felt tired.He was tired all the time trying to be the man that she wanted around, and look where it had gotten him.Nowhere.Just on the outsideof her life now that her mother was gone.
He should have killed her when he had the chance.Debra had sucked him dry to the point where he’d had to go back to working full-time just so that he could have disposable income when he needed it.Not that he didn’t have enough money to do what he wanted, but it was the principle of the thing.She’d been demanding, and he’d fallen for her lies.
She’d lied to him about a lot of things about his daughter.First and foremost was the fact that he’d be able to see her when he wanted.Then she’d changed her mind and had said that she didn’t want her in his life.That little tidbit had been put in the contract without his knowledge.He should have known better than to give her the say-so over the contract that he’d had with her.It wasn’t until Debra had nearly killed his daughter that he’d figured out that he was to have nothing to do with her so long as she never asked about him.Damn it, he’d had to fire a good attorney who had worked for him for years when that had been told to him.He should have killed him as well.
Howard thought about all the people that he’d had to kill over his lifetime.It had gotten him to be a wealthy man, of course, but it had come at the cost of blood on his hands.To think that he’d been acting like a good man all these years, and it had gotten him nothing.Not even a good daughter that would see to his needs.What burr was up her ass about doing what he’d wanted her to do?He asked himself that question daily since he’d been able to be a part of her life.Damn it, but he hated his kids.Even his firstborn would have nothing to do with him once he cut them off from his life.
It had been easier than he thought it should have been to tell them that he wanted nothing to do with them.After divorcing their mother, they didn’t have much to do with him in the first place.Then, when he’d told them that he was cutting them out of the will as well, they just smiled and walked away.Like they knew something that he didn’t.But in all these years, none of them, not a single one of them, had contacted him for money.He knew, too, that they were struggling, and it did his heart good to know that.But they didn’t come running to him for a single penny, and that had pissed him off as well.
Howard had wished that he’d never been married.But his father had told him if he didn’t marry and have children for him to bounce on his knee before he died, then he’d get nothing of the estate.Marrying the first woman who said yes, he regretted it since the day she said yes.If not for the fact that he needed someone to run his empire, he’d not have a thing to do with Serenity.Women were the ruination of the world as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t care who knew it.
He’d been pampering his daughter long enough.It had made him ill to act like a loving father to her when all he wanted was for her to take over running his companies.But today proved that she was more like all the women he knew than anything.
“A nap.It’s the middle of the day.Who takes naps anyway?”He couldn’t believe that that man had kept him from going into the house that he’d paid for.“Not really, but if I’d had my way, Robert wouldn’t have had a thing to do with my daughter.But at the time, it was all I could do to see her thanks to her mother.”
Lying down in the bed so that his head would stop pounding, he decided that he needed something for it.Calling down at the desk, he asked for a doctor to come and see him, and they told him that there was only one doctor who did house calls.For enough money, they’d all god damned make house calls if he wanted.But he played nice again, and after hanging up the phone, he went to the bathroom to throw up.It was mostly bile and blood, but he was used to that.He’d have to play nice for a while, or he’d be back in the hospital, where they’d tell him that he had to control his blood pressure or he’d die.
“Like they know when a person is going to die from a headache.”His belly was upset, too, and a doctor at one time told him that he had an ulcer.They’d wanted to take it out, or at least do surgery on it, but he’d have to be laid up for a while, and that wasn’t good for him.“It would be like taking a nap during the day.Damn it.”
Lying back down, waiting for the doctor, he told himself that he could get over this.However, the longer he laid there, the sicker he got.It wasn’t until he was at the toilet again that he realized thathis belly was really upset and that there was more blood than bile in his vomit.This couldn’t be good, he told himself.
The doctor showed up just as he was contemplating calling an ambulance.Being nice to the man—it was a small town, and things got around quickly about him being a bastard—but he was ill, and he wanted some relief.
“You need to be put on some medication, or this is going to kill you.You said that you’ve had an ulcer all your life?”He told him that it was just a way for the doctors to make some money off of them.“Well, I’d say it would have been money well spent.I’m going to call an ambulance for you so that we can get some fluids into you.You’re not well, and your belly is only going to get worse from here on out.”
He didn’t have it in him to argue with the man.He really wasn’t feeling well and was worried that he’d been too nice for too long.That’s what made him ill.Trying to appease his daughter so that she’d do what he wanted.Well, no more.He was going to be Howard the way that he wanted, and damn her sensibilities.Women were too delicate most of the time, and he hated that he’d have to be nice to them to get what he wanted.
By the time the ambulance had arrived, he was sick again.The doctor had insisted on seeing what he threw up from his belly, and that worried him all the more.It was just blood.His body was making more of it even as he threw it up.Everyone knew that.But the worried look on his face had him cooperating with the people from the hospital’s ambulance service more than he thought he should have.He was off to the hospital as quickly as he’d ever been.
He thought about calling his daughter as he was being set up in a room.They were putting sticky tabs on his chest and running a test that way.He didn’t know what it was called, nor did he care, but so long as they kept giving him something for the pain, he’d do just about anything that they wanted.
He was being run through a donut-shaped machine when the pain started to come back.True to their words, they had told him that he’d not suffer needlessly; he was given something more for the pain.As he was being drugged up, he thought that he could get some sympathy from his daughter and her dumbass husband when they told him that he was going to need surgery.After that, it was a blur of activity to get him prepped so that they could cut him open to see what sort of damage he’d done to himself by being nice.
While he didn’t know what they were going to do to him, he agreed that they’d cut him open.When he was taken to surgery, they told him that they’d give him something to knock him out, and that was all he remembered.
Waking up once, he was told that things went well and that he should be in the mend.He didn’t have it in him to ask what they were talking about, but he closed his eyes again.Things were too much for him to stay awake, so he let the drugs take him under until he could think.Howard didn’t know what they were giving him, but he’d have to find out and invest in it.It was the best thing that he’d ever had when he’d been ill with his belly.
