“Christ.” Damien rubbed his face and took a deep breath. He was going to have to kick some ass, and he preferred to do that in the confines of his office,notin the back seat of a taxi.
What a day.
Casting dreams of his Fijian holiday aside, Damien cracked his knuckles, hit reply on Geller’s email, and got back to work.
2
Matthew
The tablet Matthew held high over his head slipped from his fingers and slapped him in the face. Startled, he gasped and flailed, but the damage had been done—his nose pulsed from the agonizing pain of good technology gone bad. As if that weren’t embarrassing enough, Matthew’s almost four-year-old daughter, Emily, giggled at his misfortune. Her voice was thin and bright as it came through the tablet’s tiny speaker, and despite the pain of the throbbing protrusion that was now his nose, the sound of it brought a smile to Matthew’s face. Nothing in the world touched his heart like the sound of her voice.
“It attacked you, Daddy!”
“It did.” Matthew tipped the tablet onto his bed and rolled onto his stomach so he was looking down at the screen. It wasn’t the most flattering angle, but the Wi-Fi signal was stronger than it’d been when he’d been holding it over his head, so he kept it there. The video feed, which had frozen when Emily had been mid-sneeze, struggled to catch up, speeding through at least a minute’s worth of footage in the span of a few seconds. By the time the video was synced with real time footage, Emily had vanished from the frame. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“I’m here, Daddy,” Emily called from elsewhere in the room. “Grammie brought me a water and said I haveta go to bed. Do I haveta go to bed? I wanna stay and talk with you.”
“If Grammie says you have to do something, then you have to do it.” Matthew stretched his legs, dug his toes into the waffle weave sheets covering his bed, and plucked at them. The ridges were fun to manipulate while still somehow feeling indulgent. The sheets he slept beneath back home weren’t half as nice as the ones at this resort. “Remember that it’s Grammie’s house, so it’s Grammie’s rules. What she says goes.”
Emily popped back into view of the webcam and puffed up her cheeks. She looked, for a moment, like an exceptionally angry chipmunk. Matthew held back a laugh. If he let out even a single peep, his little chipmunk would go nuts. For the most part, Emily was a dream, but when she got upset, she tended to fly off the rail.
“Besides, do you remember what’s special about tomorrow morning?” While Matthew spoke, Emily’s face turned red. “Tomorrow morning, as soon as you wake up, you get to call me to wish me goodnight, just like I’m wishing you goodnight right now.”
Emily narrowed her eyes. Her tiny shoulders shook. Any second now, she’d explode.
From somewhere off-screen, a woman laughed. “You’re gonna fly away if you puff up those cheeks of yours any bigger.” Clarissa, Emily’s great-grandmother through marriage, stepped into the shot. She held a see-through green sippy cup in one hand, and Emily’s security blanket, GeeGee, in the other. In a slow and obvious way, Clarissa extended her finger and pushed it into Emily’s inflated cheek. With nowhere left to go, the air inside of it buzzed past Emily’s lips. Emily deflated like a popped balloon. “There you go. Much better.”
“Grammie!” Emily huffed. She grabbed GeeGee and tugged it close to her chest, obscuring the cartoon princesses printed on her nightgown. “Not fair!”
“Nope. It’s not fair at all, and I know it. I’m a big meanie.” Clarissa kissed the top of Emily’s head, then turned her attention to the screen. “Why don’t we say goodnight to Daddy so he can get on with his day, hmm?”
“I wanna stay up to talk to him!”
“The sooner you get in bed, the sooner you can wake up and talk to him again.” Clarissa draped GeeGee over Emily’s head, blocking her from view. Emily grumbled and windmilled her arms, which did nothing to help get GeeGee off her head, but was undeniably adorable. Not for the first time since he’d boarded the plane headed to Fiji, Matthew’s heart ached from her absence.
At last, Emily pulled GeeGee off her head. Some of her long, dark hair fell over her eyes. Clarissa swept it back with an affectionate hand, then gave Emily the sippy cup, which she reluctantly accepted.
“I gotta go to bed,” Emily huffed. She leaned toward the webcam, her hands braced on the desk Clarissa’s laptop was situated on. “Goodnight, Daddy. I love you thiiiiiis much.”
Like she did every night, Emily stretched her arms out as far as she could, then twirled.
“And I love you even more,” Matthew replied, smiling from his soul. “Goodnight, Emily. Sweet dreams. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night, Daddy!”
“Night, Daddy,” Clarissa concluded. She curled her fingers to wave him goodbye, then ended the call.
Faced with a blank screen, Matthew fell sideways onto the bed and emptied his lungs in a single, satisfying sigh. It was the first time he’d been apart from his daughter in the four years since she’d been born, and while she was handling the distance like a champ, guilt gripped Matthew and refused to let him go. What kind of a father was he, flying away to a tropical paradise and leaving his daughter behind? She needed him. It didn’t matter that the trip was a gift from his father, who’d paid Matthew’s way in celebration of the fact that Matthew had decided to go back to school—it was selfish, unnecessarily indulgent, and it made Matthew question the kind of man he was growing into.
“Are you in there, Matthew?” came his father’s voice from outside his cabin door.
Matthew lifted his head. “Yeah.”
“You’re not planning on going to sleep, are you?”
“No.” Sleepwastempting, but it hadn’t been Matthew’s intention. According to his internal clock, it was around seven in the evening Aurora time, but here in Fiji, it was barely noon. They’d been in the air and waiting for connecting flights for over twenty-four hours prior to that, then ferried over from Viti Levu island to reach their secluded resort. If he ever wanted to get over his jetlag, he was going to have to suck it up and stay awake… which meant he should probably get out of bed, where sleep was all too tempting.
“My friends and I are heading to the wharf to meet another friend of ours, then we’re going to Bakatu’s Grill for lunch. You’re welcome to join us.”
