“Oh, just with the usual sly digs.” Whatever the digs were, they’d knocked her for a loop, he could hear it in her voice. “I’ll try them tomorrow, promise.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the cookies, Livvy. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Don’t be. I’ll be fine. Just need a good night’s sleep.”
Tension crept up his spine, and Connor rubbed at the back of his neck. “Stuart is always trying to get one over you, but you don’t usually let it get to you. What was different this time?” She went quiet for a few beats, and his heart jumped into his mouth. “It was about me, wasn’t it? He saw the cookies and you were forced to admit you were dating the guy you’d said was the son of a friend.”
“I wasn’t forced to admit anything,” she said. “I chose to tell him.”
“And now you’re regretting it.”
“No.” Another beat of excruciating silence. “But it gave him an opening to tell me he was dating the daughter of one of Simon’s close friends. It doesn’t matter what I do, he has all the contacts, the networks. Plus...” Another sigh, this one sounding weary. “It doesn’t matter, that was the gist of it.”
“What else?” he pressed. “I don’t want my feelings spared, Livvy. I want the truth so I can deal with it.”
“Fine. He also said some highly sexist crap about me being a stepmother and having to take time off to do school runs. A short while later, Simon came round to warn me not to lose my edge.”
Fuck. “That’s...” He didn’t even have the words, he was so angry.
“Appalling? Outrageous? Unbelievably archaic?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize.”
“To be clear, I’m not apologizing for having a daughter. But I hate that Stuart believes he can use Ellie to get one over on you.” This waswhy she didn’t want to be a mum. Finally, he thought he understood. If you wanted something as fiercely as she did this job, if it was your whole focus, your dream, you didn’t let anything get in the way.
The realization caused a twinge of sadness. He hadn’t lied, he didn’t need another child, but regardless of whether he was in the picture, Olivia would have made one hell of a mum.
“I won’t let Stuart win.” Her voice took him out of his thoughts. “Tomorrow I’ll find my mojo again. Tonight, I just feel like a bit of ‘I hate sexist, misogynistic men’wallowing.”
“Dad!” His daughter shouted. “I’m ready for my story.”
Connor exhaled a heavy breath. He felt impotent. His girlfriend might not like it, certainly didn’t know it, but she needed him, and he wasn’t there. “I’ve got to go, Ellie’s calling.”
“Of course. Thanks for phoning. And for the cookies. I really did appreciate them.”
He went through the mechanics of reading with Ellie—they had a deal, one sentence was his, the next hers—but for once, his mind wasn’t on his daughter as he tucked her into bed.
“Dad?”
He gazed down into her sleepy blue eyes. “Sorry, just thinking about something.” He kissed her nose. “If I can get Grandma and Granddad to come over, do you mind if I go see Livvy? I think she could do with a hug.”
Ellie sat up and put her arms around him. “You give the best hugs. Make her better.”
God, he loved his kid. “I’ll try, thank you. And I promise to be here when you wake up.”
His parents were predictably less forgiving than his daughter, and he got it. Getting in the car to spend the evening watching TV in his cramped living room on his tatty sofa? He was bloody lucky they were willing to do it at all.
“Thanks, really,” he told them as he opened the door ten minutes later.
“We’re not doing it for you, we’re doing it for Ellie,” his mum replied sharply. “We don’t want her waking up and finding some stranger downstairs.”
“I wouldn’t do that to her. What’s more, you know that.” He heard Olivia’s voice in his head and stood straighter, his shoulders squared. “I might have been a shit son, but I’m a bloody good dad.”
He waited for them to disagree. When they didn’t, he inclined his head and walked out of the door an inch taller than when he’d let them in.
A forty-five-minute tube ride later, he pressed Olivia’s intercom button. “Hey, it’s me.”
