He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “Too late to take it back now, sweetheart. That night already happened.”
“Oh, believe me, if I could go back in time and undo every choice I made that night, I absolutely would. And not only because it cost me a job, but because your lackluster performance is so not worth the regret.”
The smirk he gave me just then told me he was aware I was lying my ass off. It was so arrogant, so self-satisfied, that I wanted to slap it right off his perfectly chiseled, unfairly handsome face. “Yeah? The scratch marks you left on my back and the noise complaint I got the following morning don’t really say lackluster to me.”
I had to get out of there before my anger exploded and my skull did an impression of a boiling tea kettle with steam coming out of my ears. Full of indignation, I whipped around on my heel only to jerk to a stop when I saw the girl hovering in the doorway.
“Hi,” I squeaked, unaware that we’d had a lurker, especially one who appeared so young. It was harder to gage her actual age, what with the raccoon thick eyeliner she had rimming her eyes, but her skin was still dewy, free of any lines or blemishes. The long, lanky legs, encased in shredded fishnets and denim shorts and attached to somewhat rounded hips spoke to a girl’s body developing into a woman’s, so she had to be in her pre or early teens. Which meant I hoped to hell she hadn’t overheard anything that had just been said. I couldn’t imagine the kind if long lasting psychological damage it could do to a kid to hear about her father’s sex life, I didn’t want any hand in the years of therapy that would might require.
Her eyes—I thought they might be blue, but it was hard to tell with that heavy-handed makeup—darted over my shoulder to the man behind me, disregarding me all together. “I thought I heard yelling when I was walking up.” Well, it seemed she’d missed the sex talk, at least. Thank God for small miracles.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about, kiddo. How was school?”
“It was school,” she answered with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish that had been rotting on the beach for at least a week. She gave me another glance, an incredulous once-over. “Who’s she?”
I opened my mouth to introduce myself, only to be rudely interrupted. “This is Luna Copeland, the woman your grandmother recommended I interview. Luna, this is my daughter, Evan.”
“Not his real daughter,” she established.
“For Christ’s sake. Not this again,” Nate grunted, pinching the bridge of his nose. “An adopted daughter is just as real as a biological daughter.”
The girl shrugged. “Whatever.”
Deciding to ignore the parent/child squabble building in front of my very eyes, I took a step closer and held out my hand. “Hi, Evan. It’s nice to meet you.”
She looked at my hand, then back to my face, hers a blank canvas that gave absolutely nothing away. “I got homework.” With that decree, she hooked her thumbs through the straps of the backpack on her shoulders and moved right past me like I wasn’t even standing there. She did the same to Nate, grabbing an apple from the bowl on the counter of the break area before trundling up the stairs on heavy, combat boot-clad feet.
“She’s a real ray of sunshine,” I deadpanned.
Nate let out a sigh I’d heard from Cheyanne more than once when Renee was being less than the perfect angel she was ninety-nine point nine percent of the time and was pushing her mommy’s nerves. The very sigh that had miraculously disappeared the moment her man Trent came into her and Renee’s life and gladly took on half the load. It was the sigh of an overwhelmed and exhausted single parent. It was also not my damn problem. Not after he'd been such an overwhelming dickbag.
“I’m told it’s a phase,” he said in a tone that was equally conversational and exhausted. “But I’m not so sure about that.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that,” I snarked. “Also, go to hell.”
I whipped around, determined to hold my shit together until I got out of there. And as soon as I locked myself in my car, I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, threw my head back, and screamed my frustration into the void until I went hoarse.