Not Her Daddy Read online

  “Natalie, I—”

  “No, I don’t want to hear it.” She held her fingers to her temple. “You even assumed my problem was to do with us sleeping together, as if there’s nothing you could possibly imagine going on in my life that is more important than being your little girl.”

  Natalie stared at me. “I can’t believe your first thought when hearing about my brother was to pay for the problem to go away. I thought you were different than that. But I’ll tell you something, Dan—I don’t need a sugar daddy. I could do just fine on my own, and I don’t need you to tie me to you through financial gratitude or whatever.”

  “Natalie, that’s not what I meant at all!” I said, standing up to try and take her hand once more; she recoiled. “I only want to help!”

  “You only want to help in a way that keeps me here!” she fired back. “That’s literally what you said! You’d pay for Dean’s treatment and then I wouldn’t have to leave—as if me leaving this job was the worst thing about my entire problem! Does what I’m going through—what my family’s going through—mean nothing to you? Do you really think I want to stay here pretending to play happy families when my own family is suffering? Especially when you don’t even have it in you to let Wyatt see his mom, when he misses her so desperately.”

  I bristled. “Don’t bring Sandy into this. She’s not in a condition to see Wyatt—”

  “Have you even asked her? Have you talked to Wyatt recently to tell him how his mom is doing?”

  I said nothing, because I hadn’t. I didn’t know what to say to him about his mom. It was too difficult.

  Natalie’s face twisted. “I thought not, because if you did he wouldn’t come crying to my room in the middle of the night asking for his mommy. I should have realized how emotionally stunted you were when you went after a nineteen-year-old girl instead of—”

  “Natalie, that’s not fair and you know it.”

  She stared at me, chest heaving from her upset and her anger. I had no idea what to say. How could I? Natalie’s brother was dying. Clearly she’d been avoiding thinking about that as long as possible, and now she felt guilty.

  I was only making things worse.

  I forced myself to hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, Nat. I didn’t mean to pay for your brother’s treatment in return for you staying with me. It was stupid of me to have said anything that could have been misconstrued as such. You’re not just—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Nat—”

  “Just…stop talking,” she sniffed, wiping away a tear as she made for the front door. “I’m going to go now—my stuff’s in the car already. Tell Wyatt I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye.”

  “Natalie, wait, don’t go!”

  But she ran out of the house before I could stop her, slamming the door of her battered car closed before revving up the engine and driving away before I could do anything about it.

  I couldn’t believe it. My mind was numb. How could something so good have been twisted and destroyed so quickly? In a sentence I had fucked everything up.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, collapsing back onto the couch with my head in my hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  I had messed up the best thing to happen to me in a long time, and I hadn’t even tried to.

  Chapter Ten

  Natalie

  “Nat, honey, lunch is ready!”

  “I think I’ll give it a miss, mom. I’m not hungry.”

  “At least come down and sit at the table! We haven’t seen you all morning!”

  I sighed heavily, feeling guilty. Here was me at home to spend time with my brother, yet I was holed up in my room by myself. I was an awful big sister.

  That didn’t change my loss of appetite. “I’ll come down later!” I yelled. I needed out of the house, I decided, so I slipped on a pair of sneakers, tied up my hair in the most haphazard ponytail known to man, then padded down the stairs as quietly as possible and out the front door. Once outside I considered taking my battered car for a drive, but the weather was too nice to justify it.

  “Walking it is,” I murmured, sliding my hands into my pockets as I made my way down the side walk with no particular destination in mind.

  A few days had passed since I’d left Daniel Farthing’s house. I felt like crap.

  Part of me knew Daniel hadn’t really meant that he would pay off my brother’s medical bills in return for me staying with him. Or, at the very least, he hadn’t meant it callously. But the fact remained that the first thing he thought of after hearing what was going in my family was to throw money at the problem so that I could stay with him.

  He hadn’t thought about my mental well-being. He hadn’t thought about what my family was going through. He hadn’t even asked if I wanted to go home, or at the very least wanted to take a week or two off work to see my family and consider whether I really wanted to quit. No, he’d not considered any of those options at all.

  Daniel might have been the ‘grown up’ in our relationship—or whatever it was—but he had a lot of emotional growing up to do. My heart hurt thinking of Wyatt. I couldn’t believe I left without saying good-bye. I could have kicked myself for leaving him, but…

  My family has to come first. Even if I love Wyatt, he’s not my own kid or my brother.

  It would have been easier to get over my situation if Dan and I hadn’t given in to our desires. I felt guilty about that, too—I had pushed him. Prodded him. Dressed provocatively and left the bathroom door open and given him every possible opportunity to take advantage of me, like I’d wanted.

  There’s something wrong with me, I thought. Why did I want Daniel to treat me like a little girl who needed scolding? Why did I like that? I’d never liked that before. So why…

  Why was I still craving it? Longing for Daniel to punish me for having no manners and for driving him crazy? To feel his hands on me as he teased me into begging for him to be inside me?

  I stopped abruptly where I stood on the sidewalk. It was so not appropriate to get horny in public—especially not thinking about a guy I had to forget about. Especially not when my family was going through so much.

  In truth, Dean was doing better than my mom had made him out to be doing. But I knew where she’d been coming from—he really wasn’t responding to this round of chemo the way he had when he was younger. He’d lost a little too much weight. He kept a baseball cap on to hide his thinning hair. He bruised too easily.

  But he was still eating okay and was intent on being as active as possible. Part of me wondered if he was putting on an act around me, since I wasn’t home much. I didn’t want him to have to do that. If Dean was exhausted or sick or tired I wanted him to feel like he could be those things around me.

  And here was me criticizing Dan for not dealing with his sister’s health properly when I can’t even have an honest conversation with my own brother. What a hypocrite.

  I continued on my walk blindly, not really knowing where I was going, until by change I found myself outside our local bookstore. I’d used to go in all the time as a kid with my mom and Dean but, as I’d grown up and had to focus on my studies, I’d stopped visiting.

  Maybe it was because of that, or maybe it was because I was thinking of Daniel, but I entered the dusty shop before I could stop myself. I milled about in front of the science fiction and fantasy sections, which were my favorite genres as a teenager, then found myself drifting over to the romance section.

  It made me think about Daniel telling me about Farthing Publishing’s erotic romance writer—the one who was making them millions.

  What was his name? Rafe Frank? Rafe—

  Forbes. Rafe Forbes. I caught sight of his books just as I remembered his name, and for good reason. His book covers were sleek and elegant—completely different to the books around them. They were the kind of books that looked good on a shelf when they were all together, and if you didn’t look too closely at their names you might never know what they were about.

  But I did
know what they were about, and I knew which one I was looking for. And, though it was definitely mortifying to buy an erotic romance titled Yes, Daddy from my childhood bookstore, I swallowed my pride and did exactly that…though I didn’t look at the elderly cashier as I did so.

  It was with a nervously beating heart that I returned home, my book wrapped up in a brown paper bag as if it was a porno I was trying to hide from my mom. Well, I suppose it was.

  When Dean caught me trying to creep up to my room he called me out, and I tried not to flinch.

  “Yo, Nat,” he complained, “where’d you go? If I’d known you were going on a walk I would have tagged along.”

  “I’m sorry, Dean. I just needed to clear my head for a little bit.”

  He looked at me strangely. “What’s up, Natalie? You haven’t been the same since you quit your job. Did you end things on bad terms? I’m sorry Mom made you quit—”

  “She didn’t make me quit,” I corrected quickly. I smiled. “I wanted to come home. But…yeah. Things ended badly. I didn’t want them to, and to be honest it was all my fault. But I don’t think I could face Dan—Mr. Farthing—to apologize, so like a mature grown-up I’ve been sulking over it instead.”

  Dean laughed. “Nice and functional. Want to have pizza for dinner and watch Lord of the Rings like we used to when we were kids?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said, genuinely excited by the prospect. But for now…I had a book to read. Rubbing my temples I grimaced slightly. “I think I just need to lie down for a little bit. The sun got to me. But I’ll be fine in a couple hours, then we can pig out. Think we can convince Mom to buy some Ben and Jerry’s?”

  “I’m sure I can work my magic on her.” My brother grinned. “Right, go recover from your brutal sun exposure and prepare for four hours of the best high fantasy cinema every made.”

  “Ah, going for the extended edition, then?”

  “Obviously.”

  Rolling my eyes, I bounded up the stairs and collapsed onto my bed, wrenching my newly-bought book from its paper bag and opening it to the first page before I could think better of my decision.

  Three hours later I’d finished. It wasn’t a hugely long read, but to be honest it hadn’t needed to be. It had served its ultimate purpose—making me horny as hell. And stuck thinking about Dan. I didn’t know why I thought there would have been any other outcome, all things considered.

  What an idiot, I thought. You’re just a giant baby.

  The plot of the book had served up some eerily similar parallels to my relationship with Dan, right down to the male protagonist mistakenly offering the female protagonist money to ‘solve’ all her problems. She’d dealt with his suggestion about as well as I had.

  But, crucially, the two of them worked things out. They talked, and they listened and they fucked and they made up, now with a much deeper understanding of each other.

  And it wasn’t just that. They were fine with how their sex life played out. How they flirted. How they treated each other. Their relationship was theirs and nobody else’s. Having a strange kink didn’t change who they were as people.

  I chuckled. “Why did I ever think it would change me as a person? I really am an idiot.”

  I thought of Daniel, and everything I’d stupidly said to him before I left. I wondered if he’d ever forgive me. But I’d been the one to leave, and if he’d gotten over it then I didn’t want to interfere with his life again. He had a life, after all—I was the one with the freedom to do whatever. In autumn I’d go back to college and continue learning how to be an adult.

  I didn’t like the thought of leaving things the way they were, but it was the grown-up thing to leave the ball in Dan’s court. I’d already disrupted his and Wyatt’s life enough—I wouldn’t force further problems on them.

  No, even if it hurt me, and it made me want to cry, it was all down to Daniel. I glanced at my book. If it was to be believed, it was only a matter of time before he showed up at my door.

  “What a fairytale ending that would be,” I murmured, laughing at the idea of of putting fairy tales and erotic romances together.

  It was what I wanted. I wanted it more than anything.

  But, for now, I had a date with Middle Earth and my nerd of a brother.

  Chapter Eleven

  Daniel

  “Uncle Dan. Uncle Dan? Uncle Da-aaaan!”

  I blinked myself out of my own head. Wyatt stared up at me in annoyance and hurt at me apparently ignoring him. I gave him a tired smile and ruffled his dark hair.

  “Sorry, kiddo.” I pointed at my laptop. “My work has been keeping me busy.”

  He frowned. “But you’re at home. You’re not s’posed to work at home.”

  It was a child’s logic, of course, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. But ever since Natalie had left I’d been taking more and more work home with me—partly because I couldn’t focus enough in the office to get it done and partly to distract me from her obvious absence when I returned to a largely empty house.

  Funny, I don’t think I took work home at all when Natalie was staying here.

  With a satisfying thud I slammed my laptop lid closed. “You know what? You’re right, Wyatt. Work is for work. Not home. What’s up?”

  Wyatt looked at me a little uncertainly. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Of course I won’t laugh. What’s wrong?”

  His bottom lip began to tremble almost immediately. I entered panic mode: what if Wyatt wanted to see his mom, especially after what Natalie had told me? What if he wanted to know what happened to his dad? What if—

  “I miss Natalie.”

  The comment left me stunned. A week had passed since Natalie left and, admittedly to my surprise, Wyatt had taken it okay. Clearly he’d been putting up a front, which left me feeling wretched.

  I swept Wyatt up into my arms and held him tight. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? You don’t have to keep these things to yourself, Wyatt!”

  He began crying in earnest. “But I—I have to be strong. Like you are. For mommy.”

  Oh my god. Natalie had been so on the mark it hurt. I didn’t know how to deal with people in pain at all. And, worst of all—I’d neglected to treat my nephew like the tiny child he was. I’d thought that if I simply didn’t bring up anything tough that everything would be fine.

  How wrong I’d been.

  “Wyatt, kid,” I said, holding him even tighter. “You know your mom is sick, right? Do you have any idea what’s wrong?”

  He stared at me with big, teary eyes and pointed to his head. “She’s—she’s very tired. Her brain is sick.”

  “I—yeah. That’s right. Her head is sick. But she’s working hard on getting better.”

  “I know. She’s my mom. She’s strong like you.”

  I burst out laughing but it sounded more like a cry. “She sure is, Wyatt. Strong like me.”

  “Did Nat-Nat leave because she doesn’t like us anymore?”

  The curveball brought us right back to Wyatt’s original topic of conversation. I smiled at him. “Her brother is sick. She went home to spend some time with him.”

  “Sick like mom?”

  “A little different,” I said, stroking Wyatt’s hair which was so similar to my own. “His blood is sick.”

  “Is he…is he very, very sick?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  “So is Natalie really sad?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then we have to cheer her up.”

  “I—Wyatt, we should let her be with her family.”

  “But aren’t we her family, too?”

  I stared at him. “Are we?”

  Wyatt nodded enthusiastically. “She’s my best friend. I’m going to marry her when I grow up.”

  I snorted in laughter. “Is that so? What if someone else was in love with her? Would you fight for her?”

  “I’d bite them like a T.Rex.”

  “Oh, I better watch out, then.
”

  Wyatt caught onto that surprisingly quickly. “You love Nat-Nat, Uncle Dan?”

  “…yes.”

  “Then we can share her, until I grow up.”

  “Oh we can, can we? Does Natalie not have a say in this?”

  “She already said she’d marry me,” Wyatt said smugly. “I made her promise when we went to the museum.”

  “You’re a little sneak!”

  Wyatt giggled when I tickled him. I wondered where on earth he’d inherited such womanizing ways—my father, perhaps.

  I sighed. “Wyatt, do you want to see your mom? We could go this weekend if you want to.”

  His eyes lit up so much it was unbearable “Can I? Really?”

  “Just so long as you know she might not be…herself. And she might be very sad.”

  Wyatt nodded sagely. “That’s okay. I’m strong.”

  “I know.”

  “Can we go see Natalie too, then?”

  “Wyatt—”

  “We can help her with her brother.”

  The thought gave me pause. My idea of ‘helping’ had been to throw money at the problem. I’d told Natalie that way she could stay with me. Looking back on it no wonder she’d been so insulted—it really had sounded like I thought she’d stay with me instead of spending time with her family just so long as I paid enough.

  What a fucking prick I am.

  Natalie had said her brother needed a bone marrow transplant. I should have focused on that instead of the financial aspect. If I could find a private match for her brother, then…

  She might not take me back but I can at least make things right.

  I plopped Wyatt down on the ground. “Okay, kiddo, we’ll go and see Natalie.”

  He jumped on the spot excitedly. “Really?!”

  “Yep. I just need to make a few calls first, okay? Can you be a good boy for a few hours whilst I do that?”

  “I’ll draw Nat-Nat a picture,” he replied. “Of dragons and dinosaurs fighting.”

  “And why are they fighting?”