Take This Regret (21 page)

“Yes, I’m here to pick up Lizzie Ayers.” Her face lit in recognition. “Oh, yes, we were told to expect you.” She thumbed through a stack of files on her desk and produced a folder with Lizzie’s name on the tab.

She pul ed a sheet from it, passed it across to me, and set a pen on top of it. “I just need you to fil this out, and I need your driver’s license for verification.” Most of the form had been fil ed out by Elizabeth, her distinct handwriting adding me to the list of people authorized to pick Lizzie up from school. There was only a smal section where I needed to add my personal information.

My heart palpitated as I realized the huge leap of faith Elizabeth had taken in me.

I now had control of signing my daughter in and out of school.

With a shaky hand, I added the information and passed the form back to the receptionist along with my license.

She looked it over, put up a finger, and said, “Just a minute.”

She made a photocopy, added it to the file, and showed me where to sign out my daughter. Then she led me down the hal to Lizzie’s classroom.

“Daddy!” Lizzie spotted me the second we walked through the door and ran across the room with outstretched arms.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I picked her up and kissed her on the forehead, rocking her as I held her to my chest. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Daddy.”

“Come on, let’s get your things.”

Lizzie showed me her cubby stuffed with her day’s work, proud as she presented me with a picture she’d painted. Although the picture had been drawn with the crudeness of the hand of a five-year-old, the two adults and one child standing hand-in-hand, one with yel ow and two with black hair, made it clear who she’d drawn.

“This is beautiful, Lizzie.”
So beautiful.

I helped her wriggle her backpack over the sling she stil wore on her arm and then took her good hand and led her out.

“Where to, Lizzie?” I looked at her through the rearview mirror where she was buckled in her booster in the backseat of my car.

“I want pizza!”

Then pizza it was.

Soon we were seated at a round table for two at the smal pizza parlor I’d looked up on my phone. It was the kind of place where the owner cooked in the back while he yel ed orders to his employees up front, a place where a person could order pizza by the slice and sit at tables covered in red and white checked cloths, a place where the intoxicating smel of fresh-baked dough hung in the air.

Lizzie sat on her knees, sipping a clear, bubbly soda through a straw, the two of us conversing about our day.

She told me of the fight between two little boys on the playground, her voice disapproving as she described how they had to sit in time out for the
whole
recess.

I chuckled and then told her about the board meeting I’d had to sit through the entire morning, leaving out al the boring details and tel ing her how I’d spent the entire time gazing out on the sailboats on the water while thinking of only her.

The server arrived with our food and refil ed our drinks.

The slices of pizza were huge and dripping with grease, and I convinced Lizzie to al ow me to cut it into pieces so she could eat it with a fork rather than trying to balance it with her one good hand.

“Thank-you, Daddy,” she said with a soft expression of appreciation on her face, as I set her plate back in front of her and handed her a fork.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” I smiled as she speared a piece of her cheese pizza and popped it into her mouth. Only then did I turn to wrestle the huge piece in front of me.

We ate in peace for a couple of minutes while I contemplated the best way to bring up a discussion I was certain would be one of the hardest of my life, but one I couldn’t put off any longer.

“Lizzie, honey?”

Grinning, she looked up from her plate and across the table at me.

“Are you happy Daddy’s here . . . now?” Real y, I knew what she would say. I just didn’t know a better way to break into the conversation.

She nodded as she took another bite. “Uh-huh.”

“Did your mom ever talk to you about why I wasn’t with you when you were younger?”

She shrugged one shoulder as if it didn’t matter at al .

“You didn’t want me.”

I wanted to pass out from the dizzying pain her answer brought me. Swal owing the lump in my throat, I held onto the table in front of me, forcing myself to speak. “Lizzie, I’m so sorry.” Even if it hadn’t always been the case, even if I’d spent the first five years of her life wondering about her, longing for her, there
had
been a day I’d believed
this
child would ruin my life.

“It’s okay, Daddy.”

There was nothing
okay
about what I’d done, but I accepted it as her way of tel ing me she’d already forgiven me.

I leaned heavily against the table, lowering myself so I could look up at my child’s face. “I need you to know, Lizzie, that as long as I live I wil
never
leave you again. Do you understand?”

She smiled a simple smile, one of sincerity and trust. “I know that, Daddy.” She grinned and asked if she could have another soda.

It was just after three when I pul ed into the spot with my name engraved on a silver plaque in the parking garage of my building. I jammed the up button several times, wil ing the elevator to hurry. I’d been due for another round of board meetings at three o’clock. After spending the hour after lunch at a nearby park, I’d dropped Lizzie off at the smal , one-level house Natalie and Matthew shared. With a smile, Natalie had invited me in. She’d enveloped me in an encouraging embrace when I explained I had to get back to the office.

What felt like five minutes passed, which in reality was only about thirty seconds, before the elevator doors slid open. I breathed a sigh of relief when I stepped out onto our floor a minute later, rushing to my office to grab the files I needed for the meeting.

I nearly tripped over my feet when I found my father sitting at my desk, his face twisted in disapproval. “So very nice of you to show up, Christian.”

Recovering from my surprise, I shook my head and crossed the room to find the paperwork. “Nice of you to let me know you were coming into town,” I threw back at him.

Standing at the front of my desk facing my father, I rummaged through the files, grabbed what I needed, and shoved them into my briefcase.

“I just thought I’d pop in and see how things were coming along here.” He waved his hand around the room.

“They’re coming just
fine
.” He was already wel aware of this. Sure, we’d had a few snags in the beginning but nothing that wouldn’t have been expected.

“Doesn’t look that way to me.” I stil ed my frenzied activity and stared down at the man sitting in my chair, staring back at me, his dark eyes gleaming with contention.

“Care to tel me why I’ve been sitting in this very spot for . . .

oh . . .”—he glanced at the Cartier around his wrist—“the last three hours while you were nowhere to be found?” I knew my father expected me to live my life the same way as he, tied to the office with concern for nothing but the elevated title he’d given me.

I refused.

“I was with my daughter. Do you have a problem with that?”

He looked as if I’d just smashed a paperweight against the side of his head, reeling with the blow I’d struck him with.

The shock was quick to morph into fury. He jumped up, his palms pressed flat on the desk. “You hooked back up with that money-hungry little whore? Are you real y that stupid, Christian?”

The briefcase I held smashed against the wal , glass shattering on the impact, frames fal ing to the floor.

I’d just told the asshole he had a granddaughter, and instead of thinking to ask her name, he thought of money?

I couldn’t stand to look at the pathetic man in front of me—his black hair salt and peppered around his ears, only worn that way because he believed it gave him a look of distinction—couldn’t stand to watch him trembling with rage over what I knew was his embarrassment over my bastard child.

I hated him for it.

With a shaking hand, I pul ed my wal et from my back pocket and dug out the smal picture of Lizzie I kept there. I slammed it down on the desk in front of him and made a decision I was sure I would never regret. “You can count that as my resignation.”

I had no idea what I believed anymore, where I stood. A door had been opened, a line crossed, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. I knew I’d let it happen, had been a partner to it, had even pushed for it. How easy it would have been to cal my mother or my older sister when Matthew’s phone had gone to voicemail.

But no, I’d cal ed Christian.

In the time it had taken him to drive to our house, I’d agonized over that decision, what kind of mistake I was making, and its ultimate effect on my daughter. Did I stil believe he would harm her?

Then when he’d knelt before her, his worry and tenderness enough to engulf us both, enough to chase away my baby’s fears and assuage the panic pounding against my chest, I’d thought,
No. He never would.

It wasn’t difficult to trace it back to its origin, to the moment I’d sat beside Claire and she’d made me question everything I’d held onto for so long, everything I thought I understood.

I tensed when a too intimate hand ran down my upper arm and rested on the smal of my back. “Hey, Elizabeth, Anita asked me to finish up for her today. Do you need any help with anything?” Scott leaned over my shoulder and looked at my computer screen. He was so close I could feel his breath against my neck.

I shrank forward, the movement minute. With mouse in hand, I clicked through the daily closing procedures, brought up my reports for the day, and pressed print. “I’m just finishing up here.” I handed him the smal stack of papers, ending drawer, and key. “Here you go.” Scott was my friend, and I smiled at him in a way to indicate that was the only thing he was. His green eyes glimmered with misunderstanding. He’d been bold of late, his touch no longer a hint of desire, but overt want. He examined the documents for what seemed like minutes when it should have only taken seconds—stal ing.

Shifting my feet, I tried to remain patient under his scrutiny of both my work and my body while he stood inappropriately close. Al I wanted to do was rush out, grab my phone, dial Natalie, and ask her how the day had gone.

Today had been Christian’s first day to pick Lizzie up from school.

“Looks good, Elizabeth,” Scott said as he nodded and took a step back, stil lingering.

“Great.” I glanced around, hoping for an easy escape.

“So, uh . . .” He looked back at the papers in his hands before looking back at me. “Do you have any plans Friday night?”

I grimaced, wishing he would stop continual y putting me in this position, the one where I had to let him down. He was starting to make things uncomfortable between us.

“Scott . . .” I sighed and looked away, pushing my bangs from my face in exasperation.

“Elizabeth,” he pled low as a whisper. “I’m tired of waiting.” His dipped his eyes, searched my face. “Please, just . . . try.”

“I can’t.”

His voice raised a fraction in frustration. “Why not?”

“Please, Scott, you’re my friend.”
Don’t ruin that
, I wanted to beg.

He stepped back and huffed before he turned and left me staring at his back as he stalked away and into the break room.

I placed my hands flat against my counter, sighed, and flipped off my computer monitor while I wondered why I couldn’t force myself to say yes. It was
just
dinner. Why did it have to be such a big deal?

In the break room, I gathered my things from my locker and powered my phone, anxious to be in the privacy of my car so I could make the cal . Tension fil ed the room, radiating from Scott as he trained his attention ahead, brooding as he refused to look my way. Selina offered a brooding as he refused to look my way. Selina offered a smal understanding smile, a sympathetic shrug.

“Night everyone,” I cal ed as I slung my purse over my shoulder and rushed from the room, through the lobby, and out into the cool evening air, the sky grey with overcast. I breathed it in and wondered when things had become so complicated. Walking along the side of the building, I studied my feet, counted my steps, and tried not to think of Christian and his pain that had echoed through my house, cal ed to me, almost caused me to cave.