Page 282 of The Doctors Will See You Now

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Me: I’m fine, Dad. I’ve got it.

Dad: Are you sure? I think it might be good if you wear that cute pink dress with the white bow.

Me: You mean the same dress I wore at my high school graduation?

Dad: Was it that long ago?

Me: Uh, yeah. And since I’m 29, I’m pretty sure I no longer have that dress.

Dad: What about the purple dress with the ruffly things at the bottom?

Holy hell. Now he was referring to my junior prom dress.

Me: Bye, Dad.

Before he could send back any more texts, I turned my phone off. A daughter could only handle so much of helping her father get ready for a date.

I was also going to be attending my father’s date, as the date for his date’s son—who also happened to be a man I pretty much despised.

Good Lord, tonight is probably going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

“They’ll be here soon,” I told my mom as she paced a tiny two-foot line in front of me, doing her best to wear a hole through the floor of Tavern on Park, the quaint but opulent banquet hall.

My dad and Linda were already out and mingling, and hors d’oeuvres passed every few moments on silver trays. They’d gone all out for their fifteen-year celebration, and I didn’t blame them. Linda and my father were the perfect couple my mom and dad had never been. A yin and yang of sorts, but quiet and loving—two qualities my parents together had never been.

Still, my mom was a woman scorned, even if she knew she wasn’t right for my dad and that he wasn’t right for her. I personally think she’d just wanted to be the person to leave rather than the one to be left. But after nearly two decades, the facts weren’t changing.

“We should have picked them up.”

“Mom, this is New York. Picking people up is nice and all, but it’s about ten times the trouble. They wanted to meet us here. They’ll be here soon.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “I just wanted to shock Linda.”

I nodded. I knew that’s what she wanted.

“Of course, you ruined it anyway.” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes to emphasize how unhappy with me she was.

“Mom, I had to tell Linda we were bringing people. Don’t you want our dates to have chairs to sit in? That’d be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it?”

She clamped her mouth shut and shot lasers out of her eyes—her standard move for knowing I was right but not wanting to admit it. Obviously, I came by my stubbornness naturally.

“But if it makes you feel any better, the additions were so last-minute, the venue is probably making them pay out the nose. They like to have a head count further in advance than this,” I consoled, hoping to diffuse the situation rather than escalate it.

She shrugged. “That does make me feel slightly better, thank you.”

I laughed. “You’re welcome.”

I lifted my eyes from my mother to the door, and all laughter cut off abruptly as the air left my lungs.

Holy shit. Struggling to compose myself, I patted at the button of my suit coat and then lifted my hands to straighten my already straight tie. My mom noticed my fumbling and turned to look.

With soft curled hair, tucked behind one ear, and plum-red lips, Harlow was stunning. Her eyes skated up from the ground to meet mine and caught.

I didn’t know exactly what I looked like, but I knew it wasn’t collected. Transfixed, maybe. The sleek, tanned skin of a stiletto-tipped leg winked at me from the thigh-high split in her long black dress, and the deep V in the front went nearly to her navel. And still, somehow, I’d never seen a more classically beautiful woman. She didn’t look cheap or like she was trying too hard.

She looked goddamn breathtaking.