A wealth of love filled his voice as he spoke, as well as that ever present shadow of pain he carried. He had loved her mother, even after her death. So much so that he had never considered remarrying. He didn’t even date.
“Mom never lied to you.” Sheila shook her head, barely restraining her smile. Because he was right. Her mother was very good at evasion, though, not lying. And her father had always known when she was evading.
“There’s no difference between an evasion and a lie,” he warned her as though reading her thoughts. He simply knew her that well.
“Of course there is.” She laughed back at him. “When you don’t want to lie to someone, you evade. It’s perfectly acceptable.” That way they couldn’t get angry or accuse you of deceit.
His brow arched. “So you’re not lying, you’re evading?”
He had no idea.
“You’re funny.” This time, she did roll her eyes. “I’m not evading either,” she promised him. “I’m trying to get this mountain of paperwork finished.”
“No, dear child, you’re flat-out lying.”
And at that point, she had to drop her eyes, because he was right, she was lying through her teeth and she hated it.
“My business,” she told him firmly.
He watched her for long, silent moments.
“Hmm, that means it’s a man,” he guessed.
“It means it’s my business and I prefer not discuss it with you or anyone else, Captain,” she informed him.
Her father could be like a dog with a bone. She never appreciated being the bone. It was highly uncomfortable.
He glared at her again. “Then that means it’s a man I’d know.”
There was the displeasure. How the hell had he known?
Duh! He knew everyone she knew. There was no way to be wrong.
“No, Dad, it means someone you know might know him, and I’d prefer he be unaware of the fact that I’m displeased with him.”
Not exactly a lie, not exactly the truth either.
At that point, he frowned again in confusion. “But dear, how else is your young man supposed to make the situation right and win your heart if he doesn’t know why you’re upset?”
Sheila leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and stared back at him firmly. “Dad, I don’t want him to make anything right and I definitely don’t want anyone else to tell him if he’s done something to upset me. I prefer to take care of these things myself.”
Her father reached up and scratched at his weathered cheek, and Sheila could see that he had no idea what to make of his daughter. He often lamented that she refused to fall in love and marry fast to suit him, because he had always insisted on probing into her dates’ lives.
It wasn’t a refusal to love, she knew how to love, it was simply a refusal to beg or to play the games she watched so many other women play. Those relationships rarely worked, she had found. It had left her friends and acquaintances with broken hearts and disillusioned lives. If a woman had to beg, plead, or hint at a need for commitment from a man, then she didn’t need that man.
She didn’t want that. She wanted to be like her mother. She wanted to marry once and marry a man that she not only loved, but one that loved her just as much. She didn’t want to guilt Casey into loving her. Where would the satisfaction be in that?
Yet Casey had been convinced she was playing games instead.
“So, who is he?” her father asked, his tone indicating a demand for an answer.
Sheila shook her head. “Sorry, Dad, but I don’t need your help in this. I’ll take care of it myself. I’m rather good at that now.”
She had only been young and dumb once.
His frown deepened as concern filled his eyes. “I promise to say nothing to anyone,” he promised her. A huge concession from him.
“Sorry, Dad, it’s not going to happen.” She shook her head slowly as amusement tugged at her lips. “I know better than to tell you. You like trying to fix my life too much. And I don’t need this fixed.” At least, not by her father. There was nothing her father could do anyway, except make the situation worse.
He was a busybody. A loving one. A caring one. He would never do anything to hurt her. But she knew him too well. If he knew who her lover was, he would no doubt make it an order that Casey find a way to fix it.
“So why won’t you let him fix it? Tell me that and I’ll let it go,” he said gently. “Otherwise, you know it will drive me crazy.” Because he was her father and he felt it was his place to fix her problems. She believed differently, but she could tell him the least of what he wanted to know.
“Because, if he loved me, then he would love me enough to know what to do, Dad,” she said somberly. “Like you knew with Mom.”
And how many times had her father told her how he’d known the second he met her mother what she would be to him? That he had loved her from the moment he had met her and had been willing to die for her if he could have?
She wanted that kind of love as well.
Her father shook his head sadly. “Sheila, your mother led me on a merry chase. I didn’t say I recognized the emotion in that first moment. It was only later I realized what I was feeling. No man that I know of recognizes love for what it is until his absolutely forced to do so.”
“So will he, if that’s what he feels,”
