The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max) novel Chapter 76

Lark watched as her father slowly turned to face Charlotte and picked her fingers off his forearm with disgust. She wondered how her father was going to deal with the woman who was playing the victim. She still couldn’t see what it was which ever attracted her father to this woman. She seemed like a poisoned viper from the inside out.

“Do not touch me.” His tone was cryptic as he stepped backwards.

“Grady, you look good. I mean bald but good.”

Lark wondered why her father being bald was so shocking. She’d seen plenty of photos of her dad with hair when he was younger, and he looked way better with no hair.

Her father scowled at Charlotte, “and you smell like body odor and are in desperate need of a shower,” Grady shot back.” Now the pleasantries are out of the way, do you want to know what is happening with Gracie or not?”

“She needs surgery and it’s risky.” Charlotte said with a shrug. “Nothing I can do about it.”

His mouth opened and closed, and he inhaled sharply “Then why are you still here?”

“I want to talk.” Charlotte tried to step closer again, but he stepped backwards.

“What do you want?”

“You called me here.” She said batting her lashes. “Were you hoping to reconnect?”

“No, actually I didn’t call you here. The hospital’s legal team felt it was important you were here in the event Gracie passed away. My family paid your plane ticket because we thought, maybe there might be a sliver of decency in your body which would be concerned for her.” He looked her over, “and reconnect is the last thing I would ever do with you. You’re vile.”

“You sound like Sawyer,” she gave a bitter grin which exposed her nasty teeth.

Lark was sure she could smell the woman’s breath from across the room.

“Sawyer was a smart man, for the most part.”

“Is Sawyer really dead?”

“Yes.”

“He owes me alimony.”

“Actually, he and I discussed at length how he doesn’t owe you shit.” Grady smirked at her somehow colder than Lark ever saw him before. He wasn’t even lawyer mode. Her father was in ‘f**k around and find out’ mode and Charlotte was about to find out how brutal her dad could be. “In fact, he told me how he paid you out a lump sum when Gracie was twelve for you to sign over your rights and how you got remarried three years after you moved to Florida. The marriage lasted less than six months but it was long enough for Sawyer not to need to pay you any further alimony. The judge sided with him because he gained full custody of Gracie, and you were not paying him anything in child support. He didn’t owe you a thing.”

“I,” she stammered, “you really reconnected with him?”

“I did. The biggest mistake he ever made is the woman standing in front of me. You know,” Grady cleared his throat, “in high school and college you were a sweet, kind-hearted woman everyone loved. Then you started drinking. I tried to help you but the more I helped, the more you called me a nag. You and Sawyer would close the bars down while I was working long hours trying to make a life for us. Alcohol changed you, Charlotte. It made you mean, bitter and cold. Sawyer the moment he realized he was going to be a dad, changed his life and turned it around. He did everything for Gracie. Everything. I will never be able to take his place in her life,” he wiped a tear off his cheek as he thought of the man, he’d reconnected with over the past several days, “but I am sure as hell going to make sure everything he did wasn’t in vain. I will be here with Gracie. I might not have been with her when she was born, but if she passes away, I’ll be right here, standing in for her dad.”

“Sawyer was a liar.” Charlotte hissed. “The minute you walked out on us, and I had the miscarriage, he dumped me. He was a cold bastard and he just walked away. When I found out I still carried the other baby in my belly, I considered an abortion. He begged me to keep the baby. My father was done with me because I was such an embarrassment,” she sneered, “and so he fudged the DNA Sawyer demanded to make sure I was his problem and not my dad’s. Sawyer would work hours upon hours and leave me home all alone with a crying baby. It was his fault I got so messed up on drugs and alcohol. I couldn’t cope with being alone all the time!”

“He was building a life for his child.”

“I hated him.”

“He hated you too,” Grady said bluntly.

Lark watched as her mother suddenly stood up and put her hand on her father’s forearm.

“Grady, it’s enough. This isn’t helping anyone. This isn’t going to bring Sawyer back. It’s not going to help Gracie in surgery. We need to clear all this negative energy from this room and focus on being positive, for her, for your daughter. For yours and Sawyer’s daughter,” Everly cupped his cheek.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Everly. I’m angry and it’s not fair to you and the girls.”

“I know and I’m angry too, but she isn’t worth it.”