What a Woman Gets Read Free Page B

phone number for a second.
    Two.
    Was she
really
going to throw her father’s name around to demand respect? Seriously? Where was her backbone? Her sense of pride? Self-esteem?
    Cassidy set the phone on the counter.
    She couldn’t make that call; she’d be just as bad as her father. Wasn’t that what today’s lunch was all about? To prove to herself that she didn’t need him? That she had her own talent, her own skills, and she didn’t need him and the made-up position at his company to support herself?
    She took a deep breath, not really looking forward to the conversation. It would be a battle. Dad always expected everyone to jump to do his bidding, her included.
    Look where that’d gotten her.
    Cassidy walked into the living room. Okay, so this wasn’t a bad place to be, but while it might be a giant, gorgeous room with the best furniture and view money could buy, a Steinway in the corner, a sound system fit for a Philharmonic, and enough artwork to feed a third world country, it was still just as empty and devoid of warmth and hominess as any of the other top-of-the-world penthouses or hotel rooms or boarding school dorms Dad had put her up in over the years.
    If he’d let her, she could’ve made this place a home. With splashes of color and personal knick-knacks, and that granny-square afghan she’d found at a flea market in college and had kept hidden in the steamer trunk in her closet ever since for the day she’d have a house of her own.
    If she didn’t get this lunch with him, that day was going to be later rather than sooner.
    Something crashed in her bedroom and Mr. Rude cursed. Cassidy bit her lip to keep from smiling. It wasn’t funny, really, but served him right for being so testy. Normally her room was in pristine shape when Sharon showed up, but she’d been more focused on the lunch with her father than the fact that someone new was coming by.
    Titania growled and that
did
elicit a smile from Cassidy. She picked up the teacup-sized dog and nuzzled her topknot. “Hush, Titania. I can’t hear him cursing if you start barking.”
    Titania licked Cassidy’s neck, little tail brushing the side of Cassidy’s breast, reminding her all too well what her breasts had felt like pressed against the guy’s hard, muscular back. She’d had to jump away to keep him from noticing her body’s reaction. He was one giant pheromone in a way Burton, her father’s right-hand man and her semi-regular date these past eight or so months, wasn’t.
    Mr. Maid cursed again and Cassidy winced, waiting for the crash. Luckily, it didn’t come, though, honestly, there wasn’t anything in that room that she’d mourn the loss of. She’d learned long ago not to put out anything personal that wasn’t designer-selected or Dad would have a fit. Everything had to be picture-perfect for her father. Everything. Including her.
    She twisted one of the diamond studs her father had given her on her birthday. The ones he’d picked up in Dubai. She’d seen them when Deborah had unpacked his briefcase, both of them figuring they were for the flavor
du jour
, neither one of them certain what that flavor’s name was since it’d only been one
jour
. But that’s all that one had lasted and Dad had given them to her. What was there to be said for getting a bimbo’s cast-offs?
    Cassidy sighed and set Titania, the show-dog-caliber pet, back in her pen. She needed to talk to Dad; this living in a gilded cage thing was over. She was almost thirty years old and after her mother had walked out, she’d practically been in limbo waiting for her real life to start.
    Well now it was time and Dad was just going to have to face it. He couldn’t go jet-setting all over the world and expect her to sit here, twiddling her thumbs or arranging flowers or meeting with women old enough to be her grandmother on some charitable