Instead of putting Bea in the middle of things, as I usually did, I decided to face the music and finally went to see my father. His office wasn’t all too far from the campus where I attended college, so once my last class of the day was over, I made my way there. The minute I walked through the door, Gabby, his receptionist for the past fifteen years, smiled brightly at me. “Mina, your father will be so pleased to see you,” she announced.

It was nothing for her to say that. Actually, she said this every single time I came to visit my father at work, and it never failed to be the truth. My father might have been business-centric, with questionable judgment in business partners, but he loved his family and was always happy to see us.

“Mina Katherine Robeson!” He growled when he came out of his office after Gabby announced me. It startled both of us, as her eyes came up to mine, looking larger than life. She had never heard my father three-name me, much less sound angry while doing it. To be honest, I couldn’t remember the last time I heard him do it either.

“Technically, it’s Tucker, for now,” I countered with a bit too much sass for my father’s liking.

“You are never too old to be taken over my knee,” was his response. An odd one at that, because I couldn’t remember a time when my father had ever spanked my butt. I was the youngest child, and therefore, I was pretty sure he was over the spankings when they never worked on my brother, who was his oldest.

“What exactly do I deserve a spanking for?”

“You have had your mother worried to death about you.”

“I don’t see why. I told you both that I was perfectly fine.”

“She went by that apartment looking for you, and no one is ever home.”

“Dad, Tucker is out of the country, and I have been staying elsewhere.”

“I’m not out of the country any longer,” another voice boomed from down the hall where my father had left his office door open. I ignored that and turned to my father, giving him the evil eye.

“What is he doing here?”

“He came to plead his case with me, in the hopes that I would tell him where you were staying.”

“You didn’t know where I was staying,” I informed my father, as if he wasn’t aware of that fact.

“He didn’t know that, now did he?” My father chuckled then, and I wondered if maybe the stress of merging his business with the Brighton’s was finally taking its toll on him. Surely, he couldn’t actually want to help the man who had cheated on his daughter, whether we had an arranged marriage of convenience or not.

“Why don’t the two of you use my office and talk while I go out to grab some lunch?” My father glanced down at the watch on his wrist. “I should be about an hour or so, I think.”