Daddy's Girl: A Daddy Issues Novel, Rebel Wild [top 10 most read books in the world .TXT] 📗

submissive removed once she leaves, but that’s just impossible with Sydney. She’s everywhere. She’s in my library, my office, my bed. Fuck, she’s in my bed. I’ll never be able to sleep peacefully again without her.

I try to throw myself into work, poring over the pile of briefs I have on the coffee table, but like I always do, I find myself waiting for her to come downstairs and join me.

She’s even here.

I close my eyes and I can almost feel her presence. I can almost feel her coming to me as I practice my closing arguments. A part of me is grateful for the feelings but another part of me is praying for the day they’ll fade away and she’ll be a distant memory. I laugh out loud despite myself. Maloney would be proud. I finally admit I have feelings for her, but what good will they do me now?

She’s gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

One Year Later

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this shit,” I tell Brianna as I sit pissed off and glaring at the doorway of my office where she’s standing.

“Hey, it’s about time you got back out there,” she tells me, trying hard not to sound amused at my expense. “There are a whole lot of women out there just waiting to be caught on your hook.”

“And you expect me to find them at some damn college award ceremony? I get you’re proud of your cousin winning, but why the hell did you have to talk me into going?”

“Because you’re a public figure and it’s your duty to show support.”

“Bullshit and don’t you have some packing to do?”

Brianna has been on my ass to start dating again for the past two weeks. How that conversation ended with me going to some stupid Universal Language awards for the freshman at Stanford University is still a mystery to me. I hope it’s not some misguided attempt to keep me from being lonely once she and Joe move into their new place next month.

True to their words, they’ve stayed clean and I know they’re serious this time. Once his probation was up, I had Joe’s accounts unfrozen. He had complete access to his inheritance, but instead of him taking the money and running, he hired a very reputable financial advisor known for keeping drugged-out stars from blowing their money up their nose.

He comes in with a stupid grin on his face and I want to punch him in the eye. Why is he so damn happy all of a sudden? Yesterday, he had a stick so far up his ass he almost choked on it.

“What the hell’s so damn amusing?” I bark at him when Brianna leaves. “I’m in a bad mood and I don’t have time for your bullshit.”

“What did I even do?”

“You smiled.”

“I had no idea.” The fuck he didn’t. I decide to let it go and give the guy a break. I’ve been jumping down his throat more often than not lately. “I have the list of the students being honored,” he tells me as he puts it on my desk in front of me.

“Like I give a shit,” I say, about to toss it in the trash.

“Might I suggest you look under the letter W.”

“W,” I repeat, thumbing through the pages. I scroll down the list until I see her name in bold letters. It’s typed no differently than the one above or below it, but to me, it stands out like a beacon. “Sydney Warren,” I say it aloud for the first time in little under a year.

“The one and only,” Joe says.

The last time I said it, I was forbidding Mom to speak it again in my presence. I admit it was out of frustration. She’d been on me for weeks after I told her we’d decided to go our separate ways and she’d moved to Montreal to be close to her mother. Mom was convinced I’d fucked it up and was giving advice on how to get her back. After a while, things just went back to the way they were before Sydney even entered my life, except for the merry-go-round of submissives I used to forget her.

Sydney is still my only long-term contracted sub. Now I use the services of Luella LaSalle, Madame to the stars, as she so proudly boasts. I ignore her breaking the law and she supplies me with women to fuck. Often, it’s a redhead that looks like Sydney, but I’m always disappointed and unfulfilled. I have yet to fuck anyone. I simply don’t find them very fuckable. It’s as if she took my cock with her. I can’t blame him. He knew no one else would be half as good as she was. Maloney keeps cracking jokes about my right hand getting hairy. He’s having a field day trying to work this one out for me.

“I thought she moved to Montreal,” I ask Joe as I continue to stare at her name. It’s the closest I’ve been to her in a damn year.

“Only for a few months.”

Joe and Brianna are still friends with her. Brianna talks to her often, but she never gives me any details. I would be too tempted to interfere if she was to tell me that she was happily involved with someone.

“Is there a problem with her and her mother?”

“Doesn’t appear to be,” he says. “Bree would tell me if there was.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t go. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for her.”

“I think she’ll be happy to see you.”

“You two set this up, didn’t you?” I ask of him and Brianna, finally figuring out why she’s been pressuring me to do this stupid event. “Damn it, Joe…”

“Yeah?” he asks when I stop my rant.

“Thank you.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

I’ve been counting the days anxiously waiting for this ceremony so I can see Sydney again. I sit listening to the chancellor drone on with his speech as I discreetly