Romancing the Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club #5)(71)
Author: Jessica Clare

I know that my choice wasn’t the right one for you, but I didn’t know what else to do. Half the time when I tried to come home, your mother would insist I stay away. I missed several of your birthdays, your kindergarten graduation . . . but I did it to try and please your mother. By the time I realized that there would never be any pleasing her, it was too late and you and I had grown so far apart that I felt there was an uncrossable gulf between us.

Violet swallowed hard. He’d stayed away while she was growing up because her mother had asked him to? She’d always thought he’d been too busy for her, too uninterested. To find out that her miserable mother had been equally responsible for Violet’s loneliness wasn’t surprising, but it was heartbreaking. How many times had she misunderstood old Phineas DeWitt, who knew how to handle a two-thousand-year-old vase with care, but didn’t know how to spend time with his daughter or handle his too-young and too-unstable wife? Suddenly, things were no longer so black and white.

You were always the brightest little scrap, and even if I wasn’t the best father, I was proud of you. You were smart and sensible where I wasn’t, strong and independent where your mother was not. Both your mother and I were two really weak people at our core, but I like to think we created something special when we created you. When you graduated, I wanted you at my side for the summer in Akrotiri. Your mother didn’t want you to go. She was jealous, I think, and lonely. I insisted, though. I loved having you there for the dig that summer. I know we didn’t get to spend as much time as we’d wanted together, but I was so proud of you. I still am.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I’ve dragged you all over the place and forced you together with Jonathan Lyons once more. It has everything to do with Akrotiri, because that summer . . . I made a huge mistake.

It didn’t take much digging to figure out the trouble you were in. Someone had overheard you telling Jonathan that you wanted to start a family, and one of the other girls that bunked with you confessed that you were crying a lot. It reminded me of how your mother and I got together, actually. I guessed that you were pregnant and trying to bring Jonathan home with you.

And I got selfish. I saw Jonathan as the son I never had, and the thought of him losing out on his dreams to go and raise a baby with you . . . it made me feel as if history was repeating itself. I was coming off of another bitter argument with your mother, and we were on the verge of making some really wonderful breakthroughs in Akrotiri, and my daughter wanted to take away my favorite assistant. So I acted selfishly, and when you left your letter for Jonathan, I took it and hid it.

He never got your message, Violet. That’s my fault. It was clear he was in love with you, though. As soon as you left, he became a different person: morose, unhappy. It was like the light had gone out, and I knew the light was you. So I did my best to make him forget you so I could have my assistant back. I told him you’d married someone as soon as you returned home. It broke his heart, I think, but it did the job. He threw himself back into work, and I hid my guilt. I knew I had crushed your relationship, but I hoped, foolishly, it would end up being best for both of you. When I heard from your mother that you lost the baby, my guilt was overwhelming. By then, though, I’d chosen my course. You resented me for continuing to spend time with Jonathan, and I felt as if I’d lost every connection to my baby girl, and it was my own fault. I’d chosen archaeology over family for the last time, and I had nothing left but work . . . so I worked. It wasn’t something I could apologize for, so I tried to forget it ever happened.

Of course, it came back to bite me when I got too sick to work. By then, I’d chosen my path. There was no one to sit at a lonely old man’s bedside and hold his hand and keep him company. I’d pushed everyone out of my life except for work colleagues, and if you can’t work, you don’t even have those.

I sent you on this long, crazy chase so you might remember me a bit more fondly over time. I’ve arranged this “scavenger hunt” in the hope that you will reconcile with Jonathan and at least part as friends. It was my fault that the two of you did not end up together ten years ago; the least I can do is bring you together upon my death.

You’ve probably wondered at the poetry, too. I remember my sweet Violet loved poetry once upon a time. It was a form of expression for someone who had a hard time expressing herself. I hope you enjoyed the pieces I picked. They spoke to me, and I thought the themes of love and loss were appropriate to how I felt, too. Perhaps you got your inability to express yourself from dear old dad, eh?

Please tell Jonathan that I stole the stele deliberately to force his hand. It’s being held in a safety-deposit box at the Detroit Credit Union under your name and your date of birth is the passcode. I trashed my journals when I found out I was sick. Even this old bastard can keep a few secrets.

Most of all, I wanted you to know that even though I was a terrible and absent father, I still loved you with all the capacity of my small, selfish heart and I’m so proud of you.

Your father, Dr. Phineas DeWitt

Tears blurred Violet’s eyes. I still loved you with all the capacity of my small, selfish heart and I’m so proud of you. How many times had she wanted her father to say that to her as a young girl? And yet, if he’d approached her as an adult, she’d have turned away from him with scorn, her heart hardened by disappointment. She carefully refolded the letter, tears flowing down her cheeks. Then, she held it out to Jonathan so he could read it. He did, utterly silent as he paged through it, eyes scanning the words written in a shaky hand. She swiped at her tears with irritation, but they kept coming.

She was feeling so many things at this moment: sadness for her father, who’d died lonely and cut off, knowing that the choices he’d made in his relationships had condemned him; self-pity that she’d lost her father; helpless frustration at knowing her father’s motives behind the choices that had screwed with her life. And a sad, sweet ache for the fact that she’d never gotten to tell her father that she’d always loved him, too, even if he disappointed her.

Most of all, she wept for the realization that she could have become her father.

She’d failed at relationship after relationship, not willing to open herself up to get hurt. Before Jonathan had pushed his way back into her life, she’d been alone, with friends at work but spending most weekends by herself and passing time by devoting herself to work. Just like her father.