Chapter 4

FOUR

I paced my room wondering how everything had spiraled out of control so quickly. Since my grandmother had rescinded her invitation to stay with her while I was visiting, I was back at the resort. What I’d planned on being a quick stop to pick up the dress I’d left hanging in the closet during my hasty escape this morning turned into me checking back into the room I’d stayed in last night. Thankfully housekeeping had already cleaned the room, removing last night’s bedsheets.

I should call down to the lobby and tell them to double wash them in extra hot water. God knows we’d worked up a sweat—multiple times in those linens.

Stop.

No more thinking about Wilson.

At breakfast he’d played it cool. No one at the table could’ve guessed we’d spent the night together. If he could do it, so could I.

We were adults. We’d done nothing wrong. I just really didn’t want my grandmother or his friends knowing I’d had a one-night stand with a sexy stranger who’d turned out to be a friend of my grandmother.

Only me.

Why did nothing ever go my way?

I couldn’t even have wild sex without doing it wrong.

My phone on the dresser rang.

Knowing who it was, I pulled in a breath and braced.

“Hey, Dad, how’s…” Shit, where was he again?

“Port-au-Prince.”

Right. Haiti.

“Are you with your grandmother?”

“We had breakfast. I’m back at the hotel.”

“Good. Good,” he hummed. “How was the flight?”

“Uneventful. How’s your week been?”

“Lymphatic filariasis is still on the rise. Higher than normal TB cases, a ciguatera outbreak, and fifteen cases of TD.”

Ah, good old traveler’s diarrhea.

What did I say to that? Good thing you’re there to help all those sick people while your only child is back in the good ol’ US of A all by herself wishing her father cared about her half as much as he cared about traveling the world helping those less fortunate?

I couldn’t say that because it made me sound like a selfish bitch.

But damn if it wasn’t true.

Perhaps if he’d started his crusade to help the world after he’d finished raising me I wouldn’t have been so bitter. Or maybe if he’d spent a single summer doing father-daughter things with me instead of sending me to my grandparents’ house after my mother had died I wouldn’t resent his quest. But since neither of those things had happened and I’d grown up with an absentee father who was a really great financial provider but sucked at being anything beyond that I hated his campaign to save everyone but me.

When the silence stretched beyond what was acceptable for me to comment on this week’s medical triumphs he launched into the familiar disapproval.

“Have you given any more thought to going back to school?”

He meant medical school. Something I had no interest in and had repeatedly told him but he’d refused to listen. This included when he forced me to apply to NYU with the hopes I’d get a bachelors in biochemistry then get accepted into the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. There had been a moment, though it was short lived, when I’d wanted to be a physician like my father. Not because I wanted to be a doctor but because I thought then maybe if we had something he deemed important in common my dad would notice me.

As I said, that was short lived and here we were, me almost forty and he still wouldn’t let it go.

“Dad, I haven’t thought about going back to school since I graduated college sixteen years ago.”

“You have a degree in hospitality.” His tone was incredulous and it only served to piss me off. “At least consider going back and getting your PhD.”

Right, so then I could add the letters DR in front of my name even if I wasn’t a medical doctor.

“I have a degree from Cornell, Father. Not some pop-up cert program that printed my diploma on an inkjet after they stole my money and closed up shop.”

And it was my money.

I’d paid for my education.

All of it.

Me.

“Why must you be so difficult, Atlee? I only want what’s best for you.”

“No, you want me to be you. We’ve had this argument five thousand times. I do not want to be a doctor. The thought of having to deal with TD makes me want to vomit.”

“The theatrics are unnecessary. I’m your father and I simply want you to consider furthering your education. Opportunities will open. No daughter of mine needs to be working in a shit hotel in Las Vegas. You could at least be using your degree someplace less seedy.”

For a man who spent all of his time living in third world countries he had some nerve calling the billion-dollar hotel I worked in seedy. But, for him sleeping on the ground in the dirt with flies swarming was a badge of honor. Me living in a luxury high-rise, driving a nice car, supporting myself, while still being able to pay off my student loans and put money in a retirement account wasn’t good enough.

Nope.

Not for Dr. Tyler Levine.

Sometimes I wondered how it was possible my mother had fallen in love with my father.

No, actually I wondered that all of the time.

Gram had answered that question a long time ago but I still didn’t understand.

On a good day my father was cold and pompous. On a bad day—meaning if he was unable to save every patient who’d walked into whatever clinic he was working in, in whatever country he was in—he could be a total asshole.

As far as I saw it, my parents were total opposites.

My mother didn’t have a cold bone in her body. She was loving and kind and always had a smile on her face. She had the best parents in the whole world. There was never a shortage of love when Gram and Gramps were around. My grandfather had held my grandmother and wept at my mother’s funeral. My father had not held me nor had he wept. It was like the day my mother had died my father had turned off.

The day I’d buried my mother, I’d lost both my parents.

Gram told me it was because my dad had loved my mom so completely he didn’t know how to function without her.

That might’ve been the case and maybe I should’ve had more empathy for the man but I was still alive and deserved to have a father who loved me enough to snap out of his grief and love me. And if nothing else at least show me kindness.

“I must cut this short. I have a new case I need to see to.”

Thank God.

“Have a good week, Dad.”

“You, too, Atlee. Until next time.”

He disconnected and I didn’t bother searching my feelings about his goodbye. I’d long ago stopped wishing my father would one day end a conversation with ‘I love you’ instead of ‘until next time’.

But for some reason I stared out over the beautiful lake and wondered when the last time my father had told me he loved me. Or if he’d ever told me he was proud of me.

The mere fact I had to think about how long it had been since my father told me he loved me broke my heart.

At least I could remember the last time my dad did that.

Seven days ago during our last weekly call.