Free Bartered Proposal: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 1 (A BDSM Erotic Romance) by Ava Lore Page A

reptiles couldn't produce tears.
    I stood in the doorway, wavering, my heart in turmoil. He was a shitbag, sure, but he was my shitbag father. And he didn't look so hot, now that I had time to study him. His hair, usually so meticulously combed, was in disarray, and his stupidly expensive Italian suit was wrinkled as though he had slept in it. It looked too big on him, too, and I was shocked to realize that he had lost weight. Jonathan Dare had always been a robust man, a college football star gone slightly to seed. Now he looked like a man wearing my father's skin, draped over a bony frame I didn't recognize.
    Glancing back over my shoulder at my unfinished work, I hesitated.
    My father saw my moment of weakness. Another mistake. He pounced.
    “Felicia, please. We have to talk.”
    I was going to regret this. I knew it.
    Nevertheless, I found myself giving in to him, like I always did. Because I wanted him to love me. Because I needed his approval. Apparently knowing this wasn't enough to fight it.
    “Fine,” I said. I grabbed my keys and purse from beside the door, and stepped outside. “Let's get this over with.”
     
    *
     
    I took him to the local coffee chain, which I hated, but I didn't dare take him to Rick's or Shade's Cafe. I didn't want his presence to taint the places I actually liked.
    “Okay,” I said as we sat down across from each other at dark wooden tables carefully designed to look intimate and indie. “What's going on?”
    He stared down at the cup in his hands, and I tried not to do the same. I'd noticed the significance of his order the second he'd placed it: smallest size, black coffee. The cheapest thing on the menu besides water.
    My father never ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. He always said that looking poor invited being poor. That little cup of coffee between us on the table sent alarm bells clanging in my head, even more so than his tears. He could have been crying just to manipulate me, but appearing poor?
    Something was definitely very wrong.
    “Felicia, I need your help,” he blurted suddenly. “Everything's gone all wrong, and I can't fix it. I need you, you're the only one who can do it. Please, Felicia.”
    Oh my god. I stood up. “You said this was about mom,” I snapped. “I'm leaving.”
    “She's sick.”
    Perhaps, I thought, sitting down was a better idea.
    I sat. I blinked. “What?” I said, stupidly.
    Tears brimmed in his eyes again, and I could have almost sworn they were real. But why would my father cry over the woman he had married? As far as I could tell, he'd never given a second thought to her after the ink on the marriage certificate was dry.
    “She has cancer,” he said, and the words came out in a sob.
    I felt cold. Looking down at my hands, I flexed my fingers, trying to warm them up. “What do you mean, she has cancer?” It was a stupid question. But I'd just talked to mom two days ago. Why had my father flown all the way out here to tell me she was sick? Why couldn't she have told me in a phone call? Surely she was already in treatment.
    None of this felt right.
    My father shook his head and mopped at his eyes with a napkin. “We found out a week ago,” he was saying, “but we couldn't start chemo.”
    My mouth went dry. “Why not?”
    He brought his hands to his face, and I was shocked to see them covered in liver-spots, wrinkled and papery. They were the hands of an old man.
    “I'm ruined,” he said.
    My mouth dropped open. “What do you mean, ruined?”
    He shook his head, unable to speak, and took a few deep breaths. “There's no money left,” he said finally. “It's... it's gone.”
    I pressed my lips together. “It's gone?” I couldn't believe it. My father was richer than King fucking Midas. How did that kind of money just... disappear? “How the hell did you manage that? You don't have the houses? The cars? All the artwork?”
    “It's all leveraged. Everything. I owe it all.”
    Shock numbed me. “You... is this about the