Free Playing With Fire (Sweet Redemption) by Rose Francis

country on a trip before?”
    “Well sorry dad, clearly you have someone else in mind for me?”
    “No, no. Just wondering. Thought you might have someone special you’d want to take along by now.”
    “Dad, seriously? David and I just broke up like five weeks ago.”
    “I know, I just...look, it was a just-in-case situation anyway. I just hope you and Liz have fun and get a chance to drop your worries for a while. I love you pumpkin.”
    “Love you too dad,” Janet grumbled before they both disconnected the call.
    She sighed in frustration.
    Who was she fooling? There was no way Jason would let Liz leave the country without him—he barely let her go shopping without scrutiny. That left no one since she was certainly not asking Eric—they were still just coworkers after all.
    Which meant she had to take her dad’s awesome gift and go to some awesome place all by her awesome self like some loser.
    She felt some embarrassment when she thought about what others might think if they could hear her thoughts. She knew what the others thought of her, and she knew she’d get no sympathy.
    Poor little rich girl , they’d probably say sarcastically.
    Well, I guess I can catch up on some reading , she thought. And work on those other projects...
    But again the thought of doing such a thing by herself made her incredibly sad. Who went on vacation in a strange, new country alone? No one. She’d never heard of it. Who enjoyed eating at five-star restaurants and taking sailing lessons or swimming with dolphins or whatever else one did on some exotic island all by themselves? No one—unless that person was on vacation with the intent of hooking up with locals—which she had no intention of doing. She preferred taking sand to the beach.
    She sighed again. She wished she and Eric were on better terms, although even if they were by the time her vacation started, she knew it was still a bad idea to take him along; they weren’t ready for it.
    She wasn’t ready for it.
    If he could do to her what he did the other night, who knew what else he was capable of?
    She suddenly started resenting her dad’s gift. It was so impersonal like so many gifts before. He was always throwing money at her—gift cards, Black Cards—anything that screamed: “I don’t know a thing about you, nor do I care to find out, but go buy yourself something nice” year after year.
    Finding out she liked Versace, Louboutin and Tiffany & Co. for gift cards was easy—he probably found out where she liked to shop from the secretary or her other coworkers becausethere’s no way he’d know otherwise.
    She tried to remember the last time her father bought her a thoughtful gift and couldn’t.
    Probably when she was a little girl.
    The more specific gifts he had gotten her—like her sixteenth birthday Mercedes and her college Porsche, she had told him specifically what she wanted, not trusting him to pick up on just hints. He never knew enough about her to venture an educated guess.
    Still, she was glad she no longer had to think about what to do for her birthday this year—she inevitable got stressed out planning for it.
    For her twenty-fifth birthday, she had wanted to throw a party, creating a company gathering of it, but luckily, Liz had talked her out of it.
    “That probably won’t go over well,” Liz said gently, and by the softness of her approach, Janet knew she was missing something.
    “Imagine all of these guys feeling obligated to bring you something. What do you get a girl like you?”
    “What do you mean a girl like me? I’m not much different from anyone here! My salary is to scale...”
    Liz was shaking her head.
    “Not everyone has a trust fund.”
    “Are you kidding me? I don’t even know if I have a trust fund anymore...”
    “That’s not the point Janet—you still have access. Your father has not cut you off and you know it. You tell him you need money to buy an island and he’ll probably wire the funds to you. You know what I