The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

Grant was living in Vegas at the time and said he wanted nothing more than to show Emma a good time and rekindle the relationship they’d never had. Come stay with me. I’m your dad, baby, and I want to know you, to know the real you, because your mother hasn’t kept me up to date. You can shop, you can see shows, you can meet my friends. It will be fun, Emma, you’ll see. This summer will change your life.

And she could bring Laura, too! It all sounded so fantastic to the girl Emma had been that year, dewy-eyed and hopeful, ready for a good time. She’d felt truly special, thrilled that after spending the last few years listening to her mother’s endless list of flaws in her, Grant didn’t seem to see any of them. Here was someone who’d come all this way just for her. To know the real her, which her mother seemed to despise.

Somehow, Grant had managed to convince Emma’s parents to allow her and Laura to spend the summer with him in his Vegas penthouse. Of course Emma had gone. She’d told Laura—her best friend, her confidant—how she craved that relationship with her father. She’d even confided that she harbored a secret fear—that somehow, she was partially to blame for her parents’ failed reconciliation because of her inability to be “nice.” Maybe this time, she’d eagerly said to Laura, her father would stick around. She envisioned him going with her to buy her first car, taking her to dine at good restaurants. Walking her down the aisle, becoming the curmudgeonly yin to her mother’s yang, a goofy grandpa to her children.

All her life, Emma had envied her friends and the dads who loved them, who drove them to movies and out to the beach, who told their boyfriends they better have them home by midnight, and who teared up with pride when their daughters dressed to go out. Emma had wanted that, too, and Emma had believed Grant had really, truly, come at last to be that person for her. He’d ridden into her life like a knight, sporting a miraculous change of heart about being a dad and truly loving her, his flesh and blood.

Laura was the one person who knew how much hope Emma held for him.

The first few weeks in Vegas had been great. Emma and Laura had the time of their lives living in Grant’s lavish penthouse with a rooftop pool. There were lots of parties and shopping and late nights with Grant’s “friends,” who would give them alcohol and pass joints to them and whisper that they could show them the world while grabbing their asses. Emma was willing to put up with it all, because she was Grant’s daughter, protected by her status as his blood. She was his pet, his princess, and woe betide the man who took it too far.

But as the summer wore on, Grant became less and less available to her. When he came in late, he said he was working. Emma knew that meant he was gambling. That’s how he’d afforded those digs. It came with the territory.

And then Laura met a guy.

“Who is he?” Emma had asked when Laura told her, eyes bright with the excitement of a new love.

“I’m not ready to say,” Laura had said coyly. “I want to make sure it’s going to work out before I tell you.”

“You can tell me!” Emma had insisted. “We tell each other everything!”

“No, I can’t!” Laura had said, laughing. “When it’s official, I promise, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Does he have another girlfriend? Is he married? What does official mean, anyway?”

“Nothing like that. It’s sort of complicated. He said he’d know when the time was right. Until then, I can’t tell you!” And Laura had giggled like a girl.

Emma hadn’t liked it, but she’d made a game of it, studying the young men who showed up at the pool, looking for any sign of affection from Laura. Emma had finally decided it was the lifeguard, and was convinced of that until the early morning she’d gone looking for Grant and had stumbled on Laura in his bed.

Emma had knocked softly, and when there was no answer, she’d turned the knob and poked her head into her father’s room, intending to wake him up. She could still remember how the day’s heat had already begun to seep in through the windows and up through the floor, how it had felt as if her skin was burning as she stared at Laura, alone and naked under the sheets of her father’s bed, her face ashen.

And still, Emma was so na?ve that she’d felt wildly protective of her stepsister, thinking Laura had used Grant’s bed for a tryst with the boyfriend. “Laura!” she’d whispered. “You have to get out of here before he finds you!”