Backpack and a Red Dress by Maddie Jane

Author:Maddie Jane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Escape Publishing

Chapter 10

She should’ve told Sam right then. Come clean about her relationship to Dirk Eldridge. Told him the same man who’d ruined his family was her biological father. That Eldridge blood ran through her veins. But Sam was finally taking her seriously and she hadn’t wanted to destroy something so new and full of promise.

So she’d said nothing. And it made her sick to her stomach.

Left alone with piles of old clothes in the flat with no furniture, Cally allowed herself a few tears and a brief wallow. Every time she started getting somewhere, she got knocked back. Two steps forward, one step back.

Except for the days where it was the reverse. Days like today.

She’d known Dirk Eldridge wasn’t a saint, but she’d never imagined he would be so … so hated. Maybe Sam was wrong, his judgement clouded by youth and the intervening years of hardship and work?

In all the years she’d thought about her father, imagined the person he was, it’d never occurred to her he would be a bad person. Because what would that make her? She’d thought of him as a straw man at times, lacking in backbone and devoid of feelings, but she’d always retained a slither of hope that could change when they met and he saw the daughter he’d missed out on for so long.

Cally blew her nose, snuffling into the tissue before balling it up and throwing it into the wastepaper basket. Most of the time she was an optimist, but was she wasting her time here? Was she ready for harsh reality?

A knock at the shop door brought her out of her tailspin and she sprinted down the stairs, slowing when she saw Sam through the glass. He had something in his hands, which he held out to her as she opened the door. It was the black negligee left behind in her speedy exit from the car.

‘I didn’t want you to think I kept it to wear myself,’ he said. The thought of Sam’s powerful body crammed into such a feminine garment brought a small smile to Cally’s face. Sam looked at her, long and hard.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Hideous. She must look all teary. ‘Yup,’ she lied. ‘Just a reaction to the dust in some of those old clothes.’ He followed her upstairs to where she’d dumped all the clothes out onto the floor to sort. Sam gazed around him, a frown darkening his face.

‘You still haven’t got any furniture? Just the sewing table? This is ridiculous. You can’t live like this.’

Cally bristled. ‘I’m only here for two months and half of it has gone already. I can live out of my backpack a little while longer.’ She shrugged her shoulders, her mouth too dry to fake a laugh.

‘Mum might need you longer than that.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I don’t have a proper contract, it’s just a verbal agreement, so I’m not going to spend money I haven’t got on furniture.’

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Mum! First she employs you without

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