What a Woman Gets by Judi Fennell Page A

among the petunias. “Go ahead. Do good girl.”
    She caught Liam rolling his eyes in her peripheral vision.
    Titania, being Titania, took her time sniffing the flowers before finding the perfect spot.
    Liam’s foot started tapping.
    All finished, Titania yipped her sweet little happy bark, then licked Cassidy on the nose before practically leaping into her arms. There was nothing like the unconditional love of a dog. That would be why Titania barely left her side. The Maltese was six years old and Cassidy could remember each day as if it were yesterday—especially the day she’d brought her home.
    Dad had had a conniption. Cassidy had heard the term but never known exactly what a conniption entailed. Bringing a dog home to his new pristine, “highpoint of my career” penthouse induced the conniption. And what a thing it had been to behold. Exactly what she’d been trying to avoid yesterday at lunch by breaking the news to him gently.
    Yet he’d gone and had one just the same. Granted, it’d been in her—
his
—home, but still, it was the second time she’d ever seen that reaction from the normally calm and unflappable Mitchell Davenport.
    She still couldn’t believe he’d cut her off. She hadn’t seen that coming. How could she have been so wrong about her own father?
    â€œAre we all set, then? You don’t have softly scented, individually wrapped doggy wipes, do you?”
    The sarcasm was rolling off Liam’s tongue, yet still the man held open the door of the truck
and
helped her into it. Thank goodness because it was really high off the ground, even with running boards.
    â€œThis is a big truck,” she said after he walked around the front and climbed in the driver’s side.
    â€œYes, it is.”
    And that was it. There wasn’t another word spoken by Mr. Liam Manley the entire way, for which she was grateful because she was still trying to wrap her brain around the past hour. Dad had cut her off. He’d tried to force her to his will with money.
    God, how pitiful. How utterly shallow did her own father think she was? How shallow was
he
? And Burton? How shallow was
he
to marry her just to become Mitchell’s heir?
    Okay, well that might be incentive, but did he really want to marry someone who wasn’t in love with him?
    Scratch that. People did it all the time, and being CEO of her father’s conglomerate was reward enough for a loveless marriage.
    He’d. Cut. Her. Off.
    Cassidy shook her head. Her own father, manipulating her—an almost thirty-year-old woman—into an arranged marriage. What was this, feudal England?
    Cassidy looked out the window as Liam turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street with the houses spaced close enough to be called neighbors, but far enough apart that they wouldn’t know their neighbors’ intimate business.
    Intimacy
. Burton would have expected it. And with money as the basis for their marriage, her father would be consigning her to being a very well-paid prostitute.
    She was going to be sick. She’d never even
thought
of him doing something like this. Oh, sure, the passing “being broke” comment had risen its head every once in a while when she’d thought about going out on her own, but she’d expected the “broke” part to be temporary while she waited to sell more furniture,
not
because every cent she possessed would be frozen due to her father’s long reach.
    What was she going to do? When she’d first envisioned this, she’d expected to stay in the penthouse or maybe one of his other properties until she had enough income for a small mortgage. She’d planned to live simply. Make do with a thousand square feet instead of the four thousand she’d just been booted from.
    Now, if it weren’t for Liam’s generosity, she wouldn’t even have
one
.
    Liam pulled down a long driveway. Cassidy had to keep her mouth shut.