Daddy's Girl Read Online Free

in case he didn’t get enough attention. He’d excelled at high school football but didn’t get enough playing time at Penn State, so was forced to settle for golf and a three handicap. He’d been a rabbit on the pro tour until he quit to become property acquisition jock at Greco.
    “Funny how you don’t hear from Rosenhaus anymore. I gotta admit, I miss the guy. Remember T.O. at the podium with him and some reporter asked that great question? How funny was that? I’ll never forget it. What’d he say?”
    Hank Ballisteri. Nat’s boyfriend of three years, a commercial realtor who did business with Greco Construction and who had impressed Big John enough to get invited to every family function, where he and Nat had met, as part of her father’s master plan. Tonight was Hank’s thirty-third birthday. She’d wanted to take him out alone, but he’d closed a big deal with her father and a client today, so it made sense to celebrate his birthday en famille. It reminded Nat of a poem about birthdays. She scratched Jelly, and while he purred, she tried to remember the poem. She couldn’t hear herself think for the shouting. It sounded like they’d started celebrating early.
    “‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR YOUR CLIENT BESIDES GET HIM FIRED?’” the men yelled in unison, then burst into loud laughter. Jelly startled at the sound, curling his tail into a question mark, then skittered off like a monkey. Hank shouted, “Hey, stop, that’s my birthday present! Gimme that! Hands off my stick!” They burst into new laughter, and the fight was on. “I WOULD NEVER TOUCH YOUR STICK, YOU LOSER! YOU COULDN’T PAY ME ENOUGH TO TOUCH YOUR STICK!”
    Nat picked up her shopping bag and went through the sample-house living room, sinking into the dense burgundy carpet and following the noise to the great room. She crossed the threshold into a House & Garden version of country casual, except for the horseplay between Hank and her brothers. The boys were fighting over a wooden cue stick, bumping the coffee table. All her brothers had her father’s huge, heavy-boned frame and his thick, dark hair, deep brown eyes, and largish noses and lips, as if Big John had called all the genetic plays. The family resemblance was so strong their brawl looked like a fistfight among overgrown triplets.
    “Hey, watch it!” Junior swung a cue stick at Paul and Tom, who grabbed the narrow end and struggled to wrest it back.
    “I got dibs first game!” Tom called out, holding the cue stick until Hank wrestled it from him. The others jumped in, the four of them in silk ties and oxford shirts, making a corporate scrum and almost knocking over her mother as she walked past with an empty china platter.
    “Paul, put your back into it!” Her father stuck out his tasseled loafer and almost tripped his youngest son, which was when Hank noticed Nat.
    “Hi, babe!” he called from the melee. “We’re gonna play pool with my new stick!”
    “Happy Birthday, Hank.” Nat waved. “Now you have to grow up. All of you.”
    “No, stop!” Tom shouted, as Junior broke free with the cue stick and ran for the door. Nat stepped aside at just the right time, from years of practice.
    “That’s mine!” Hank bolted after Junior, chased by Paul and Tom, an express train of flying ties.
    “I’ll take you all!” her father yelled, hustling to bring up the rear. At sixty, he was still quarterback-broad in a smooth blue shirt, Hermès tie, and dark pressed slacks. He had conventionally handsome features, round brown eyes with deep crow’s-feet, and thinning hair a shade too dark to be completely credible. He ran past, trailing Aramis.
    “Hi, Dad,” Nat called out, but he had already gone. The room fell abruptly quiet, as if the life had gone out of it, leaving the women alone with Tony Bennett. Nat trailed her mother as she made her way back to the kitchen. Ivory-enameled cabinets lined the walls above a built-in plate holder and a tile backsplash in floral