“I don’t have the time for any of this. I don’t need your apology nearly seven years later.”

He put a hand on her door. “Maybe I need to give you one.”

She breathed out long and slow. “I hope it works out for you. Wish you’d felt that way when it meant something.” She sent him a raised brow as she got into the car, yanking to get his hand loose, but not hard enough she would have harmed him if he hadn’t let go.

Damn it all, the harder she tried to resist what they had, still, between them only made him hotter. There was something wrong with him.

“Goodbye, Nathan.”

He stepped back and waved. “Be seeing you around, Ms. Travis.”

He realized as she drove away just how much he wanted her. Thankfully, he had an entire team behind him who’d help. He’d known the Chases long enough to have heard how the entire family backed each one of their sons when they found the woman they wanted. He had seven brothers and sisters and the Chases too. She didn’t stand a chance.

Grinning, he headed back into the school.

Not even a week later, Lily came back in from dropping Chris off at school and found her mother having a heated conversation with her father while Nancy looked on. The girlfriend was also there.

“I don’t see why you can’t just sell the house and give me half. It’s my half, after all.”

“I live here. Your son lives here! It’s not bad enough that you left the way you did? Not enough that you cleared out the bank accounts and stole the electronics in the house? Not bad enough you humiliated me for years and then you do this? You want to sell my home out from under me so you can buy more stuff for her? Get out, Rodger. I’ve had enough.”

“You two can live in a condo. They’re nice. You don’t need this big house. Heck, we can take part of the money and send Chris to military school to straighten his ass out.”

Nancy nodded. Uncharitably, Lily wondered if their father had promised her some money for helping.

“This house belonged to my grandparents. I’m not selling it so you can go to Mexico with your whore.” Her words were slurred, but Lily was so relieved her mother was showing some spine that she didn’t interrupt.

“You’re holding things up to push our wedding back,” the girlfriend whimpered. “You lost him. Just let it go! You don’t need this place. We want to start a family and our place is too small for it.”

At that, her mother burst into tears, and the girlfriend sent a smug look toward Lily.

“Enough. You.” She pointed to the girlfriend. “It’s not necessary for you to be here. This is my mother’s house, and you’ve got no right to make her cry again.”

“You’ll not talk to my future wife that way,” her father stuttered out.

“I’m sorry, it’s just… I can’t take you seriously when you’re walking around with this baby on your arm. I have T-shirts older than she is. Your future wife? Really? You’re here trying to push my mother out of the home she’s lived in most of her life so you and your little friend can have more money. Money you’re not even entitled to.” Yes, she’d taken the opportunity to run her mother over to Edward Chase’s office, and they’d declared the trust the house was in as valid. Rodger Travis had no right to it. Lily’s great-grandmother hadn’t ever liked Rodger, but she’d been close with Lily. She placed the house in a trust before she died, deeding it over to Lily when she turned twenty-five. The house was actually hers, though she had no immediate plans to claim it and undo the trust.

Still she had a rental agreement with her mother to keep them all covered in precisely this situation. Her father wasn’t going to harm her mother, at least not on this one issue.

“Also, Georgia isn’t a community property state. You aren’t entitled to half of anything. She stayed home with your children, hosted dinners for your work people, essentially lived her entire life for you. You can’t take her house and the law will say the same.”

“You keep out of it. You’re only stirring up problems. Your sister tells me what goes on here. I don’t approve.”

“You don’t approve of what? Me stepping in and doing your job ’cause you can’t keep your business in your drawers? Chris is your son, not that you act like it. If I hadn’t have come back to help, he’d be still failing his classes. As for whatever Nancy says, she’s not here unless it’s to borrow money so what does she know anyway? If you don’t approve of another person raising your child, you could do it yourself.”

“You’re my daughter. You will respect me.”

She shook her head slowly, wondering at what point it was where she finally saw him for the soulless, selfish ass**le he was. “You aren’t owed respect, you earn it. Take your whore and get out. The house is in a trust. It’s not community property. She’s not selling it, even if she could. You’ll just have to send teenage Barbie here out to get a job and learn to live on your retirement. You don’t even respect yourself, why should I respect you? You crap all over your family and pretend to be moral? Get out.”

“You can’t tell me to get out.”

“As it happens, I can. You want to beat up on defenseless women, you’ve got a young one right there. You want his kids? Good luck with that. I hope you can keep him interested long enough to make it happen. You need money, ask her parents. You went to high school with them anyway. Oh, wait, that was her grandparents.”