Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(86)

She felt like someone had just yanked the whole world right out from underneath her. “What, Daddy? How… where did you hear that?” she tried to speak and found herself stumbling through the sentence.

He raised his voice a little. “Just answer my question! Are you having an affair with one of your professors?”

She couldn’t lie to him. She could not sit there in front of her father and lie to him, and she suddenly felt more ashamed than she ever had in her whole life. If there was one thing she would have wished to keep secret from him, it would have been her relationship with Connor.

She took a deep breath and nodded her head, speaking quietly. “Yes, Daddy.” She wanted to add so many things to that statement. She wanted to tell him what a wonderful man Connor was, and that it was not just a tawdry affair. She wanted to tell him how much Connor meant to her and to help him understand what a wonderful thing she had found with him, but she knew that she shouldn’t say much more than whatever the basic answer to his question was, at least while he was so angry.

He shook his head slowly at her and pressed his lips together in a tight line. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing having an affair with some older man who is one of your professors? Huh?”

She felt her heart pound and her body tremble as she sucked in a breath to try to answer him. “Daddy, it isn’t really like that, it’s more like-“

He cut her off. “Don’t you dare say love, young woman. Don’t you dare. What you are doing right now is messing up your life! You are making one of the biggest mistakes that you are ever likely to make! I can’t believe you’re doing that! I can’t believe that my own daughter is sneaking around the campus having an affair with one of her professors!

“I raised you better than that! That’s something that some cheap little tramp might do, but not you! Not my daughter! I’m so disappointed in you right now! You’re letting me down, and you’re letting yourself down!”

Harold had never hit Catalina, but his words just then felt like a wrecking ball to the stomach and she could barely stand to look at him, knowing how upset with her he was. Disappointing her father was about the worst punishment she could imagine. Nothing he could do to her could ever make her feel as bad as him being disappointed in her or ashamed of her, and she could see clearly that he was both, just then. It devastated her.

He took another long pull off of his beer and rose up to his full height of six and a half feet. He was a big man; strong and full bodied, but not heavy. He worked far too hard to be overweight.

Harold began walking toward her and he stopped when he was a few feet away from her, looking down at her in outrage. “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” He waved his hand at her.

“I never had the chance that you have! No one ever did anything for me like I am doing for you, working my fingers to the bone every single day so you can have the money you need to go to school and make something of yourself; make something of your life!”

She felt guilt begin to ball up and build in her heart and stomach. He began to pace in front of her, looking down at her.

“I never got any kind of opportunity like you have! I’m not jealous that you have it, and I don’t begrudge it at all, you know that, I always wanted better for you than I had!” He raised his voice a little and she dropped her eyes to the floor.

“I know that, daddy,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t go to work and just about kill myself, spending my life toiling so that you can pull some kind of stupid stunt like this!” He kept walking back and forth in front of her, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m not about to sit here and watch you throw away the chance at a good life just so some despicable old man can lure you into his bed! You deserve more than that! You deserve better than that!” He raised his voice again and she did not look up from the floor, but instead just watched his sock-covered feet moving back and forth in front of her.

His arm went sweeping in an arc and he continued. “He probably has all kinds of young innocent girls that he coerces into sleeping with him, and you probably think that you’re special to him! Well, you’re not! You’re not anything to him! You’re nothing more than the next girl he’s screwing, and that’s all. You don’t mean anything at all to him! You think you matter to him? You don’t! He’s just using you, and I’m not about to put up with anybody using my baby, especially like that!”

Catalina didn’t want to defy her father, but she had to defend Connor. She looked up at him then and shook her head. “No, daddy, it isn’t like that! I don’t know why you think it is, but he is really special to me, and I’m special to him! There are professors who have reputations for having affairs with all kinds of students every semester, but he isn’t one of them.

“In fact, I’ve been taking his class for four years now, and he’s never had an affair with a student. It’s just not how he is!” She hoped that her defense would ease her father’s anger and help him to see that there was another side to it altogether.

Her defense of Connor only fueled the anger in her father more. “You think you’re special to him? You’re not! Has he come by here? Has he met me and stood in my house and shook my hand and introduced himself? Has he asked me if he could see you? Has he acted with any kind of honor or respect at all? No! No he has not.