“You didn’t?” This was news to Mia. Holly had only met Paul once, but they’d seemed to get on like gangbusters. Her sister had never voiced any criticism of him. “Why?”
“He never seemed to pay enough attention to you. You know all those little things guys do when they’re head over heels in love? Like—I don’t know—rubbing your back or checking if your drink needs a refill. Or gazing lovingly at you from across the room when you’re talking to someone else. He never did any of that.”
“Not all men do those things.” What Holly was describing sounded like a fantasy rather than real life. They were the sorts of things Mia had assumed men only did in books and movies.
“They do when they’re infatuated,” Holly said. “You deserve a boyfriend who hangs on your every word. And that wasn’t Paul.”
It definitely was not. Maybe Holly was right. Maybe those were exactly the sorts of signs Mia should have picked up.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling like a fool. “You never said anything.”
“Well, you know…you were so into him.” Holly sounded regretful. “I didn’t want to make waves.”
“Promise me that the next time you don’t like my boyfriend, you’ll tell me. You could have saved me a lot of grief and wasted time.”
“I promise,” Holly said. “As long as you promise not to hold it against me.”
“Deal.” Mia reached for her coffee cup, which had long since grown cold. “So did you call just to check up on me?” She swallowed the dregs with a grimace.
“Not exactly. I have a question, although I think I already know the answer.”
Uh oh. Mia recognized that tone, and it usually presaged something unpleasant. “What is it?” she asked, pushing her chair back to carry her empty mug into the kitchen.
“Have you told Dad about the job and your move yet?”
Mia hung her head with guilt as she set the mug in the sink. “Ummm…well…”
“Sis.” For a younger sister, Holly was surprisingly good at sounding stern and disappointed.
“I know.”
“You have to tell him.”
“I will.”
It wasn’t entirely Mia’s fault. She hadn’t actually heard from her father in several months, which was par for their relationship. Sure, she could have called him herself to break the news, but it wasn’t a conversation she was eager to have. So she hadn’t.
Mia knew exactly how her father, a quantitative analyst who’d put his doctorate in statistics to work on Wall Street, would feel about her new job. He’d made his disappointment in her academic and professional choices clear enough already.
If she’d followed in his footsteps like he’d wanted, he could have helped her at every step of her career, smoothing the way for her to jump from the right schools into the right jobs with the right companies. Which might have been fine if she’d had any appetite for finance or the ambition to make ungodly amounts of money the way he had.
Mia preferred the creativity and challenge of pure mathematics—something her father had never been able to understand. Her choice of graduate school had been yet another disappointment. Choosing UCLA over his precious alma mater, Princeton? Was madness as far as her father was concerned. A deliberate choice to be mediocre instead of exceptional.
Mia had followed her heart instead of her father’s advice, and now she was paying the price for it. She wasn’t in a hurry to tell him it wasn’t turning out as well as she’d hoped.
Holly let out an annoyed sigh. “I’m seeing Dad on Saturday and I don’t want to have to cover for you.”
“What are you seeing Dad for?”
Even though Holly only lived a borough away from their father, she didn’t see much more of him than Mia did. Generally, his interactions with his daughters were confined to the winter holidays and odd special occasions—when he could be bothered to spare the time. Mia had lost count of all the birthday parties, recitals, and award ceremonies he’d missed over the years. He’d even missed Holly’s high school graduation, canceling at the last minute because of a “work trip” they later learned had actually been a tryst in Hawaii with his mistress.
Holly sighed again. “It’s his and Mindy’s fifth anniversary, don’t you know? So of course they’re having a big party to show off how blissfully happy they are, and my presence has been commanded.”
Mindy was their father’s third wife. Not the wife he’d cheated on with the mistress in Hawaii, but