Chapter 3

The mood in the crafts room was hard to describe.

Daryl Gilbert, six-foot-three, was crammed miserably into a tiny plastic chair, his long legs folded up with nowhere to go. He looked, frankly, a little pitiful.

A pair of blunt-tipped children's scissors in his hand, he cut slowly along a sheet of pink paper, as focused as if he were signing a billion-dollar contract.

"Daddy, you have to fold on the dotted line."

"Otherwise the paper crane comes out really, really ugly."

His daughter stood beside him with her hands behind her back, directing him with complete seriousness.

Daryl's jaw was clenched tight, the vein at his temple jumping twice, but he pressed the crease down again exactly the way she told him to.

【Can you believe this? The great CEO of Gilbert Group secretly signed up for thirty origami classes, just so he wouldn't embarrass himself today!】

【And it still turned out like a moth that got run over by a car. I'm dying!】

The comments streamed across the top of his head like a party.

I held my water cup and looked at the hopeless, lopsided crane in his hands, not sure whether to laugh or ask him what the point of all this was.

Then a mess of footsteps came from outside the room.

"Where is that little fox, Charlotte Simmons?"

Kathy Gilbert came storming in, a pair of imperial-green jade earrings at her ears, one hand on Valerie Fox for support.

She spotted Daryl the moment she stepped in, huddled in the plastic chair, and her chest heaved several times before she jabbed a finger at him, shaking with anger.

"Daryl, you're supposed to be closing a deal worth hundreds of millions!"

"And instead you run off to play house with this woman?"

Done with her son, her finger swung around to me.

"You took the money and walked out back then, and now you drag some girl of unknown origin back here to bleed us dry?"

"Let me tell you, the door to the Gilbert house is one you will never set foot through, not in your entire life!"

The shrill voice made my daughter shrink her neck down, her two little hands twisting into Daryl's shirt collar.

Daryl's face darkened, and he braced a hand on the little table to stand.

But my daughter poked her head out from his arms first, still clutching the pink crane she'd just folded, the one that had come out ridiculously crooked.

She worked up her courage and walked right over to Kathy, tipping her soft little face up and studying her for a long moment.

"Grandma, your green stones are so pretty. You look like the fairy lady on TV."

She stood on her toes and held out the crane.

"Daddy and I folded it together. It's for you, pretty Grandma."

"Please don't be angry anymore, okay?"

Kathy's hand froze in midair.

And her eyes, once they landed on the little girl's face, couldn't pull away.

The child already looked so much like Daryl had as a boy, and with a few more blinks of those innocent big eyes, most of the anger drained out of Kathy.

"This child…"

She murmured it, her hand reaching out on its own to take the crane.

"Ma'am, don't let her fool you!"

Seeing which way this was going, Valerie suddenly slapped the crane out of my daughter's hand and raised her voice to a screech.

"Charlotte Simmons slept around while she was overseas. Who even knows whose bastard that is!"

"And she coached the kid on purpose to butter you up!"

"She's trying to use the child to worm her way in. You can't fall for it!"

The crane hit the floor, and Valerie pinned it under her foot, grinding it hard twice with the toe of her shoe.

"Who gave you permission to step on what's mine?"

Daryl spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it was cold enough to shut every mouth in the room.