Something Gained: A Billionaire Romance

Chapter: 22

RYLAN

"Daddy." Leaving Dad's hand, Ava came running and tightly hugged my right leg. I bent down and picked her up.

"My little girl missed me?" She quickly wrapped her arms around my neck and put her face on my shouldeR.

"Sweetheart?" She just stuffed her face in the crook of my neck. I sighed realizing that she wasn't going to respond. Whenever I would be back after a business trip, she would always act like this, speak less and cling to me for at least a day. This was her way of expressing how much she missed me.

"Aww, she missed you!" Elena smiled at her.

"She did, a lot." Dad agreed before chuckling.

"So did you two have a good time?" Dad stared right at me.

"Yeah." My answer was stiff but I'm sure he wouldn't have expected me to gush over it even if it was my actual honeymoon.

"It was beautiful. We had a great time." Elena covered up with a bright beautiful smile. She was stupid if she thought she could fool Dad into believing anything.

"That's nice." He offered a smile that was obviously too insincere.

"I will go and make some coffee for all of us." Elena turned around to go into the kitchen when Dad stopped her.

"I will have to leave now. Some other day. Besides, you two came back this morning only. Have some rest. I would have come tomorrow but Ava won't rest until she meets her father." Saying this he patted Ava's back before leaving.

I sat beside Ava while she went on showing me what all she had drawn in the last week. The door to her room slightly creaked open and Elena let herself partially in.

"Are you coming down for breakfast?" The question was directed at me.

"Yeah." She nodded and glanced at Ava once before closing the door. Helping Ava clean up all her drawing supplies, we went downstairs. As I settled in my seat, I heard her small voice.

"Daddy?" She looked at me with her puppy eyes and I had no heart to refuse her.

"Come here." I picked her up and placed her on my lap. We were midway through lunch when my phone rang.

"Hello?" I brought another spoon of eggs to Ava's mouth.

"Good Afternoon, Mr. Parker. There's something important." I knew it was something important because no one would have called me otherwise on a sunday.

"I'm listening."

"Mr. Parker, the Russo group of companies. They want the meeting to be arranged today." My eyes immediately found Ava's head. I wasn't going to go to the office today. She wouldn't let me either.

"It's not possible. I can't come to the office today." I was met with Elena's curious glance.

"But they are saying that they have got some urgent issues pressing and they only have today for the meeting." I let out an inaudible sigh. This deal was important to me, I had been working on it for a while.

"I'll call you back." I hung up.

"You look stressed." Elena was looking at me with furrowed eyebrows.

"Running a business does that to you."

"Ava." She stared up at me. I wiped the bit of food sticking to the corner of her mouth. "Daddy needs to go to the office."

"No!" She gripped the sleeve of my t-shirt.

"Sweetheart, it's only a matter of a few hours." I said with a convincing smile which apparently had no effect.