The Rented Husband (Southern Nights Series)

Chapter 16

**Edited by krisgee**

“The Rented Husband”


2011 Copyright All Rights Reserved

Chapter 16

                Olivia glared at her father.  Narrowing her eyes on the man that had raised her from birth, she threw her hands on her hips and blurted, “What did you do that for?” 

                Ted rubbed the hand that he had just used to punch the vagrant while staring back at his baby girl.  “Because,” he retorted petulantly.  The numb nut took advantage of my baby girl.  He not only married her without my permission but he impregnated her and now… well now I’m stuck with him and there’s nothing that I can do about it.  

                Keeping his thoughts to himself, Ted looked elsewhere.  “He deserved it,” he said flatly.

                She had to work hard to reign in her anger.  If the aging man in front of her had not been her father she would have knocked him one herself.  “That’s not a reason Daddy.”

                 “It is,” he insisted, turning back to his daughter.  His eyes dropped to her abdomen as the words that the gigolo said reverberated in his mind.  ‘She’s having my baby.’  His baby was having a baby.

                 “Dad,” Olivia alleged, “You’re being unreasonable.”

                He started shaking his head, ready to argue with her and Olivia held up her hand to stop him.  “No Daddy, you listen to me.  You, Mama, and everyone else in this family has tried to set me up with every Joe Blow that they thought was supposed to be the right one for me.”  She crooked her fingers as an added annotation when she mentioned ’the right one’.  

                “Obviously, none of them was the right one.  Brody, well,” she shrugged and smiled as she remembered how silly he looked in his sponge bob boxers while standing in her kitchen cooking her breakfast a week ago.  “I like him.”

                “You…like him,” Ted dragged out the phrase that seemed to stick in his throat.  

                “Yes,” she confirmed.  “I really like him.”

                Ted frowned, once again staring at his daughter’s stomach.  “Girl, your mama and I raised you better than that.”

                “What?” she asked, confused.

                He sighed.  “You don’t marry a guy because you like him or,” he stopped, his frown deepening, waving his hand at her belly. “Or just because you’re having his baby.  You marry a man for love Livy.  For better or worse.”

                “Dad, I do love him,” she said, not believing how easy the lie rolled off of her tongue.  She read the suspicion all over her father’s face and persisted, “I doooo.”

                 “Uh huh.  Livy, two people don’t just fall in love - not the kind of love that I’m talking about.  The two of you may lust for each other and you may think its love, but it’s not.  I mean, look at Ashley and Seth; their love is strong and true.  It can weather the storms that come with marriage.  Now look at you and….and…him,” he settled on saying, not verbalizing aloud what he really wanted to call him. Prick.  “You saw for yourself, the first sign of discord and he said he was done.  Is that love to you?”