Growing up, my parents taught me that I could have whatever I wanted. That’s the mentality I grew up with. I grew up, going to the best elementary schools, the best high schools and was one of the most popular girls. I was the head cheerleader and President of Student Counsel. I had the quarterback football player. I was the girl that everybody wanted to be.

Why?

They wanted to be me because I could get anything I wanted. If I wanted a new car, I would go to my father. If I wanted an entire new wardrobe, I would go to my father. In the simplest terms, I got everything I wanted. Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve calmed down. I know that you can’t get everything you want and I think a few nights ago when Nick and I went to the awards show I realized that.

He isn’t a new car and he isn’t a brand new party dress. He’s the new head designer that my father is counting on to make the Spring collection the best one yet. He’s also someone that I look at daily, wondering if I could possibly want him more than I already do.

Yesterday I sat in my office and while I was supposed to be looking over press releases for my father’s assistant, I caught myself daydreaming. I wasn’t daydreaming about running off with Prince Charming and living happily ever after. I daydreamed about lying in Nick’s arms, on a beach somewhere, looking out at the water and feeling the wind blow against our skin. Hell, it doesn’t have to be the beach. I would be happy lying in his arms in a cheap hotel somewhere in the middle of the desert. I just want him to hold me again.

That’s the one thing my Daddy can’t buy.

“Erin,” my father said, walking into my office. It was almost five o’clock and I was ready to leave before I ran into Nick and dragged him back to my place. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Sure Dad.” I shut down my computer and watched him as he sat down nervously in the chair across from me. “What’s going on?”

“It’s about your mother.”

“What did she do now? Invite Daniel to my place?”

“Your birth mother,” he said. I paused, not even realizing that he did indeed consider her my mother. “I had someone track her down, and try to find her.”

I was in shock that he actually did that. He sat there telling me what his private investigator had found out. Apparently my mother, Erica, moved back home to Alabama after she gave birth to me and was paid off. A few years later, she married a politician from Atlanta who consequently is now the Governor of Georgia. They have four children together, triplets (two girls and a boy) who are eighteen and a son who is fourteen. My father seemed a bit shocked that she made such a good life for herself.

“So my mother is a governor’s wife?” I asked. I was a little in shock myself. I thought that maybe my mother was still someone’s maid in another part of the country or world or maybe that she was just the average housewife. “Wow,”

“I thought about calling her but I’m not,” my father said, looking at me. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “That’s their address and number. If you want to go there and visit her you can,”

“But aren’t they highly guarded and stuff like the President?”

“Be the socialite your mother wants you to be. You can get in there like that,” he said as he stood up. “I don’t want you to go alone though,”

“Can Lily come with me?”

“I would prefer if a man went with you. Call me over-protective but I like you going somewhere with someone I can trust around you,” he said. I rolled my eyes. He would probably hire a bodyguard for me to watch my every move. “So I’m going to ask Nickolas if he will go with you.”

Hold up. Nick? Trip? Airplane? Me?

“Dad, Nick? I mean, he’s still relatively new here and we don’t know each other that well –“ I started to say as he interrupted me.

“He informed me of his own personal issues. He’s adopted so I think it would be good if you had someone there with you that would understand.”

“Daddy, Lily would understand too. She’s going for her master’s in psychology for Pete’s sake.”

“If you go, Nickolas is going,” my father said as he walked out of my office.

I sat there, looking through our adjoining doors at Nick. He was sitting at his desk, reading something. I wondered if he knew that he was about to make a trip with me – that is if I decide to go. I looked down at the paper, reading my mother’s name.

Mrs. Erica Richards.

I look back through the door to see my father talking to Nick. I wondered if my father actually wanted us together but decided to make it seem impossible. He wanted me to take Nick to the awards and now he wants me to go to Atlanta with him. I don’t know if I can even be on an airplane with him without testing out his mile high club contributions.

“So let me get this straight,” Lily said that night as we sat in my apartment, pigging out on our favorite: cheese pizza, “Your father wants Nick to go with you to meet your mother?”

“You’ve got it about right,” I replied, smiling. “My mother is the Governor of Georgia’s wife and they have four children. I’m her bastard child by her former employer. You know she’s going to be thrilled to see me,”

“So are you really going to go there? Are you sure you want to? I mean, like you said, she might not want to see you – ever,” Lily said as I looked away. She was right. Maybe my mother didn’t want to see me. Maybe I was the skeleton in her closet that she never wanted to admit to. Maybe I was the thing that would keep her husband from being reelected or something.

“Yep, our flight leaves Friday morning,” I said, smiling at her. She looked at me like she knew what was on my mind. Sure, I’m going on this trip to try and meet my birth mother, but there’s another reason.

I can be alone with Nick.

I don’t mean be alone with him in a sexual way. What I mean is to get to know him better and talk. We can hang out and my father won’t question it. If we did that here in Los Angeles, my father would interrogate me and ask if I have motives or either fire Nick. Now, I can be alone with him and my father can’t say anything.

Finally something is looking up for me.

“Erin, someone’s at the door,” Lily said as I snapped out of my thoughts. “I’ll get it.” I ran my hands over my eyes, trying to get the thoughts of Nick out of my head when I heard his voice.

“Oh, so you’re Nick?” Lily asked. I turned around to see Nick walk in. He looked as if he had just been working out and that alone caused me to be out of breath. A huge smile smeared across Lily’s face as she mouthed the words “Fine as hell” to me. “Well it’s nice to meet you. I’m Lily.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about you from Mr. Davidson and from Erin here,” Nick said as he watched me stand up. “I was just dropping by to talk to you about that whole trip thing.”

“Yeah, I was just telling Lily about it here. She knows what happened so don’t worry,” I replied, watching Lily as she walked past me with a smirk. “It was my father’s idea. He said he wanted someone to go with me that he could trust, and well, I assumed he’d hire a body guard or something and then he said your name.”

“Yeah, it made me feel nervous because he said that he trusted you with me,” Nick said as he sat down on the edge of my sofa. “I mean, I can tell him I can’t go if you’d like,”

“Do you not want to go?” Lily asked, butting into the conversation. We both stared at her in return. “What? Get your thoughts and feelings out in the open people.”

“No, I want to go. I know what this whole thing is like but if Erin here is going to feel uncomfortable or anything,” he said, pausing to take a deep breath, “then I’m not sure if I should go.”

“I have no problem with you going,” I said, sitting back down in the spot I was sitting in before his arrival. “It would be a lot more boring if some huge bodyguard was going with me.”

Nick smiled and before I could help myself, I smiled back. I looked at Lily who had a smile on her face as wide as the state of Texas. It looked as if she was trying to play some little game of matchmaker against my father’s office policy.

“Great, then I guess I’ll leave you two ladies to your pizza and head home and shower,” he said as I stood up to walk him out.

“Been working out?”

“Yeah, lifting weights at the new gym,” Nick said, turning around to tell Lily goodbye. “See you at work tomorrow.”

“Bye,” I whispered, shutting the door. I turned around, leaning against it. Lily jumped up, running up to me and looked as if she was a huge bulldog and I was a piece of meat. “What?”

“Screw your father’s office crap, did you not see him?” Lily asked as I rolled my eyes. I didn’t feel like hearing this same stuff again. “Erin, okay, the way he looked at you just then, I never once saw Daniel look at you like that,”

“Lily, drop it. I’ve only known him for three weeks if that. Don’t compare him to Daniel,” I said, moving away from her. “It’s different with Nick. It’s like he understands me in a way. He knows all the right things to say to me that just make me want to melt into his arms. Sure, I wouldn’t mind sleeping with him, but I just don’t think I need that with him. I just need him.”

Did I just say that I needed him? That may be the first time in my life that I’ve actually said that I needed something and meant it. That reminds me of when I was eighteen and told my father that I needed a new Mercedes because the other kids at school had the newest models. I didn’t really need a new Mercedes. I was being a spoiled little rich girl. Now, I think I know what I need.

I just have to figure out how to have my cake and eat it too.