Chapter 1Dad Is My Sugar Daddy

I was a high-risk pregnancy, which might be why I have a hard time picking up on social cues.

Like when I ordered pungent snail noodles to the office for lunch, and my boss, Ava, walked past my desk with a smirk.

"Enjoying that, are we?"

The next day, I ordered a bowl for her too.

Or when I put in for time off and the HR manager asked me, three times, "Are you sure this is for a concert? Not a family emergency?"

I nodded enthusiastically every single time.

Everyone had written me off as a lost cause, which only made them treat me with a strange kind of protective pity.

It wasn't until the company's funding dried up and the office was shrouded in a fog of despair that things changed.

"I have an idea," I announced.

Everyone laughed.

"Gigi, sweetie," my deskmate said, patting my arm. "Don't make things harder right now."

Why wouldn't they believe me?

I mean, how could someone this clueless be this cheerful if they weren't from a well-off family?

Besides... those fertility treatments don't pay for themselves.

* * *

After half a year of job hunting with nothing to show for it, I was starting to panic. My family, however, remained annoyingly optimistic.

"Don't worry, honey. You have to believe in yourself," they'd say. "You're not lucky enough to stay unemployed forever."

So, for my next interview, I dove deep into the internet's archives and unearthed a few "killer interview tips."

On the day of the interview, the lobby was packed with at least fifty other candidates, the air thick with the tense, crackling energy of overachievers.

And then there was me, a golden retriever who'd wandered into a wolf den, just looking around with wide-eyed curiosity.

When a broom leaning against the wall clattered to the floor, I saw my chance. I leaped up and set it right.

I spotted a crumpled piece of paper on the office floor and, with a sense of purpose, picked it up and tossed it in the trash.

At the end of the interview, I gave the panel a deep bow and proceeded to walk backward out of the conference room, only turning around when my head connected solidly with the doorframe.

That night, my dad looked at me over his newspaper. "Let me guess, Gigi. You got those tips from some twenty-year-old issue of Reader's Digest?"

He was convinced that my brain, already scrambled by the fertility hormones used to create me, had now been further poisoned by corny self-help articles.

A unique combination of clueless and gullible.

"Who in their right mind," he declared, "would ever hire you?"

Someone did.

When the HR manager called to offer me the job, her voice was laced with pure disbelief.

I found out later what my boss, Ava, had actually said.

"I'm surrounded by sharks, and I'm going crazy. Hire the ditzy one. She can be our mascot. At least then I won't have the lowest IQ in the room anymore."