by M. S. Parker
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t worry about it, Whitehall,” Mitchell growled from over my shoulder. “I can take care of my sister.”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean take care of her?” He looked at me. “Shae, what’s going on? Why is Mitchell here? And why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”
I barked out a nervous laugh. A ghost. Yeah, that was pretty close to the truth. I held out the picture.
“Shae,” Mitchell warned.
“Didn’t you say you had somewhere you were supposed to be today?” I asked, shooting my brother a sharp glance.
He glared at me and then at Jasper before turning back to me again. “I do.” He stomped past us both and climbed into his truck, peeling out of the driveway.
“What’s going on, Shae?” Jasper glanced down at the picture. “Why do you have a picture of Aime Vargas?”
Oh. She had a name. Of course she did.
I walked over to the porch swing and sunk down on it. “Who is she?” I asked.
Jasper came over and sat next to me. “She and Allen dated during his junior year of college and he broke it off at the end of the year. She didn’t come back to UCLA the next year. Where did you get this?”
“In the mail,” I said, holding up the envelope.
“I don’t understand.”
I nodded. “I know you don’t.” After taking a moment to collect myself, I told him the whole story, starting with the first letter I received. As I spoke, the expression on his face kept growing darker. When I finally stopped, he was silent for nearly a whole minute.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
I looked down at my hands. “Because I kept calling you for everything. It wasn’t a big deal for Mitchell to come.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.” The words were mild, but I could hear the edge to them.
“I know.”
“Then why.” He reached out and cupped my chin, turning my head so I had to look at him. “Why wouldn’t you call me or at least tell me about what happened? We were together all night and you never once thought to bring this up? I told you I wanted to take care of you.”
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Because I felt like asking you to stay here for an unknown amount of time would be moving too fast and I didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Shae, you could never do that,” he said sincerely.
“That was only part of it,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I also didn’t want you to feel like I only came to you when I needed something.”
Understanding dawned on his face. “That’s why you were so upset about what I said after dinner.”
I nodded.
He took my hand and squeezed it. “Well, now that I know, what can I do to help?”
I squeezed his hand back and some of the tension went out of me. He was here. He was going to help me, even if it was only by sitting by my side. Before I could think of anything that I needed him to do, a car pulled up the driveway.
We stood and watched as it parked and the driver’s side door opened. A tiny woman got out and started walking towards us.
“Shit,” Jasper breathed. “Aime.”
I didn’t need him to tell me her name again. She didn’t look much different than she did in the photo. What was different, however, was the little girl behind her. Tiny, with light brown curls and dark eyes, she looked a lot like Aime.
My blood turned to ice. I knew what she was going to say, but I stayed where I was and let her finish coming to me.
“Shae Lockwood?” Aime stopped a few feet away from me.
“Yes.” I crossed my arms. “Aime Vargas?”
Her eyes widened a bit in surprise, then flicked to Jasper. She recognized him, I was sure of it, but she didn’t say a word to him. Instead, she focused all of her attention on me.
“I’m Aime.” She reached behind her and pulled the girl up beside her. “This is Jenny. She’s Allen’s daughter and we’re here for what’s hers.”
Chapter 8
For the first couple weeks after Allen had died, there were times when it had all felt so surreal that I thought I could convince myself that it was all just a bad dream. A few times I’d even had dreams that none of this had happened, that Allen hadn’t died right in front of me. That we were still married, had a family.
This was another one of those moments.
It had to be a dream. A nightmare, actually.
There was no way I could be standing here, next to my dead husband’s best friend who I was now dating, listening to said late husband’s ex-girlfriend say that he had a daughter.
Allen didn’t have kids.
We’d wanted kids and had planned to start trying just before he’d died. Or, at least, that’s what I’d thought we were trying to do. Then I’d gotten the letter letting me know he’d been so sick. Why had he led me to believe we could have children together when he knew we never would?
Or that he already had a kid.
A daughter.
One with big dark eyes and light brown curls.
One who was standing behind her mother and looking for all the world like she didn’t want to be there.
It was the look on the girl’s face more than anything that broke me out of the strange trance that the words had put me under.
“What?”
My response was far from elegant or even particularly unique or insightful, but it was a question at least.
Aime smirked at me and the surreal feeling disappeared under annoyance. Even if she hadn’t been Allen’s ex, I wouldn’t have liked her.
“Allen and I were together for a year,” Aime said. “Jenny’s his daughter.”
I looked at Jasper, waiting for him to tell me that she was lying, that Allen didn’t have a child, but Jasper didn’t say a word. He was staring at the little girl. I wondered for a moment if he was trying to see the same thing I’d tried to see when I looked at her. But it was pointless to try to see Allen in the girl. She looked too much like her mother.
A mother who was totally gorgeous.
I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was still wearing Jasper’s t-shirt and sweatpants.
“Jasper.” I reached out and touched his arm.
He looked down at me.
“Jasper Whitehall.” Aime’s smirk widened into a smile. “I thought that was you. I can’t believe it’s been ten years.”
“Aime.” Jasper didn’t look at her.
“Well, since you know that Allen and I were...together, then you know that Jenny is Allen’s daughter.”
I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around his arm. “Is that true, Jasper? Did you know about her?” My stomach twisted. “Did Allen know?”
“No.” Jasper’s tone was firm. “Allen and Aime dated. There was no baby.” He turned towards Aime, his eyes flashing. “She looks a bit young to have been Allen’s child because I definitely know that he met Shae three months after you two broke up and he never cheated.”
I had a feeling if Jenny hadn’t been there, Jasper’s word choice would’ve been a lot less polite.
Aime’s mouth flattened. “You don’t know shit.”
I winced, then glared at her. I wanted to tell her to watch her mouth, but Jenny wasn’t my daughter.
She was my step-daughter?
What would she be to me if Allen was her father? Nothing because he was dead? Would that even matter?
My head throbbed and I knew I had a massive headache coming on. My eyes dropped to the girl as she practically hid behind her mother.
“How old are you?” I figured I was more likely to get a truthful answer out of the kid. Some kids might have been natural liars, but my gut said she was going to tell me the truth.
“Eight and a half.”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
“So you would’ve gotten pregnant...” I let my voice trail off.
“A little over nine years ago.” Aime crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. �
�When Jasper here will tell you that I was dating Allen.”
One look at Jasper’s face was enough to tell me that she was being truthful about the timeline at least.
“You might’ve been with him, but that doesn’t mean Jenny’s his daughter,” Jasper said. He reached down and took my hand, cold fingers grasping mine. I wasn’t even sure if he was doing it for my comfort or his.
“His name’s on the birth certificate.”
I was suddenly glad Jasper was holding my hand because if he hadn’t been, I most likely would’ve tried to slap the smug expression off her face, even with Jenny there.
“That doesn’t mean sh...anything,” Jasper said, his gaze darting down to the girl and then back up again. “You could’ve put anyone’s name down on that. Could’ve been mine even though we both know I turned you down flat.”
My fingers twitched in his hand as Aime’s cheeks flushed red. She looked down at our hands and then shook her head.
“Are you kidding me? You were Allen’s best friend and now you’re fucking his wife?” She rolled her eyes when she saw me look at Jenny. “Trust me, not the first time the kid’s heard that word.”
“This has nothing to do with us,” Jasper said. “This is about you claiming to have had Allen’s child.”
“She’s Allen’s,” Aime said. “We both know it.”
“All I know is that you’re saying she is and your proof is that my late husband’s name’s on the birth certificate and that you’d been sleeping with him during the time she’d been conceived.” My voice was stronger than I’d expected.
“Oh, honey, you don’t wanna play chicken with me,” she said. “You’ll end up smeared all over the road.”
She intended to intimidate me, and I supposed if I’d met her back when Allen and I had first started dating, it might’ve worked, but I’d spent far too much time with the Lockwoods looking down at me, trying to do the same thing she was trying. If May Lockwood couldn’t scare me away from her son, there was no way some blast from Allen’s past would manage to freak me out with a single comment.
“I don’t know you,” I said. “And you don’t know me, but let me tell you this. You can’t scare me into giving you what you want.”
One side of Aime’s mouth twisted up into a smile. “Oh, it’s not giving me what I want. It’s giving my daughter what she deserves.”
“Why now?” Jasper asked suddenly. Aime and I both looked at him. “Why did it take you nine years to come here with her? Why didn’t you tell Allen when you first found out?”
That was an excellent point, I realized. I hadn’t even thought about that. I looked expectantly at Aime.
“You’re the ones who said Allen didn’t know.” She patted the little girl’s head. “What would you say if I told you that Allen knew? That he’d known since before Jenny was born, but that he didn’t want to be tied down with a family. That he’d been paying me all this time and the reason I came forward now is because the money’s gone.”
I was going to throw up.
It couldn’t be true. Her claim was bad enough, but to say that Allen had known, that he’d been paying her all this time and lying about it. It was too much.
“You will give me what I want,” she said, taking a step forward. Her dark eyes were flashing angrily. “And if I have to, I’ll take you to court for it. I’ll make sure the whole world knows what a bastard Allen Lockwood was and what a bitch he married.”
“That’s enough.” Jasper stepped in front of me, using his grip on my hand to move me behind him. “You need to leave. Now.”
I’d known he was a big man, but I’d never really seen him use his size before. Now, it was a presence, a presence that stood between myself and Aime.
“I’ll leave,” Aime said. “But this isn’t the end of it.”
Jasper didn’t move until Aime’s car disappeared down the driveway. Only then did he turn towards me, his arms automatically going around me, pulling me against his broad chest.
My thoughts were chaotic, my head spinning, and I let myself relax into his embrace, let him hold me. How could this be happening? Just one more thing on top of everything else that was going on.
Aime had sent the threats. Even if the last picture hadn’t been of her and Allen, I would’ve guessed that she’d been the culprit. She wasn’t just pissed at Allen, but at me too. I knew why. He’d broken up with her and less than six months later, he’d met me. Of course she had a right to be angry, especially since she’d been pregnant.
But none of that meant that Allen had known about Jenny.
He couldn’t have known. Not like that. The man I’d known couldn’t have just walked away from his daughter, no matter what Aime said. If he’d known about Jenny, he would’ve provided for her, but not hidden her. He would’ve told me about her, would have shared custody. He would’ve put her into his will.
He would have told me.
Like he would’ve told me that he was sick? That he was dying?
Allen had lied to me about that. Had killed himself.
What if he’d lied to me about this too?
Chapter 9
“Do you think he knew?” My question was muffled against his chest. “Tell me the truth, Jas. Do you think he knew about his daughter?”
He gripped my shoulders and pulled me back so that we could look at each other. “No, Shae.” There was no doubt in his eyes. “If Allen had known, he never would’ve let Aime have custody. He would’ve fought tooth and nail to get custody of his daughter. He would have told you. Would have wanted her to meet you.”
“Are you sure?” I didn’t like how small and unsure I sounded, but I wasn’t embarrassed by it. Jasper was the one person I didn’t have to hide from, didn’t have to be strong for.
He cupped my chin, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip. “Why wouldn’t he want his daughter to meet you?”
I looked away. “I don’t know...”
“Hey.” His fingers tightened on my chin. “Look at me.” His voice was low, firm.
Reluctantly, I did as he said.
“You are a kind, caring woman, Shae. An amazing woman. Any man would be grateful to have you meet their child, to be a mother to their daughter.” He ran his fingers down the side of my face. “Allen was like a brother to me and I knew how he felt about you. If he’d had a daughter, he would’ve told me. Then he would’ve told you when he knew things were going to be serious, which was about two days after he met you.”
I leaned into his touch and closed my eyes. “I know that. I mean, I know it in my head, but after the letter...”
“You aren’t sure what to believe.” He finished my sentence.
I sighed and opened my eyes. “How do you manage to know what I’m thinking?”
He smiled as he leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. “Because I’ve spent the last eight years watching you.” He groaned a moment later and chuckled. “That sounded really creepy, didn’t it?”
I laughed, some of the tension easing. “A little bit.”
He raised an eyebrow and slid his hands down my arms. “Any chance I could do something to make you forget about it?”
“Well.” I pretended to consider the question. “My brother’s being an ass. My late husband’s ex-girlfriend just announced that they had a child together. What I really want is to not have to think about any of it.”
He looked down at me for a moment and then took a step back. I gave him a puzzled look as he took my hand and led me off the porch.
“Where are we going?” I’d been thinking my request was pretty obvious. Maybe I should’ve just told him that I wanted him to take me into the house and fuck me until I couldn’t remember my own name.
“Let’s take a walk.”
“A walk?” I echoed.
He smiled, his eyes shining. “Yes, Shae. Let’s take a walk. Show me how well the vineyard’s doing. Let’s talk grapes and wine.”
I let him lead me towards the vines and we began to walk down the r
ows. We moved slowly, taking our time. It was a perfect October afternoon. The sun was out, but there were enough clouds to give us some shade. The breeze was cool but not too cold and carried just a hint of autumn. The scent of the grapes was heavy on the air, a rich, heady smell that reminded me of the prior years when I’d take walks like this with Allen.
“How’s the harvest looking?” Jasper asked, finally breaking the silence.
“Good.” I squinted up at the sun, enjoying the warmth. “Jacques says we didn’t lose enough in the fire to make much of a dent in our production. If the frost can stay away just a bit longer, everything should go smoothly.”
“Have you been watching the weather reports? It looks like things are going to be going your way.”
I laughed and shook my head.
“What?” Jasper gave me a confused look.
“Are you seriously talking to me about the weather?”
He laughed too. “I suppose I am.”
“Do you really want to talk about the grapes and frost?”
He stopped so suddenly that I took an extra step before I realized he wasn’t beside me anymore. Then he was pulling me towards him hard enough that I automatically put my hands out as I collided with his chest.
“No.” His voice was low, husky. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Then what do you want?” I asked softly.
“You, Shae.” He bent his head towards me. “Always you.”
The moment his mouth touched mine, everything else ceased to matter. His tongue slipped between my lips as one hand cupped the back of my head. The other hand pressed against the small of my back, burning through the soft cotton of my shirt. His shirt.
“Shae,” he murmured my name as he broke the kiss. He rested his forehead against mine as he pushed one hand through my hair. He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“You apologize too much,” I said. “Why this time?” I slid my hands down his chest and around his waist. I loved the strength I felt there, the way his muscles were firm and tight under my palms.