by Holly Rayner
And I’m sure she’s right that it was the whiskey formula. There’s no reason to lie about that part.
He sighed and closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to believe that this could be true. He had wanted to believe that there had been some mistake. But here was the evidence, right in front of him. He had demanded proof, and Rhea had obliged.
A part of him wished he had never seen this video. He couldn’t forget the image of his father sneaking around another man’s office like a criminal.
No, not like a criminal. He was a criminal.
And everything Zach had, all the trappings of his new life… they had all come from this crime.
Of course, he was still a successful businessman in his own right. He had paid his father back the money he had loaned Zach to help him get his start; only after that had he gone on to make his billions. And that did make it a little better. It wasn’t as if he was explicitly living off of the money his father’s crime had brought them.
But still, there was no denying that Zach would never have been able to open EcoKitchen without his father’s help. The foundation of his wealth was corrupt. And even though all the money he had now was his own, he couldn’t feel good about it, knowing that he had only been able to earn it on the back of this crime.
What am I going to do?
He opened the second attachment in the email.
Immediately, his mind seemed to grind to a halt.
He was looking at a sonogram picture.
He had seen a few of them before, of course, in the movies and when pregnant employees had brought their pictures in to work to show off. He had never been particularly impressed. They looked like static on an old television that wasn’t connected properly, he thought, or the shapes in one of those paintings that was designed to make you un-focus your eyes and look for the hidden image. He had always needed the shape of the baby itself pointed out to him.
But today he saw the baby immediately. It was unmissable.
It was ninety percent head, the rest of the body barely a shape at all. Zach stared, mesmerized, then carefully covered the baby’s head with his thumb, marveling at the fact that he was able to obscure it completely.
It’s so small.
He made a cradle with his arms, estimating the size he believed a newborn baby would be. Here was the size his baby would be when he held it for the first time. But right now it was tiny, as small as a peanut.
It has such a long way to go.
He felt a small smile begin to creep across his face.
Whatever had happened with his father and Rhea’s family, it was the past. This baby, and the feelings that existed between the two of them now—those things were the future.
He couldn’t expect Rhea to get over what had happened so easily. But after all, she had reached out to him when she’d learned she was pregnant. He needed no further evidence that she did want to move beyond their fathers’ conflict.
He had pushed her away.
That might have been the biggest mistake of my life.
But he would get her back. She was still carrying his child, and she was still his best friend and the only woman he had ever truly loved. He wouldn’t allow this piece of their history to tear them apart.
He hit reply to her email.
What could he possibly say in an email that would sum up everything he needed her to hear?
Finally he typed: “I’m sorry. Let’s talk?”
He pressed send. Hopefully it would be enough to compel her to listen to an in-person apology.
Chapter 15
Zach
Zach spent the next few days feeling as though he had slipped back in time. He checked his phone obsessively, anxious to hear from Rhea, but there was no reply to his message by text or by email.
He tried again, of course, sending additional messages, making it as clear as he could to her that he wanted nothing more than to apologize. He left her voice messages indicating that he wouldn’t rest until he had the opportunity to beg her for forgiveness. He wrote a long email expressing that he knew he had been wrong to treat her the way he had when she’d come to tell him about her pregnancy. He texted her every morning with some variant of “I hope you have a good day, and I hope today is the day I hear from you.”
He was met with nothing but silence in return.
It was just like it had been before he had learned she was pregnant.
He was unable to relax, unable to settle to anything. What did it mean that she was refusing to speak to him? Had she made her decision? Had she already deemed him unworthy of forgiveness?
Or was there still a possibility that he might win her over, if he found the right words to say?
If she’s not going to forgive me, she ought to at least tell me!
It was a thought that visited him at his darkest times, but he did his best to force it away. He couldn’t allow himself to become angry with Rhea. If she had decided to keep away from him, that was no more than he deserved after the way he had treated her. He hadn’t earned the right to be a father to their child. She had come to him hoping for someone who would be on her side, and he had been cruel and accusatory.
I let the conversation focus on my father when I should have been thinking about our child.
He was still struggling to deal with what he now knew his father had done. Lincoln had been his only family for so long. Zach had looked up to him, loved him, trusted him. Now he was working to reconcile those feelings with a new knowledge he couldn’t deny.
His father had been a thief.
Maybe it had only happened once. Maybe it had been a moment of weakness. But it was a difficult thing to forgive. It had been a betrayal of Rhea and her family, and now its repercussions were affecting Zach in an extreme way.
But his father was gone. Zach couldn’t confront him about his actions. He couldn’t express the anger he felt over what his father had done.
The only thing he could do was try to find a way to forgive.
It was difficult. But he was managing.
But forgiveness would come a lot easier if I knew my relationship with Rhea hadn’t been ruined.
When his messages didn’t work, he tried sending her gifts. He ordered flowers and had them sent to her apartment. He sent baskets of fruit, arrays of organic jams. He even visited a jeweler, chose several pieces he thought she might like based upon the things he had already seen her wearing, and had them sent over one by one every day for a week.
He tracked the shipments on his computer, ensuring that each one arrived on schedule. Every time one of his tracked items gave him the cheery message, “Your package has been delivered!” he felt an irrepressible rush of excitement. Maybe this would be the gift that persuaded her to call him.
But it never was. Days went by, then weeks, and she still hadn’t called.
And then, at last, one evening, the phone rang.
Zach stared at her number for a long time before picking up, unable to believe his good fortune. Could it really be her? Was she really reaching out to him at last?
He answered the call. “Rhea?”
When she spoke, she sounded so exhausted that his heart broke. “Zach, you can’t keep sending me jewelry.”
“I want to give you jewelry,” he protested.
“You have to stop,” she insisted. “It’s not as if I’m going to wear it.”
“Why won’t you?”
“You know why. You and I don’t have that relationship anymore. How am I supposed to wear this necklace without thinking about that?”
“Do you like it?” he asked her. “The necklace, I mean?”
“I love it,” she said quietly. “You must have known I would.”
“Then you should wear it.”
“Whether I like it or not isn’t the point, Zach.”
“Rhea, please,” he said. “Please don’t throw away everything we had. I know things are complicated right now—”
“Complicated is putting it mildly,” she said.<
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“I know that,” Zach agreed. “It’s a lot to deal with. It’s a lot to try to work through. But we can work through it.”
She was quiet.
He took it as an encouraging sign.
“It’s you and me, Rhea,” he urged her. “After everything we’ve been through, we owe it to ourselves to try one more time, don’t we?”
Silence.
“We owe it to the baby, don’t we?” he asked. It was the last card he had to play.
She hesitated for a moment. “I can’t argue with that,” she murmured.
His heart leapt. “Will you see me?” he asked. “Please?”
“Not at your house. And not at mine.”
“That’s fine,” he said quickly. He would take anything. “We can meet and have dinner.”
“Okay. Dinner. One dinner.”
One dinner was more than enough.
“Tomorrow night at the Lily Garden? Seven o’clock?”
“That’s fine,” Rhea said, sounding resigned.
It pained Zach to think that she was unhappy about the idea of seeing him. But at least she had agreed to see him, and that was what mattered most. He would have his opportunity to apologize for the way he had behaved, and to make things right with her.
Rhea had arrived first, and Zach found her waiting for him at the front of the restaurant.
“I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” she said softly.
“After all the work I did to persuade you to talk to me again?” Zach said. “I wouldn’t have missed tonight for anything in the world.”
They were shown to their table. The host pulled Rhea’s seat out for her, and she thanked him as she sat down. Zach felt a pang of jealousy. He wanted to be the one pulling Rhea’s chairs out for her.
Things will be better after tonight. I just have to make her see how sorry I am for everything that’s happened between us.
He waited until the water had been poured and the orders had been placed. Then he faced her.
“Rhea,” he said, “I owe you an apology.”
She waited.
“I owe you several apologies,” he went on.
“Is that why you wanted to meet me?”
“Well, that’s a big part of it,” he said. “Was it not clear from the messages I sent?”
“I suppose,” she said. “I wondered if maybe you thought you had apologized enough already.”
“Not by half,” he said. “The way I spoke to you when you told me you were pregnant—that was unforgivable. I’m so sorry. Of course I don’t need to see a paternity test. What a stupid, mean thing to say.”
She shook her head slowly. “You really hurt my feelings with that,” she said.
“I know. I hope you can believe me when I tell you that wasn’t my goal. If I had been thinking about anyone but myself, I would have realized how hurtful that would be. But I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting.”
“I can understand that, I guess,” Rhea said. “It’s a big deal, finding out that you’re going to be a parent. I had the luxury of reacting to the news away from you, so you didn’t have to deal with my shock.”
“I don’t know if that’s a luxury,” Zach said. “In a perfect world, we’d have found out together. We’d have helped each other.”
She gave him a skeptical look, and Zach had to admit that he could understand what she was feeling. Of course she would be skeptical of his ability to help and comfort her, when he had failed so spectacularly at it.
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope you can forgive me. I was very wrong to speak to you like that.”
She nodded. “I can forgive that,” she said. “I know you weren’t at your best. Emotions were high. What I need to know now is whether you accept our child as your own, and whether you want to be involved in his or her life.”
“Of course I do,” Zach said. “More than anything.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Rhea said, allowing a smile to cross her face for the first time all evening.
Zach hesitated. “Rhea… I want the two of us to be together.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said.
“After everything that’s happened—”
“After everything that’s happened,” she cut in, “the lesson I feel I’ve learned is that you and I are not necessarily a good fit. I love you, Zach. I always will. But there’s too much history between our families.”
“You’re talking about… my father,” he said. He had known this issue would have to be addressed.
She met his gaze. “Did you watch the video I sent you?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“I didn’t want to believe it,” he said. “I’m sure you can understand my reluctance to believe it. But I did more than just watch that video. I went through my father’s papers, looking for documentation of the lottery win he claimed. There was nothing. And my father was a man who kept everything.”
“What does that mean?” Rhea asked. “I mean, what do you think it means?”
“I hate to admit it,” Zach said. “It kills me to think badly of him. But you must be right. He must have been lying all those years about where the money came from. And the video you sent me—that’s him. I know it is.”
Rhea nodded. “I needed to hear you say that, I suppose,” she said. “I needed to know that you acknowledged what happened back then.”
“I do,” he assured her.
“And you had no involvement personally?”
“Rhea. No. How could you think that I would?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I liked your father when I met him. He seemed like a nice person.”
“He was a nice person,” Zach said. “He was the kindest man I ever knew.”
“How could a kind man do something like this?” she asked. “That formula belonged to my family.”
“You don’t understand,” Zach said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to have nothing. Even I don’t really understand what he was going through. I was poor back then, but I was a kid. I didn’t have responsibilities. Now that I’m about to be a father myself, I see things differently. If I didn’t have the money to make sure our baby could have the life he or she wanted… I don’t know. I don’t know what I might do.”
“You mean to say that you would do what your father did?” Rhea asked. “You would resort to theft?”
“I’d like to tell you I wouldn’t,” Zach said. “But think about it. If our child wanted to go to college and make something of themselves, to reach for a better life, and you and I couldn’t afford to help him or her achieve that dream… I don’t know, Rhea. How far would you go?”
“I wouldn’t steal.”
“I don’t know if I would or not,” Zach said. “But that’s what I’m saying—I don’t know. I don’t know what desperation might push me to do. It’s easy for me to say I’d never do something like that now, when I have plenty of money to provide everything that baby will ever need. But if I didn’t have the means to provide for our child… I don’t know, Rhea. I just don’t know.”
“I can’t believe you’re still saying that you might do what your father did,” Rhea said. “How can you say that to me and also ask me to get back together with you? How could I ever trust you, knowing that that’s how you feel about it?”
“Rhea, I would never do anything without your approval,” Zach said. “And this is an abstract discussion anyway, isn’t it? I’m talking about whether I can understand why my father did what he did. I’m not talking about whether I would actually do it.”
Rhea shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “What you’re saying… it makes it hard for me to believe you’re the person I thought you were.”
Zach took a deep breath. It was time to lay his cards on the table. It was an intimidating prospect, and one that filled him with anxiety. But he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t try everything he could to win Rhea over.
“I fell in love with you,” he told her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Years ago,” he said. “When we were in college together. Do you remember that kiss we shared at the bar that night?”
She said nothing.
“You do remember.”
“What difference does it make? That was a long time ago. Everything is different now.”
“Not everything,” Zach said. “One thing is the same. I realized that night that I had feelings for you, Rhea. I know you and I agreed not to let anything romantic develop between us because we didn’t want to risk our friendship, and I think that was the right choice at the time. But now that we’ve found each other again, I realize that I have the same feelings now as I did back then. They’ve never gone away. I’m in love with you, Rhea.”
“Don’t say that,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s the way I feel. Why shouldn’t I say it?”
“Because nothing can happen between us,” she said. “This can’t go anywhere. There’s no future for you and me, and I don’t want us getting our hearts broken over it.”
He felt wretched. “I thought you said you could forgive me,” he said.
“I can,” she told him. “I do. But it isn’t enough. Because even though I forgive you for what you said… I just don’t think I can trust you.”
“You can,” he said. “I know it’s hard to get past what my father did. But I’m not him, Rhea. I would never do anything to hurt you or your family. I swear it.”
She nodded, looking despondent.
“I believe that you mean that,” she said. “But I just don’t know if I can put my faith in it.”
Chapter 16
Rhea
The rest of dinner was awkward. Rhea would have liked to leave, but they had already ordered their food, and it would have felt wrong to get up and abandon Zach in the restaurant.
Besides, little though she wanted to admit it, there was something nice about being in his company again. She had missed him, and she was glad to be with him again now.