#1-3--The O’Connells

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  “Name,” Ryan said. “Come on, who is he? Chances are that’s where Alison is.” He pulled his cell phone out, holding it, apparently ready to make a call.

  She pulled in another breath, feeling the seconds tick by, seeing the way Ryan peered at her now, hard, expecting, that alpha look that said he was waiting, and not patiently. “Well, I doubt very much Alison is with him,” she said.

  Confusion crossed his face before he let out a rough laugh. She was pushing every one of his buttons, something Wren had said was not one of her best qualities. “For the love of God, Jenny, just tell me who it is. Because right now, we don’t know where she is, and Alison could very well be walking into a situation that could land her in more trouble.”

  “She’s not with him!” she shouted, then shut her eyes, her hands fisted. Her chest heaved.

  “And why would you say that?” he replied. It was there in the way he said it, in the edge to his voice—the realization.

  “Because you’re standing right here in front of me,” she finally said, “and Alison isn’t.”

  Yes, there it was in his expression, the expression of a man who’d just heard the one thing he’d never expected.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ryan couldn’t help thinking this was a sick joke. Not only was Alison turning everyone’s lives upside down, but now Jenny was saying he was in fact her father? Jenny was fucking with him. This couldn’t possibly be true.

  He stared at the woman he’d slept with…how many years ago? The exact date was murky, and he couldn’t get his head around how truly messed up this was. He waited for a smile, for something, but all she did was appear uncomfortable.

  “What?” was all he managed to get out. At the same time, his cell phone started to ring, and Marcus’s name was on the screen. He should answer it, but he wasn’t sure he could speak.

  “Who is it?” Jenny asked.

  He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear. He couldn’t talk to her right now. When he answered, his voice sounded so off even to him. “Yeah?”

  “Did you find out from Jenny about the father?” Marcus said.

  He shut his eyes and pressed his thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose to pull it together. He couldn’t shake the sick feeling in his stomach. “Yeah, listen, let me call you right back,” he said and hung up the phone before his brother could say anything else. Then he turned back to Jenny and jabbed his index finger at her. “Go back to the beginning and tell me everything, and no fucking around, Jenny. Did you just say I’m Alison’s father? That the one night we had sex, you got pregnant, and she’s mine? Did you just seriously say that?”

  He knew he sounded accusatory, like an asshole. Something in her expression seemed, hurt, scared, or maybe she was guilty at having been caught in a lie.

  “Let’s be clear on something, Ryan,” she said. “You may be the biological father, but that’s all you were. Wren was her father. I can’t believe he told her. It was him who never wanted her to know. I found out I was pregnant after I was with him. It wasn’t a big deal. It was…”

  “Not a big deal! Are you kidding me? How could you not have told me? I had a right to know.” He leaned in, got in her face, and the way he yelled, he felt fury oozing from him, shooting up from the ground and all the way through him. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this angry before.

  “You’re upset,” she said.

  Was she for real? “Oh, I’m a little more than that. Why would you do it?”

  She said nothing. He could tell she was struggling to come up with something that would explain this.

  “Does Alison know I’m her father?” he asked. He wasn’t sure why she was looking at him the way she was, with confusion. Loss seemed to fill her brown eyes, turning them to big dark pools that showed every emotion. What kind of screwed-up life had she had? Then she shook her head.

  “I didn’t even know she knew. I can’t believe Wren did that, not to Alison. He’d hurt me, but why her? I…” She lifted her hand, still clutching a dish towel, and he found himself looking around at the house that had belonged to Althea. It had the same furnishings he remembered, the aged burgundy sofa that looked practically new, the matching chair, the tables, the blankets, the art on the wall of nature and landscapes, the photos of generations of family he’d never taken the time to really look at.

  “Well, evidently, he told her,” he said. “So Wren knew about me. Let’s assume he told her my name, yet I’ve heard nothing from her.”

  Jenny pulled her lower lip between her teeth as if thinking. She looked down and away before shaking her head, then lifting her gaze and giving him everything. “I never told Wren your name. He said he didn’t want to know.” Her voice was soft, and for maybe the first time, he believed she was telling him the truth. “I gave him an out, but he said he didn’t want it, that it didn’t matter I was pregnant. He’d take us both.”

  “But he knew something about me, or didn’t he?”

  She went to say something, then shook her head. “Would he have found out? Maybe, likely. He was always finding out everything about people. Said that was what gave him the upper hand, to know the secrets of his enemies and everyone around him. He kept files,” she said, crossing her arms under her breasts and pulling in a breath that had her chest heaving.

  He just stared at her, sensing that her husband may have had a dark and dangerous side. He could be wrong, but it was just a feeling he couldn’t shake from the little she’d said.

  “After he…” She gestured vaguely, and he heard her hesitation before she continued. “After he died, I went through his office, a room in our house that I’d never gone in. I hadn’t been allowed. He was always there. His desk was glass, with a drawer he always kept locked. I busted the lock with a crowbar I found in the garage. I was looking for insurance papers, a will, something after the first notice showed up for foreclosure on the house. Wren had handled everything, and here I was now, trying to figure out how to manage on my own with my daughter. I had no money because Wren was the sole breadwinner, and I’m not kidding when I say he looked after everything, no discussions, nothing.

  “I was completely in the dark about what he did, what he had. The bank accounts were in his name, the credit cards, the house. As I was looking for everything, I found files on the people he worked with. He had dug up dirt on each of them, things from their pasts, things they’d done, secrets about their characters and their finances. He had done the same thing with all of them, so would he have done it with me?” She was pacing now, and all he could think was to wonder what kind of life she’d given his daughter. “If I’m being honest with myself, he likely would have, because Wren didn’t trust anyone. I discovered there was a lot more to my husband, a side of him I didn’t know anything about. But why didn’t Alison say anything to me? It makes no sense.”

  As he squeezed his phone and took in the house, he wondered how much Jenny really wanted to know. Sometimes women found it easier to look the other way, as if avoiding the truth was the answer to everything.

  “Then let’s assume she knows about me—or maybe she doesn’t. Where’re your husband’s files, his papers? Do you still have them here?”

  She was already shaking her head. “No. The house was taken by the bank, and the IRS demanded back taxes. He’d leveraged everything. I put most of it in storage, his papers, his things. I mean, there was no need for me to keep it, and what would that have to do with finding Alison?” She lifted her hands and then let them fall to her sides. “I walked away from that life when my aunt left me this house. I didn’t even know her, but it was a gift, a new start, a way to break away. I didn’t want anything of him.”

  It seemed she was trying to explain away what she had done. At the same time, if Wren had dirt on him, he wanted to know what it was and what he could possibly have shared with Alison. It would be hard to undo the damage if someone had trashed his character.

  “I think I’ll start with her room,” Ryan said. “Have you sear
ched her room? She likely has something there that will give us an idea of where she is, where her head is, and what she knows. Right now, if she’s looking for me, what she’s doing makes no sense, so I don’t think she knows. Actually, I’m sure she doesn’t, because I’m right next door, and nothing she’s said or done so far since I’ve met her tells me she thought I was her father. So take me up to my daughter’s room.” He wasn’t asking, and the way her mouth opened and closed, he could see she was rattled.

  “Just one thing, Ryan. I’m her mother. She’s my daughter, and Wren is her father.”

  He shook his head and leaned in. “You’re wrong there, Jenny. She’s my daughter too, a daughter you never gave me the opportunity to know, so let’s get that straight—and Wren doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who was much of a father. He tried to hurt her by telling her she wasn’t his. That’s not what a father does. So, first things first. Show me her room, and when I find her, things are going to change.”

  Her expression hardened, flickering with anger. “Sounds to me like you’re trying to tell me what to do,” she said.

  “No, that’s not what I’m doing. Now that I know she’s my daughter, the truth is coming out. I’ll find her, and then I’ll figure out what I can do to help her, to have a relationship with her, to straighten this mess out. And you and I…” He let the words hang, knowing it was the anger speaking. “Not sure where we go, but I know you’ve spoken your last lie to me.”

  Her face paled, and she nodded before starting to the stairs, though she stopped halfway up and looking back at him. “I never expected this to happen, Ryan. I’m sorry,” she said. She pulled in another breath. “Her room’s up here, first door at the top of the stairs.”

  Then she kept going, and Ryan took another second to pull it together before starting up, one foot in front of the other, wondering how he was going to explain this to his brother.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Okay, so the secret was out. The one thing she’d feared was now the elephant in the room, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of being despised, hated. Could she blame Ryan?

  She took a second in her bathroom to pull it together. Marcus had shown up at the door, and she’d overheard Ryan telling him that he was Alison’s father. In the second of silence that followed, Marcus had given him a look that said everything about the bomb he had dropped.

  She was still shaken by the way Marcus had looked over at her.

  What had she done then but slip away into the bathroom? She splashed water on her face and stared in the mirror at the image staring back, wondering when everything in her life had turned to shit. She couldn’t remember the exact moment it had happened, when the person she had been slowly slipped away and became the person Wren had created. He had toyed with everything about who she really was and what had made her tick, manipulating and destroying her. How could a man say he loved her when everything he did told her he hated her?

  And here, now, her daughter was the casualty.

  She pulled open the bathroom door, fisting her hands as she stepped out into the hallway, seeing the open stairs and hearing Ryan and Marcus’s voices coming from her daughter’s room at the end of the hall. She pictured her daughter’s face, seeing for the first time why she was so angry. Damn you, Wren. How could you be so cruel?

  “Holy fuck, Ryan,” Marcus was saying. “Are you one hundred percent sure she’s yours? This is so totally fucked up. This is just…”

  She stopped just outside the door, her heart zigging and her stomach zagging and she listened to one more man questioning her character. She shouldn’t listen, but her feet wouldn’t move.

  “Would make sense,” Ryan muttered, still pissed off.

  “I still can’t believe the fate at play here. This entire time, a woman you slept with years ago was related to Althea Kunkel. Now you find out you knocked her up, and she had a kid and a fucked-up marriage to a man who told his daughter she wasn’t his. Like, what kind of asshole does that? Then they move in next door to you. Holy shit, Ryan. You really have a way of picking the most screwed-up women and finding yourself in situations no normal person would find himself in. Let me know when you tell Mom and everyone, because I want a front-row seat to the show when you try to explain this.”

  She thought he was making a joke at her expense, and she forced herself to take another step. The floor creaked as she stood in the doorway, and both men turned to face her. Marcus was going through Alison’s bedside table, pulling out books and journals and papers she hadn’t even known her daughter had. Ryan was holding a blue journal, reading it.

  “I can assure you, Marcus, Alison is his,” Jenny said. “Yes, you’re right: My marriage was fucked up, my life is fucked up, I’m fucked up, but I had no idea Wren would try to hurt Alison the way he did. Up until then, I had been the one he used as a punching bag for his words. I can also assure you I couldn’t have been more surprised to find out that Ryan lives right next door. This is a mess, so if you two are done trashing my character, tell me if you’ve found anything. Did she know about you, Ryan? Does it say anything in there?”

  She didn’t miss the exchange between the brothers, but she wasn’t going to sneak off again and hide. She’d done that for too many years. She’d had a fresh start now. This was supposed to have been a new life for just her and her daughter, only Alison was doing everything she could not to come on board. At least now Jenny had some idea why.

  “No, nothing, but it seems she has a lot of anger issues,” Ryan said. “There’s a lot here to read through, but at the same time, if she doesn’t come home soon…”

  Marcus had basically emptied the entire drawer, and he pulled out a red diary shoved way in the back, the kind that had a lock on it. “There’s this,” he said and held it up. “Do you mind?”

  Ryan pulled what looked like a jackknife from his belt and flicked it open. “Yeah,” was all he said before cutting the lock away from the book, and she felt the slap. It felt as if another man was making another decision for her.

  “Yes, by all means, to find my daughter,” she said as she stepped into the room. “A little respect, Ryan. I’ve been down this road once before with Wren, and I won’t be handled as if I have no voice. Ask me. Don’t dismiss me.”

  She wasn’t sure what look passed between Ryan and Marcus, maybe because all she could feel was anger.

  “My mistake,” Ryan said. “That wasn’t my intention, Jenny. Don’t jump to conclusions. Right now, we’re just trying to find Alison. Once she’s back here, then we can sort some things out between you and me, between you and Alison. We’ll sit down, the three of us, and lay all the cards on the table. By no means am I trying to treat you as if you have no voice, so don’t accuse me of that. At the same time, I don’t know what you went through or what Alison went through, because you won’t talk about it. Your husband died. You said he was shot—how, why, where? With all of this going on, I have to wonder, what really happened? What went down? But as I said, that discussion is for after we find her, after she comes home. We can sit her down and—”

  “Ryan,” Marcus said. He was reading the red journal and flipped to a page before pushing the small book over to him. Her heart was hammering.

  “What the fuck…?” Ryan muttered under his breath, reading whatever it was, another secret she didn’t know about.

  “What is it? Seriously,” she said, walking closer.

  Ryan’s expression changed to alarm as he flicked his gaze over to her. “She knows her father is an O’Connell, but she thinks it’s Luke, my brother. How, I don’t know. Shit, dammit…”

  Jenny dragged her gaze from one brother to the other. “Fill me in. Who’s Luke, exactly?”

  “Our brother, home from the military,” Marcus said.

  Ryan walked the book over to her and held it up, turning it so she could see her daughter’s scrawl. She’d never known she was journaling. She took in the words that were double underlined.

  I found him, Luke, my father. Ol
lie was right that it’s time to face the music. Can’t wait to meet him, to talk to him. Let’s see if he’s exactly the asshole my dad said he’d be.

  She read it again, staring in horror.

  “I have to ask, Jenny…did you hook up with my brother, too?” Ryan said.

  For a second, she was too stunned to answer. “You’re serious?” Her voice squeaked, and even Marcus seemed embarrassed. She pushed back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and looked at one brother, then the other. There was no damn way she would let either of them make her feel less than. She was done with that. “I have no idea who your brother is. I do know exactly who fathered her, and that’s you. It would be easier for me to say it wasn’t. In fact, I’d prefer it,” she snapped, but as she took in Ryan, she saw it in that second, there in his face. She didn’t think he believed her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jenny had insisted on coming with him and was now in the passenger side of his pickup, having changed into a pair of blue jeans and sneakers, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. The sun had now dipped lower on the horizon. She’d said no more than two words to Ryan since he’d accused her of having slept with Luke.

  He couldn’t explain it, but reading the words, thoughts, and feelings Alison had recorded privately in her diary had felt like such a betrayal of her. From the little he’d read, he’d been able to feel her confusion and anger.

  The tension in the truck was absolutely thick as he pulled up in front of his mom’s house, where he expected Luke to be. Marcus was already there, likely inside, his cruiser parked in the driveway behind the pickup.