“Come on, Kara. Don’t make me beg. I’ve sunk everything I have into the resort. If you’re worried about working together, don’t be. The past is behind us.”
“How can you say that when I still don’t know the whole story about why you called off our engagement and skipped town?”
His back teeth pressed together and his jaw ratcheted tight. Why did she have to keep harping about the past? Nothing he could say would make it any better for her; in fact, it would make things so much worse.
He gazed into her eyes and saw steely determination reflected there. She was clinging to this need to know worse than a cat holding on to a catnip mouse.
An exasperated sigh passed his lips. “If I agree to tell you, will you stay on at the resort until we have it up and running?”
“Are you still willing to provide the severance package and reference?”
He didn’t want to see her go, but he didn’t have any right to stop her. If she could just help him get through the reopening, he’d be able to take it from there.
“I promise you’ll get the severance package and the reference. Now do we have a deal?”
“I’m still waiting.” She crossed her arms. “You owe me one more thing...?”
“You surely don’t expect me to dig into my past right here in the middle of your driveway.” He checked the time. “Besides, the tow truck guy will be waiting for me to guide him to your car.”
She bit down on her lower lip as though weighing his words. “But you’ll tell me?”
He nodded. The hum of the idling engine and the occasional gust of wintry air were the only sounds as he waited, hoping she’d see reason.
“You have a deal,” she said. Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, she added, “But don’t think I’ll forget about your end of the deal. I expect a candid explanation from you.”
“I understand.”
“Then I’ll see you Monday morning.”
As the door thudded shut, he took comfort in the fact that there was no time limit on her request. Kara had always been persistent when it came to something she wanted, but she wouldn’t be the first person he’d put off. Eventually she’d get tired of asking, wouldn’t she?
A groan grew in the back of his throat. His temples started to pound. He needed a distraction. He glanced down to turn on the radio, then spotted the pink bear on the passenger seat.
With the fluffy thing in hand, he jumped out of the vehicle. “Hey, you forgot this.”
Kara turned as he rushed up to her. “Oh, can’t forget Bubbles. Samantha would never forgive me.”
“We wouldn’t want you getting in trouble.”
“Mommy. Mommy,” cried a child’s voice. “Can we put up the Christmas tree?”
A young girl dressed in jeans and a pink winter coat ran toward them, her arms pumping. This was Kara’s daughter?
Where was the baby—the toddler—he’d imagined? This little girl was so much older. She looked to be school-age. He glanced from mother to daughter. The child’s pert nose, rose-petal lips and dimpled chin resembled her mother’s, but there was something else. Something very familiar about her. The eyes. They were the same shade as his. So was her brown hair....
Could she be mine?
The air whooshed from Jason’s lungs. The stunning suspicion bounced around in his mind at warp speed, making him light-headed.
Even though he and Kara had taken precautions when they’d made love, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that accidents didn’t happen.
The girl looked about the right age. His heart hammered his chest with such force his ribs felt bruised. The child had to be his.
He turned a questioning stare at Kara, but she wouldn’t look at him. Did she really think she could keep his daughter a secret forever?
The little girl attempted to stop on the icy driveway and ended up sliding. Jason instinctively reached out for her. His arms wrapped around her slight shoulders and steadied her.
She eyed him tentatively with wide blue eyes. “Who are you? And why are you holding Bubbles?”
“This is Mr. Greene,” Kara told her. “He helped me during the nasty storm and saved your bear from the snow.”
The girl looked at him again, hesitantly at first. Then her hands rested on her little-girl hips, bunching up her padded coat. “You were smiling at Mommy. Do you like her?”
Jason choked back a laugh.
“Samantha Jameson,” Kara shrieked. “Apologize.”
Samantha—he liked the name. It also didn’t miss his attention that the child had Kara’s surname.
“Sorry, mister. Can I have my bear now?”
The mister part jabbed at him. She had no idea he was her father. Obviously, Kara hadn’t showed Samantha any pictures of him.
He crouched down and held out the stuffed animal. “Here you go.”
“Do you like Mommy?”
She was certainly a cute kid—and quite persistent. “Your mother’s an old friend of mine.”
Both females shot him surprised looks. Before Samantha could continue her inquisition, Kara’s mother called to her from the doorway. Then, catching sight of him, Mrs. Jameson waved, a much friendlier greeting than he’d been expecting. This trip certainly had been filled with one surprise after another.
Samantha waved goodbye and ran to her waiting grandmother, oblivious to the turmoil going on inside him.
When the front door banged shut, Kara turned to him. Her narrowed eyes shot daggers at him. “What’d you go and say that for? She didn’t need to know anything about you and me having a past. Now she’ll be full of all sorts of questions that I don’t want to answer.”
Certain Samantha was their daughter, a daughter he never knew about until now, anger bubbled up in him.
“You haven’t told her about me, have you?”
Kara’s brows scrunched together. “Of course not. Why would I?”
“How long were you going to keep this from me?” Betrayal pummeled him. “I’m her father. I should have been told.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Come on, Kara. Don’t lie. She’s the right age and she has my blue eyes.”
Kara’s hands balled up at her sides. “She is not your daughter.”
“Are you sure there’s not someone else in your life?” he asked, driven to know if he’d been replaced in his daughter’s life. “Someone your little girl calls Daddy?”
“No. There isn’t.”
Kara glared at him as though warning him to drop this line of questioning. But no amount of denials and icy stares would convince him to let go of this subject. There were simply too many coincidences to come to any other conclusion. Samantha was his little girl.
He wanted to push the topic, but backing Kara into a corner wouldn’t get him any closer to his daughter. He needed a different tactic to get Kara to open up to him. And making things even more tense between them wasn’t the right course of action. He needed to retreat and regroup. After things cooled down, he’d come at the situation from a different angle.
“Fine. I understand,” he lied, watching the tension ease in Kara’s shoulders.
What did she have to gain by continuing to deny he was the child’s father?
Then it dawned on him what she was doing, protecting their daughter from him. She didn’t trust him to stick around. And the fact that he was keeping the past from her was just one more strike against him.
The thought of missing out on his daughter’s life overwhelmed him. For one crazy moment, he considered blurting out the awful truth. But how on earth would the revelation that he was the son of a monster—a rapist—going to help his cause? His chest tightened. The truth about his past certainly wouldn’t make him a candidate for Father of the Year.
It’d be best for ever
yone, his newly found daughter included, if he kept his secret to himself. He’d just have to keep Kara distracted until the past was forgotten.
Besides, he wasn’t the only one who’d been holding a secret. Anger simmered in his gut over being kept in the dark for so long. If the snowstorm hadn’t brought them together, he might never know he was a dad.
Still, Kara thought she was doing the right thing by protecting her daughter—their daughter. The phrase stuck in his brain.
“You should get inside,” he said, letting the subject drop for now. “I’ve got to go.”
* * *
Saturday evening, after spending the afternoon scouring the internet for job opportunities, Kara sent out her résumé to five companies advertising for an office manager. Hopeful that someone would take an interest in her application, she headed to the Pleasant Valley Care Home. After signing herself in, she paused and scanned the list of recent visitors, searching for Jason’s name. No such luck.
To her utter frustration, her thoughts had dwelled on him since their winter storm odyssey. When he’d first laid eyes on Samantha, she’d noticed how he’d struggled to hide his surprise. And after he’d boldly stated he wasn’t planning to have kids, she’d been shocked by his insistence that he was Samantha’s father. Thankfully, he’d finally accepted the truth.
Maybe she should have explained her daughter’s background, but the circumstances hadn’t been right. Standing outside in the freezing cold while Samantha waited inside for her hadn’t lent itself to a heart-to-heart talk. Besides, what did it matter? Kara wasn’t in a relationship with him. There wasn’t even a possibility of it.
After seven long years, he still couldn’t face her and explain what had made him break her heart. He didn’t trust her then and he sure didn’t trust her now. But he did owe her the truth...and she intended to collect.
Kara’s footsteps echoed through the empty corridors of the nursing home. No matter how many trips she made here, she could never shake the unease that came over her when she entered the well-kept facility. Maybe it was the idea of her own mortality—that she might one day end up here, too.
Halfway down a brightly lit hallway, in front of room 115, she stopped and gently rapped her knuckles on the open door.
“Come in,” Joe’s voice rumbled, followed by a coughing spell.
She stepped into the room, finding him propped up in bed with a college football game on the TV. His roommate was lying wrapped in a sheet, with his back to them and the privacy curtain partially drawn.
When Kara’s gaze settled on Joe’s gaunt features, her heart clenched. His thinning white hair was a stark contrast to his yellow pallor. Some people had good days dotted with occasional bad ones, but it seemed since he’d put the Summit up for sale, his days had all gone downhill.
“And how are you?” she asked, as was her habit. But she truly cared about his answer.
“Awful,” he grumbled, hitting Mute on the television. “They won’t let me have a cigar while I watch the game.”
“You can’t smoke. You’re on oxygen.”
His whiskered face contorted into a frown. “Didn’t say I was gonna light it.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Joe had had to give up a lot of vices when his health collapsed and he’d ended up in this place. He still fussed about wanting a juicy, rare burger with fries, and the cigars, but not the alcohol. Maybe at last he realized how it’d destroyed his life.
“My boy. You’ve seen him?” A wet cough ensued.
Kara filled his glass with water from a plastic pitcher and handed it to him.
“I did see him. You could have warned me you sold the Summit to him.” She wanted to be angry at Joe for keeping such an important fact from her, especially after all she’d done for him over the years. But it was hard to be upset with someone so ill.
He at least had the decency to drop his gaze to his bony hands. “I need you to convince him to come see me. Tell him I’m sorry.”
Kara wrung her hands together. Maybe she should back out of being the go-between for these two. After what Jason had told her about what went down between him and his dad, it might be asking too much of Jason to reestablish the father-son relationship.
“I tried,” she said, still not sure how to proceed. “He’s very stubborn.”
Joe made an attempt to reach for something on his nightstand.
“What do you want?” she asked, ready to do whatever she could to help.
“Jason’s picture.”
She grabbed the framed graduation photo of the boy she’d once loved with all her heart, and handed it to his father. Joe pulled off the back and yanked out a wrinkled envelope.
“Give this to him....” His words faded into a string of coughs. “Make him read it.”
Her mouth gaped. How did Joe expect her to do this when Jason wouldn’t discuss his father, much less have anything to do with him? But she couldn’t turn her back on this man who didn’t have anyone else to look out for him. She couldn’t give up hope that somehow father and son would be reunited.
Joe reached for her arm and placed the envelope in her hand. His cold fingers squeezed hers. “Find a way. Jason has to know I regret what happened. Please, Kara.”
CHAPTER TEN
“LET ME LICK them. Please.” Samantha held out her hands for the beaters from the mixer.
“You can have one and I’ll have the other.” Kara couldn’t resist the sweet buttery taste of cookie dough.
They were both licking at the creamy batter when a knock sounded. Sunday afternoons were notorious for impromptu visits from her parents. She continued savoring the sweet treat on her way to the door. She peered through the window, finding Jason.
Jason? What was he doing here? Maybe she’d forgotten something at his place yesterday in her haste to get home.
She yanked the beater down to her side and wiped away any evidence of her childish behavior before opening the door. When she looked into Jason’s dreamy blue eyes, her heart started beating in double time. “Hi. What are you doing here?”
“Thought you might want this.” He moved to the side, revealing a lush evergreen lying on the sidewalk.
“You got us a tree?”
“You said you always wanted a real tree, so here you go.” He peered around her and she turned, finding her daughter lurking behind her.
“Samantha, you remember Mr. Greene, don’t you?”
She nodded and moved to stand beside Kara. “Is that for us?”
“Yes, it is. Do you like it?”
Samantha’s head bobbed up and down, while a huge grin showed off her pearly whites.
Kara ushered him inside. “You’re letting in all the cold.”
“I didn’t mean to stay. I just wanted to drop this off. Unless, of course, you already put up your tree.”
“We didn’t,” Samantha volunteered. “Mommy didn’t have time. Can we have it, Mommy? We’ve never had a real tree. Ple-e-ease.”
Kara eyed her pleading stare. “Fine. Mr. Greene, can I help you carry it into the living room?”
“I’ve got it,” he said.
He picked it up with ease and moved forward, favoring his leg more than usual. Concern swirled in Kara’s chest as she quickly ducked into the kitchen to drop off her licked-clean beater. She wanted to ask him about his leg but reminded herself that it wasn’t her concern. They each had their own lives to lead, and he didn’t need her nagging him about his health.
Kara held the door wide-open while he maneuvered the chubby pine through the doorway. Her living room was small and cozy. She didn’t have a clue what they’d do if the tree was too big. Samantha would have a fit. But they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.
“Put it here,” Samantha called, pointing to a
spot in front of the window. “This is where we always put the other one.”
Jason glanced at Kara and she nodded in approval. “Just give me a second to slide the chair out of the way.”
In a matter of seconds, the tree stood prominently in front of the window, with a few inches of clearance between the tip-top and the ceiling. Kara breathed a sigh of relief. Jason had already anchored it in a red-and-green metal stand, attached to a piece of wood. All she’d have to do was add water and a tree skirt.
Samantha clapped her hands together and beamed. “Mommy, isn’t it great? Now you don’t have to find time to drag down that dang tree—”
“Samantha! That’s enough.” Kara’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment. Apparently her daughter had overheard her muttering to herself in frustration at the overwhelming prospect of putting all their Christmas decorations up this weekend.
“Sorry.” Samantha didn’t look the least bit sorry as she grinned at the tree as if she’d never seen one before.
But when her daughter’s blue eyes settled on Jason with that same ear-to-ear smile, Kara knew she was in trouble. She didn’t need these two to bond. No way.
“We’re making cookies,” Samantha said. “Wanna decorate ’em with me?”
Jason rocked back on his heels. His hesitant gaze traveled to Kara. Working with him would be tough enough. She didn’t need him befriending her daughter. She gave a slight shake of her head, praying he’d get the message.
“Thank you. That sounds great....” His gaze ran to Kara again, as though he was actually interested in spending time with a six-year-old.
Part of Kara wanted to relent and have him stay, to make her daughter happy, but she knew in the end that it’d end up hurting Samantha when he walked out of their lives. He wasn’t a forever kind of guy. When the going got rough, Jason got going. Reliable definitely wasn’t in his vocabulary.
And what was even worse was that he represented the one thing Kara couldn’t give her daughter—a father. Up until this point, Samantha hadn’t shown any curiosity about her dad, but the day was coming when she’d be full of questions. And Kara couldn’t help but wonder if her little girl would blame her for never marrying and giving her a father figure. Still, Jason wasn’t an ideal candidate.
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