“Could we put that on hold for just a second, Addison?”
I looked at him, trying to pretend everything was normal. The truth was, I was still angry with him. Sitting across from him now was complicated. My dad was the only family I had. He was my whole world from the time I was five. But he was also the guy who paid my fiancé off to make his disappear. I felt like I didn’t even know him.
The waitress came over and we both ordered Belgium waffles with strawberry compote. And coffee. Lots of coffee.
“I know you’re angry with me,” my dad said as soon as we were alone again.
I studied his face. “What do you expect?”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
I inclined my head slightly. “I get that. But you should have come to me instead.”
“You were eighteen.”
“Yes. I was an adult. I was old enough to make my own choices.”
“But there were things about him you didn’t know.”
I picked up a packet of sugar and played with it, not really wanting it but needing something to do with my hands. I could feel him watching me, could feel the weight of his stare on me. But I couldn’t look at him.
“He was a thief, a juvenile delinquent.”
“Are you talking about what he did on one of your construction sites?” I saw the truth in my dad’s eyes. Part of it, anyway. “He told me about that.”
“Good. I’m glad. But that’s not all there was.”
“What else?”
My dad picked up a file folder from the chair beside him and handed it to me.
“You had him investigated?”
“He was dating my daughter. My only child. You can’t tell me you’re honestly surprised.”
I half nodded. He was right about that. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“I’m not really interested in what’s in here.”
“There are things you should know. Things that would explain why I did what I did.”
“Why did you?” I looked at him, tears burning in the back of my throat. “Why would you do something so cold?”
My dad looked away, his eyes moving to the windows. I saw him blink a few times. I’d never seen my father cry. I’d heard him sobbing into his pillow late at night when he thought I was asleep, but I’d never actually seen him cry. I thought this might be the first time.
He cleared his throat and focused on me again.
“He was arrested three times before he was sixteen for stealing. The first two times, the charges were dropped for a lack of evidence, but the third time, the victim dropped the charges before the prosecutor could file charges.”
“He was a kid.”
“But this was only, what, four years before he met you? Six years? Do people really change that much, Addison?”
“I don’t know, Daddy. But you have to give them a chance.”
“The first time I met him, he was drunk and bleeding from his hands because he tore apart one of my sites in a drunken rage.”
“He was eighteen. His mother had just died.”
“But those are just excuses, Addison. People have to take responsibility for their behavior. Blaming it on something that went wrong in their lives is just ridiculous.”
“Like you’ve never done anything stupid.”
“I didn’t blame my mistakes on the hard turns I’ve experienced.”
I nodded. I pushed the file folder away and wrapped my hands around my coffee mug. The heat filled me, made some of the cold that had settled in my chest go away.
“I wish you could understand.”
“I do understand, Daddy. That’s the problem.”
“How is that the problem?”
I hesitated as I ran my thumbs over the outside of the coffee mug. “I understand why you would try to buy him off. I just don’t understand why he would accept your offer.”
“He didn’t want to. Not at first.”
I looked up, wanting to believe what he was saying.
“I knocked on his door early that morning. I’d been up all night because I overheard you talking to him on the phone, making your final plans. I guess you were supposed to meet earlier in the day, but I’d asked you to go to the office with me that evening.”
I nodded. I remembered. Grant had wanted to leave when he was given his lunch break on the site, and I’d agreed, thinking I had the day off since it was a Saturday. But my dad surprised me by asking me to accompany him to the office for a couple of hours that afternoon. He didn’t normally do that, but he had a new project that he needed help preparing for.
My dad watched the memory play itself out over my face. He waited, continuing his story only when he was sure he had my full attention.
“He started to close the door before I’d even said a word. I think he knew what I was there for. I told him I wouldn’t go away until we spoke, so he opened the door, gestured for me to come in.”
And then it was my dad who was lost in memory.
“I won’t leave her,” Grant said the moment the door closed.
“You’re not what she deserves. She deserves someone who can take care of her, give her the life she’s accustomed to living.”
“Addison’s not like that. If you knew your own daughter, you would know that.”
That touched a raw spot that caused Charles Berryman to stiffen. He studied this young man’s face, hating that he could see himself in him. He was defiant at that age, too—determined to make a success of himself. Only twenty-one, he’d borrowed ten thousand dollars from Caroline, his fiancée, and began a construction business in a market that was already saturated with such businesses. All the odds were against him, but he managed to make a success out of it anyway. He knew success hinged as much on stubbornness as it did intelligence and charm. But he wasn’t as willing as Caroline’s father had been to risk his daughter’s future on this man’s stubbornness.
“Addison doesn’t know what she wants right now. She’s young and you are her first serious relationship. In a few months, when she’s gone off to college and discovered some independence, she’ll realize that you were just a fling.”
“She won’t, because we’re getting married in five hours.”
So defiant. He should have known then that this man was more than he appeared to be. But he couldn’t let this happen. Not his Addison.
“I have a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. All you have to do is disappear.”
The boy’s eyes widened and Charles could see him doing calculations in his head. The money was more than anything he’d probably ever seen. Charles knew he’d won.
But then the boy surprised him by grabbing the front of his shirt and pushing him toward the door.
“Get out of my house!”
“You want the money. I can see it on your face.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“Everyone needs money.”
“I might need money, but I won’t take yours. I’ll work for what I have.”
“What about Addison? Do you really think she’ll be content living on the streets with you? Because that’s where you’ll end up if you do this. Do you really think I’ll keep paying her way, giving her money to be with a man I don’t approve of?”
“We don’t need you or your money.”
“Is that what you really think? How long do you think it’ll be before Addison begins to resent you for taking her away from her multimillion-dollar home, her clothes and her toys and all the things my money had bought her? How long do you think it’ll be before she looks at you and only sees everything she’s left behind?”
“That won’t happen.”
But Charles could see there was a little bit of doubt in his eyes.
“You love her. I get that. Addison’s easy to love. But you, no matter how badly you want to be, are not the man for her. You can’t be what she wants.”
“I’m not the man you want for her. But you underestimate your daughter. She knows her own mind.�
�
“You’re a loser! You’re a petty thief, a vandal. You hurt people and ask questions later.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I saw your juvenile record.”
“Those are sealed.”
“Yes, well, I have friends.”
The boy stared at him, anger dancing in his eyes. But his grip on Charles’s collar had loosened.
“My friends tell me that if it weren’t for your mother coming to your defense, you would be in jail as we speak. Charged as an adult for stealing more than three thousand dollars from your high school English teacher.”
Charles could see that he’d hit the nail on the head. The boy looked away, his breathing suddenly labored.
“What do you think Addison would think if I showed her that?”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“No, I don’t suppose I do. But I know enough of it to be very convincing to Addison.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Don’t put it past me, boy.”
He shoved Charles hard against the door and let him go, walking backward until his legs hit the ratty couch in the center of his worn-out living room, if you could call such a room a living room. Charles shuttered to think of all the time his daughter had spent in this room.
What was she thinking?
“I know all about your past,” Charles said. “I could tell Addison all kinds of stories about you. All things I’m sure you never bothered to share with her.”
He looked up at Charles and Charles could see the guilt in his eyes. It was pretty obvious he hadn’t said anything to Addison about his criminal past. He probably never intended to.
“If you take my money and walk away—”
“I won’t do that to Addison.”
“Addison will survive.”
The boy shook his head. “She’s had enough hurt in her life.”
“So why create more? Why hurt her with the truth? Do you really want her to look at you with that lack of trust that will come with the truth?” Charles watched the boy closely. “I know my daughter. She’ll stand by you no matter what you tell her. But she’ll never trust you again when she realizes you’ve been lying to her all along.”
“I never lied.”
“You lied by omission.”
The boy shook his head, but Charles could see he was coming around.
“Do you really want Addison to know who you really are? That you’re a liar and a thief and a vandal?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“And how will you take care of her? How will you give her the life she’s accustomed to?”
“We’ll be fine. We’re going to California. I have friends there. Family.”
Charles shook his head. “You will never make her happy. You will never be anything more than the thief and liar that you are right now.”
The boy sat there staring at his hands. Charles set the check on the table.
“I’ll leave this here. You can tear it up or cash it. Doesn’t matter to me.”
“You just left it there?”
He focused on me. “Yeah. I didn’t know what he’d done until I got a call at the office late that afternoon, the bank asking if it was okay to cash the check.”
“What made him change his mind?”
My dad shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The waitress came back with our meals then. I picked at mine. It seemed like I hadn’t been all that hungry lately. I was even a little nauseous now. The past has a way of making food seem unpalatable.
I pushed the fruit around the plate, trying to imagine what it was like for Grant to be confronted by my father that way. Was he really ashamed of his past? Did he really feel that strongly about avoiding telling me the truth?
“You wanted to talk about Agnes?”
I looked up. “Yeah. She’s not adjusting well to the new system, but her daughter said she’s not interested in early retirement.”
My dad nodded. “That’s too bad. Retirement’s not that bad.”
“You didn’t get much out of the sale of the business. Are you going to be okay?”
He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t understand how you could sell the place for as little as you did.”
“It was for the best.”
I didn’t think there was any point in pushing the issue. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know.
“Do you think you could give some work to Agnes?”
“Of course,” my dad said. “I’m working on organizing my private papers. She could help me with that.”
“That’d be great. Could you call her and let her know?”
He nodded. I reached over and touched his hand lightly.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, smiling at him. “I think so.”
Chapter 20
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why did he pick that check up and decide to cash it? Was it because of his brother? Or was there more to it than that? Was he ashamed of his past? Was he worried about me finding out the truth?
I needed to know, but I couldn’t ask Grant. We’d gotten to a place where things were beginning to progress. I didn’t want to rock the boat by bringing up the past again. But I needed to know.
After a week, I was still struggling with it. And then Angela walked into my office and I suddenly realized the answer was staring me in the face.
Both Rebecca and Bellamy said that Kevin was always willing to tell stories on his brother. Maybe he’d tell me a story or two, too.
I was slipping out of my office when Grant grabbed my arm and tugged me into the break room.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m having lunch with a friend. What about you?”
“A meeting.”
He slid his hand along my hip and tugged me close against him, sliding my skirt up my leg a little as he pressed me up against the wall and leaned his forehead against mine.
“I’d rather be at home with you, but…”
“Your place reeks of paint. I don’t think I’m up to spending too much time there.”
“True. But we could hide out at your place.”
I smiled, my lips pressed against his. I loved the way he tasted, loved the feel of him against me. He tugged me closer, his fingers finding a bare spot behind my knee. It’d been a couple of days—moving everything onto computers and tablets was proving to be more of an ordeal than any of us anticipated—and I was missing these quiet moments together. But then his phone vibrated and we both heard giggles as someone caught sight of us as they passed the open door.
“I should go,” he groaned against my lips.
“Don’t sound so happy about it.”
He squeezed my leg before letting it go.
“I’ll see you later.”
He kissed me gently, and then he walked away. I watched, loving the sight of his body moving, but wishing it wasn’t moving away from me.
With a sigh, I gathered myself together and headed out. I was meeting Kevin at the hospital for sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria. It was all the time he could spare. But he was excited to get together. He’d told me on the phone—Angela gave me his number—that he’d been wanting to apologize for our fiasco of a dinner weeks ago, but he was so busy that it kept getting put on the back burner. I wasn’t expecting an apology, but I was hoping for a few answers.
He wasn’t there when I arrived, so I bought myself an overcooked hamburger and found a seat near the back of the room. He wandered in fifteen minutes late, waved, grabbed a plate of food, and came to sit.
“Sorry. We have a kid who likes me to read to her while they do scans. It took longer than I expected.”
“Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t want to pull you away from saving someone’s life, or something.”
“You didn’t. More like kindergarten class.” He shrugged as he bit into
his own hamburger, chewing quickly as he downed it with a gulp of soda. “Being a pediatrician is a combination of saving lives and entertaining small children.”
“I suppose it is.”
“So,” he studied my face over his hamburger, chewing on his second, much larger bite, “you wanted to talk about Grant?”
“How did you know that’s what it was?”
He shrugged. “We have two things in common, and I didn’t think it was about Angela.”
I smiled. “Very astute.”
“I didn’t become a doctor on my looks alone.”
I laughed.
He was so different from Grant. Not only was he less intense, but more laid back and open. There were also differences in their appearance. Kevin was shorter, his shoulders not nearly as broad. They had the same dark hair and blue eyes, but there were clear differences that I’d not noticed before. But, again, the last time I’d met him I hadn’t known he was Grant’s brother until later.
“Grant is a deeply private person. This isn’t the first time I’ve been approached this way.”
“Other girlfriends?”
“No. More like coworkers.” He raised an eyebrow. “You and Grant are dating?”
“I don’t know if you can call what we’re doing dating. But we’re…” I blushed as I tried to find a word for what we were. Lovers? Companions? Formerly engaged?
Kevin waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I get it.”
“How much do you know about our history?”
Kevin shrugged. “I know you were together when he lived here before. And I know that he wanted to marry you. I also know that he came to California without you.”
I pushed my food away. I shouldn’t arrange these meetings over meals. High emotion was not an appetite inducer.
“Did he tell you anything else?”
Kevin took another huge bite of his hamburger and then set it down, watching me as he took several gulps of his soda.
“You mean about the money?”
“He told you?”
“No, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. My brother, who worked construction, suddenly shows up at my hospital bed with the fifty thousand dollars we needed for the medication the doctor wanted to give me? It wasn’t a big stretch.”
DOTTY (The Naughty Ones Book 3) Page 96