His Long-Lost Family

by Brenda Harlen

  “I know there isn’t anything I can’t talk to you about—except this.”

  “Then it’s about Ava’s father,” he guessed.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “You’ve seen him?” Lukas pressed.

  She nodded again.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “I told him,” she admitted. “And he didn’t believe me.”

  His hands curled into fists on the arms of the chair. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  Kelly reached over and covered his fisted hand with her own. “Thanks, but I don’t think that would help.”

  “What about Jack?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “What about Jack?”

  “Why don’t you talk to him?” Lukas suggested. “He could outline your legal options, suggest a course of action.”

  She shook her head, let her hand drop away. “Talking to Jack is not going to fix any of this.”

  “He’s good at his job, Kel. He could—”

  “No!” Her response was a little too vehement, a little too loud, and she winced even before Lukas frowned.

  She pushed up from her chair, walked across the deck and tried to figure out a way to untangle the mess that she’d made. She wanted to tell Lukas everything, but it was harder than she’d imagined to find the words to reveal a secret that she’d kept closely guarded for so long. Especially when Jackson didn’t believe it was true.

  She should have been prepared for his questions, braced for his skepticism. But aside from having paternity results in hand, she didn’t know what she could have said or done to convince him. And she wasn’t going to pretend that he wasn’t Ava’s father just because he didn’t want to be.

  Because the simple truth that she’d learned from her visit to Jackson’s office was that he didn’t want to be a father—at least not to her daughter. Just like her mother and father hadn’t wanted to be parents to Kelly. And Jackson’s disinterest hurt more than his disbelief. He had every right to be angry with Kelly, but he had no reason to reject the daughter he didn’t even know.

  “Kelly?” Lukas prompted.

  And she found herself trying to guess how he might react to the news—if Lukas would refuse to believe that Jackson was Ava’s father, too. She didn’t think she could bear it if he questioned the veracity of her claim. But even if he did believe her, he would be hurt by her silence, by her deception.

  “I’ve made a mess of everything,” she admitted softly.

  She’d thought she was doing the right thing, but really, what had she known? She’d been twenty-one years old, pregnant and in love with her child’s father, who was planning to marry someone else. Not the ideal scenario in which to make any kind of life-altering decision. But what alternative did she have? Because as scared as she was to have a baby on her own, she’d had too much pride to want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with her.

  Pride goes before a fall, her grandmother had been fond of saying. And Kelly knew that her actions in this situation might prove that adage to be true, especially if the decision she’d made ended up ruining her friendship with the one man who had always stood by her.

  But even if she could turn back time, she didn’t know that there was anything she would have done differently. Jackson had been in love with Sara. She didn’t know any of the details of how or why their marriage failed, but she knew that he would never have made plans to marry her if he didn’t love her. He and Kelly, on the other hand, had never made any plans.

  She certainly hadn’t planned to get pregnant, and she had no intention of using her baby to trap him. But she knew him well enough to know that if she’d told him she was pregnant, he would have broken off his relationship with Sara to marry her. He would have done “the right thing”—and he would have hated her for it. And that’s why she’d never told him about the baby.

  He hated her now, anyway, and she knew that was probably no less than she deserved. She only hoped she could somehow get through this without Lukas hating her, too.

  When she heard the doorbell ring, she jumped at the reprieve, grateful for the interruption. Grateful for any excuse to escape Lukas’s scrutiny and the inevitable confrontation that would follow her revelation.

  Of course, that was before she opened the front door and found his brother standing on her porch.

  She didn’t realize Lukas had followed her to the door until he said, “Speak of the devil.”

  “Lukas.” Jackson seemed even more surprised to see his brother than Kelly had been to see him at the door.

  He glanced at her, a silent but desperate plea for help. But she didn’t know what to say or do to extricate them from the suddenly awkward situation.

  In that brief moment of charged silence, Lukas’s gaze bounced from Jackson to Kelly and back again. And Kelly knew the exact moment when all of the pieces clicked into place for him because he said, “You sonofabitch.”

  And then he hauled back a fist and punched his brother.

  Chapter Four

  Jackson’s head snapped back; he stumbled.

  “Lukas!” Kelly grabbed his arm as he advanced toward his brother again. “Stop!”

  He turned around, so abruptly and with so much fury in his eyes that she took an instinctive step in retreat. “Goddammit, Kelly. My own brother?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Let me explain.”

  But he shook his head and turned away.

  A few seconds later, the back door slammed and she felt a single tear slide down her cheek.

  “I wouldn’t mind hearing that explanation,” Jackson said.

  She swiped impatiently at the trail of moisture and turned back to face him. The pithy response she’d intended died on her lips when she saw the red mark on his jaw. “Let’s get you some ice,” she said instead.

  Jackson followed her through to the kitchen and took a seat at the kitchen table while she rummaged through the freezer.

  “I told you that I didn’t want you coming here,” she reminded him.

  “And I decided that you’ve been calling all the shots for too long.”

  She wrapped a bag of frozen peas in a clean tea towel and handed it to him. “How did that work out for you?”

  He wiggled his jaw, winced. “Well, I didn’t anticipate getting sucker punched by my brother,” he admitted, lifting the ice pack to his face. “And I didn’t realize he had such a strong right hook.”

  “You haven’t ever been on the receiving end before?”

  “Not since we were kids.”

  The coffee that she’d put on for Lukas had finished brewing, so she poured two mugs and set one on the table in front of him. “I’m sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to cause trouble between you and your brother.”

  The uninjured side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile. “I knew you were going to be trouble for me the summer you turned sixteen.”

  She poured milk into her own coffee, and tried not to remember that summer. Or the fact that she’d fallen head over heels in love with Jackson Garrett the night of her sixteenth birthday when he’d kissed her for the first time.

  She’d been so young, so naive. Of course, sixteen was only four years older than her daughter was right now—a reminder that brought her firmly back to the present.

  “Why are you here, Jacks? Because I doubt very much you came over to take a stroll down memory lane.”

  “I blocked a lot of memories,” he told her now. “Or tried to—until you showed up at my office today.”

  “I know I dropped a lot on you—I expected you’d need some time to think about things.”

  “I’ve done nothing but think since you left my office,” he told her.

  She wrapped her hands around her own mug of coffee.

&nbs
p; “My head is still reeling,” he continued.

  She nodded.

  “But I realize, in retrospect, maybe I didn’t handle it as well as I could have.”

  “Maybe I didn’t, either,” she admitted. “Ava had an appointment with Dr. Turcotte this afternoon.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No, she’s fine. I wanted her to have a complete checkup before she started school, anyway, and I asked the doctor, as part of his exam, to take a DNA swab.”

  “I feel like I should say that it isn’t necessary.”

  “But it is.” She met his gaze evenly. “I understand why you want proof. I might not like it, but I understand. And maybe when you have the results, you can let me know what you want to do.”

  * * *

  Before showing up at Kelly’s door, Jack had driven aimlessly around town for more than two hours, trying to figure out what he wanted to do, and he still didn’t have any answers. The only thing he’d known for certain was that he needed to see Kelly—and her daughter. “Is...she here?”

  “She?” Her brows lifted. “Do you mean Ava?”

  He nodded.

  “No, she isn’t.”

  Jack was both relieved and disappointed. Part of the reason he’d steered toward Kelly’s house was to see her daughter, because he thought that if he saw her again, he would know. The instinctive sense of relief warned that he wasn’t yet ready to know.

  “Is she still upset about the move?”

  “Well, she only told me she hates it here four times today—it was seven yesterday.”

  “Sounds like progress.”

  “Monday will be the real test,” she admitted. “That’s when I start my new job.”

  “Is she old enough to be home by herself?” he asked.

  “Technically, yes. But it’s a new home, in a new neighborhood, so I decided it would be easier for both of us if I enrolled her in camp.”

  “Isn’t she a little old for camp?”

  “It’s a junior leadership camp designed for kids entering grades seven and eight. It promotes goal setting and peer mentoring, and uses role playing to demonstrate responsible decision-making and leadership.”

  “What does something like that cost?”

  “Is it always about money with you, Jackson?”

  He turned over the ice pack, reapplied it to his jaw. “I was just curious.”

  “Don’t worry—I’m not asking you to pay half.”

  “Does your ex-husband pay support?”

  “He’s not Ava’s father,” she reminded him.

  “But if he acted in loco parentis—”

  “He didn’t. Malcolm was always very clear about the fact that Ava was my daughter. She grew up calling him ‘Daddy’ but she knew he wasn’t really her father.”

  He frowned at that. “Has he had any contact with her since the divorce?”

  “Ava,” Kelly reminded him again.

  “I know her name.”

  “Then why don’t you say it? Does referring to her by pronouns make it easier to keep her at a distance?”

  He scowled, because that was exactly what he’d been doing, even if he hadn’t realized it. “Has your ex had any contact with Ava since the divorce?”

  “She used to see him on a fairly regular basis at his mother’s house, but she hasn’t seen him at all since Bev died, more than three years ago. Since then, it’s just been the two of us.” She got up to refill her mug, topped up his, too. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come home—back to Pinehurst. So that Ava could know her family.” She looked across the table at him. “So she could know her father.”

  “You’re not sick, are you?”

  Her brow furrowed. “What?”

  “Wasn’t there a movie where the mother tracks down the father of her child because she’s dying?”

  “I’m not dying,” Kelly assured him. “And even if I was, guardianship arrangements for Ava are set out in my will.”

  “Lukas,” he guessed.

  She just nodded, and he tried not to be annoyed that she would entrust her daughter to the care of his brother when she hadn’t even trusted him with the information that he was her daughter’s father.

  “You’ll change that if the test results prove that I’m her father,” he said.

  “When the test results confirm paternity, it won’t be necessary to change it. The rights of a biological father supersede any contrary provisions in a will—as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  Of course, he was aware—he just didn’t appreciate the fact that she’d chosen his brother to be the legal guardian of his child. If he thought about it rationally, he knew that Kelly’s long-standing friendship with Lukas made him a logical choice. But he wasn’t thinking very rationally about anything right now.

  “Your peas are thawed,” he told her, and handed the bag across the table.

  “I’ve got corn, too, if your jaw’s still sore,” she offered.

  He moved it carefully from side to side. “No, it’s good.”

  She got up to toss the package of peas into the sink.

  “What are you and...Ava doing on Saturday?”

  If she noticed the slight hesitation before he said her daughter’s name, she ignored it. “Back-to-school shopping.”

  “All day?”

  She smiled at that. “You’ve obviously never shopped with a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “Obviously,” he agreed, and gave himself credit for not shuddering at the very thought. “How about Saturday night?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was thinking maybe we should spend some time together....” The suggestion trailed off when he saw that Kelly was already shaking her head. “Why not?”

  “I just think it’s too soon. Until you’ve actually accepted the truth, you’re going to be looking for any tiny piece of evidence to support your hope that Ava’s not your daughter.”

  He frowned and pushed away from the table to take his empty mug to the counter. “I don’t know what I hope.”

  “Your instant and vehement denial when I told you about Ava proved, at least to me, that you don’t want to be a father.”

  “Right now, I’m not sure what I want,” he admitted.

  But when he turned to face her, he realized that she was now trapped between the counter at her back and him at her front. He knew the smart thing would be to step away, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted his hand and brushed his thumb gently over the curve of her bottom lip.

  Her breath hitched, her eyes darkened. “Jacks.”

  He didn’t know if she’d spoken his name in warning or request, and he didn’t care. Despite their complicated history, there was something about being in close proximity to Kelly that made him forget everything else and simply burn with need. Heat flared in his belly, pulsed through his veins. He might not want to want her, but there was no denying that he did.

  “Actually, that’s not entirely true,” he told her. “I do know what I want—at least in some respects.”

  She put her hand on his chest and shook her head. “Don’t do this, Jackson.”

  “Don’t do what?” he challenged, his lips hovering only inches above hers.

  “Kiss me.”

  He ignored the “don’t” and, focusing on the “kiss me” part, brushed his lips against hers.

  He wasn’t the kind of man who gave in to impulse. At least not since that night he’d taken Kelly back to his hotel room more than thirteen years earlier. But being so close to her now, he found he didn’t have the willpower to resist what he wanted. Just one little taste, he promised himself. Just a sample of her flavor, to prove to himself that she wasn’t nearly as intoxicating as he recalled and rid himself of the haunting memories.

 
But that sample proved otherwise; one little taste wasn’t nearly enough. He settled his mouth over hers, and slowly deepened the kiss. Her resistance melted like a double scoop of ice cream in the August sun—slowly and sweetly. And her flavor was even sweeter.

  He traced the shape of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, felt her breath shudder out between her lips. The hand she’d laid against his chest was no longer trying to push him away but clutching at the fabric of his shirt.

  He’d wanted to do this since he’d seen her at the airport. Not that he would have admitted it, even to himself, but he’d felt the flare of desire in that first moment when her gaze locked with his. And now that he had her in his arms, he wasn’t even close to being ready to let her go.

  Then the screen at the back door banged against its frame, and she froze.

  “Mom?”

  Jack was already stepping back before Kelly pushed him away.

  “In the kitchen.” She picked up a cloth and began to wipe down the already spotless counter.

  Ava poked her head inside the doorway. “Can I hang out next door with the twins and the puppies for a while?”

  “If it’s okay with Mrs. Garrett.”

  The child rolled her eyes. “She’s the one who told me to check with you.”

  “Then it’s okay with me,” Kelly allowed.

  “Great.” She was gone again as quickly as she’d entered, without ever noticing that Jack was standing on the other side of the room.

  But he noticed that Kelly’s hands weren’t quite steady as she carefully folded the cloth and draped it over the faucet. Had she been as shaken as he by the kiss they’d shared? Or was she simply unnerved by the fact that her daughter had very nearly walked in on them together?

  He might have initiated the kiss, but there was no doubt that Kelly had been an enthusiastic participant, and he couldn’t help but speculate about how far things might have gone if Ava hadn’t interrupted. But maybe he didn’t want to know. He suspected that the memory of that kiss was going to be more than enough to keep him awake at night without imagining how Kelly’s skin would have felt beneath his fingertips, how her body would have responded to his touch.