His Long-Lost Family

by Brenda Harlen

  “Because I knew exactly how you’d react when you found out that your brother was Ava’s father.”

  She didn’t realize that Ava had come back into the house or overheard any part of the conversation with Lukas until her daughter said, “Dr. Garrett’s my father?”

  Chapter Seven

  Jack was staring at his planner and trying to figure out what he was going to do with the four days he’d set aside for a contentious custody hearing that had been postponed. Ordinarily, he would have opposed the eleventh-hour adjournment request as prejudicial to his client, except in this situation, it was not. Because his client had interim custody of her three children and her estranged husband was currently in the custody of the Las Vegas Police Department after a weekend trip with some buddies ended with an ill-advised proposition to an undercover police officer.

  He wasn’t accustomed to so much unscheduled time. He enjoyed his work and he had no problem with fifteen-hour days or even working weekends. In fact, he sometimes worried that he wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have such a busy practice. And there were other times that he wished he could escape from his clients’ problems, just for a little while. Now that he had such an opportunity, he thought he should focus on his own life—and establishing a relationship with his daughter.

  He looked up at a knock on his door. “What are you still doing here?” he asked his secretary.

  “I’m not still here,” Colleen told him. “I went home for dinner, saw a movie with a friend, then came back to pick up some files I wanted to finish billing tonight. You’re the only one still here.”

  “Not for long,” he told her, shutting down his computer.

  “Well, since you are here, you can let me know what to do about Norah Hennessey Sinclair. She called several times this afternoon demanding an appointment for tomorrow.”

  “And you said?”

  “That you were scheduled to be in court all week, which is technically true.”

  “Your boss should give you a raise,” Jack told her.

  “He should,” she agreed. “But he’s way too cheap.”

  “Or he could demote you to the copy room.”

  She just shrugged, unconcerned. “If she calls again in the morning, do you want me to book her in for Monday morning? If I schedule an 8:00-a.m. appointment, she should be sober.”

  “I told you about that dinner meeting in confidence,” he reminded her.

  Colleen glanced around the empty office, but all she said was, “Monday?”

  “The following Monday,” he allowed. “I want to keep next week open.”

  “For what?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “You usually have to have a personal life to justify personal reasons,” she pointed out.

  “Ha, ha.”

  “I wasn’t joking.”

  He closed the lid on his briefcase. “You know how to reach me in case of emergency.”

  “You’re really taking time off?”

  “And I have complete confidence that you can handle the office.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Who are you and what have you done with Jackson Garrett?”

  He chuckled. “Go home, Colleen. You can do the billing tomorrow.”

  She was walking beside him to the elevator when his cell phone rang. Jack pulled it out of his pocket, surprised—and pleased—to see Kelly’s name and number on the display.

  “Maybe I was wrong about you not having a personal life,” his secretary mused, punching the button to summon the elevator.

  Jack connected the call as the elevator dinged to signal its arrival.

  “I hope it’s not too late,” Kelly said without preamble.

  “Actually, I’m just leaving the office,” he told her.

  “In that case, could you stop by on your way home?”

  He couldn’t resist teasing, “If this is a booty call—absolutely.”

  “In your dreams.”

  She had no idea how very true those words were. And while he had a ready retort on his lips, the underlying tension in her voice prompted him to ask instead, “Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” she admitted.

  “Ava?”

  “She’s fine, but—” She blew out a breath. “I’d really rather talk about this in person.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he promised.

  * * *

  He was pulling into her driveway in less than that, and when Kelly answered the door, he could see the worry in her eyes.

  “What’s going on?”

  She managed a wobbly smile. “Well, you said that you wanted Ava to know—now she knows.”

  He did want Ava to know, but he’d got the impression that Kelly was a little less eager to share the news, so this revelation coming so soon on the heels of their earlier conversation surprised him. “You told her?”

  “She overheard Lukas and I talking.” She hesitated, as if she was going to say something else, then apparently changed her mind.

  “How did she take it?” he asked cautiously.

  “She didn’t say too much on the drive home,” Kelly admitted. “And then she went to her room and slammed the door.”

  “Is she mad at you or me?”

  “Both, I’d guess, but probably more at me. She thinks I should have told her who her father was a long time ago.”

  He couldn’t disagree, so instead he asked, “Why am I here?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I probably shouldn’t have called. I thought maybe you could talk to her, but I don’t think she’s in a mood to listen to anyone right now.”

  When he’d suggested telling Ava about their relationship, he’d assumed that he and Kelly would sit down together and make the announcement. But he hadn’t anticipated what kind of reaction Ava might have to the news, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be called in for damage control. Or to worry that he might exacerbate the damage.

  “I can try,” he said, and she looked up at him, her golden eyes filled with wary hope and reluctant gratitude.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Even if he hadn’t known which room was Ava’s, he could have guessed by the firmly closed door. He knocked, but the sound barely registered over the pounding of his heart against his ribs.

  “Go away.”

  He turned the knob, pushed open the door a crack.

  She glared at him from her cross-legged position in the middle of her bed. “I said ‘go away.’”

  “I thought maybe that was code for something else—like how ‘sick’ actually means ‘cool.’”

  “You thought wrong.”

  He shrugged. “Do you want to tell me why you’re so pissed off at me?”

  Her jaw dropped. “You’re not supposed to swear in front of me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a kid and it sets a bad example,” she informed him primly.

  He stepped farther into the room, straddled the ladder-back chair at her desk. “I don’t have a lot of experience with kids,” he admitted.

  “Could’ve fooled me.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, but at least she was talking to him.

  “So why are you pi—mad at me?” he asked again.

  She held a fuzzy purple pillow against her chest, her fingers raking through the fur as she considered how to respond—or maybe if she should. Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own. “Did you sleep with my mom and then dump her?”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “I didn’t ask her,” Ava admitted. “I’m asking you.”

  “You could have started with an easier question,” he grumbled.

  She hugged the pillow tighter and waited
for his response.

  Jack knew he could try to slant the truth in his favor, but what would be the point? It seemed as if Ava had already made up her mind about him and nothing he said was going to change it.

  “Yeah,” he finally said. “That’s not a complete summary of what happened, but it’s basically accurate.”

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  “No.” Kelly answered her daughter’s question from the doorway before he could. “When we decided to go our separate ways, neither of us knew that I was pregnant.”

  “Didn’t they teach you about safe sex back then?”

  Thankfully, Kelly came to his rescue again, adeptly skirting the question as she lowered herself onto the edge of her daughter’s bed. “Just because you weren’t planned doesn’t mean you weren’t wanted.”

  “Maybe you wanted me,” Ava acknowledged. “But what about him?”

  “That’s not a fair question,” Kelly chided. “Because I moved to Seattle without telling Jack about you.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s...complicated.”

  “Don’t you think I have a right to know why I didn’t have a father for the first twelve years of my life?”

  “The details don’t matter as much as the fact that you have a father now.”

  Ava looked at him with blatant skepticism. “Do I?”

  “I know this revelation came as a surprise to you—it was a surprise to me, too,” he admitted. “And I’m not expecting you to embrace me with open arms, but I’m hoping that we can give each other a chance to try and figure this out.”

  She didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, and finally admitted, “I thought Dr. Garrett was my father.”

  Jack glanced at Kelly in surprise and confusion; she shrugged apologetically.

  “Mom told Uncle Lukas that his brother was my father,” Ava explained. “And I thought—I hoped—she meant Dr. Garrett.”

  “Matt already has three kids,” he said lightly.

  “Probably because he likes kids.”

  He frowned. “I like kids.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I might only be twelve, but I’m not stupid.”

  “Ava,” Kelly said warningly.

  But the child kept her gaze firmly on Jack. “How long have you known about me?”

  He cleared his throat. “Your mom told me last week.”

  “And you were obviously overjoyed.”

  “I was...overwhelmed,” he said cautiously.

  “Did you ever plan to have kids?”

  He glanced to Kelly for assistance, but she looked as helpless as he felt. “I never thought too much about the possibility,” he finally acknowledged.

  “I guess I know now why Mom didn’t tell you about me,” Ava said. “Because she knew you wouldn’t want me.”

  “That’s not true,” Jack said.

  “And not fair,” Kelly interjected.

  “Isn’t it?” She tossed the pillow aside and pushed off the bed to face him more directly. “What did you say when she told you about me?”

  “Ava,” Kelly said, trying to divert her attention.

  She shook her head. “I want to know.”

  Jack held her gaze. “I didn’t react well,” he admitted.

  Green eyes, so similar to his own, narrowed. “You didn’t want to believe it, did you? That’s why Dr. Turcotte took that swab—it wasn’t a strep test but a DNA test.”

  “I don’t doubt that you’re my daughter,” Jack said now, because it was true.

  “Did you ask for a DNA test?” Ava asked.

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Then she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room and down the hall to slam another door.

  Kelly blew out a breath. “Look at us—one big happy family.”

  “At least now I know where she gets her penchant for sarcasm.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I completely screwed that up, didn’t I?”

  “Welcome to parenthood.” Kelly stood up and moved toward the door.

  Jack followed. “Maybe if you’d said those words twelve years ago, I might have figured out a few things by now,” he told her. “Instead, you spring a twelve-year-old child on me and I have no idea what to say or do.”

  “I was just as unprepared to be a parent when she was born,” Kelly reminded him as she made her way down the stairs. “And completely on my own.”

  “That was your choice,” he shot back.

  “I never chose to be a single parent,” she argued. “I only chose not to tell your fiancée that I was pregnant with your baby. And truthfully, when I realized that you’d jumped from my bed right back to hers, I decided that you weren’t the kind of man I wanted as a father to my child.”

  The accusation wasn’t just hurtful, it was wrong. “I didn’t jump from your bed to hers,” he protested.

  “When you came to Chicago, you told me your engagement was over. And when I called you a few months later, she answered your phone.”

  “We weren’t together when I came to Chicago.” He paced the length of the living room. “God, Kelly, how could you even think otherwise? There’s no way I would have spent that weekend with you if I’d still been with Sara.”

  “So when did you get back together with her?” she wanted to know. “The day after you got back from Chicago?”

  “You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? Because then I’m the bad guy and you can feel self-righteous about keeping my child from me for the past twelve years.”

  “Are you denying that’s what happened?”

  “It’s not even close to what happened.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The only reason I even agreed to see Sara again is that I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  “That’s your story? That you jumped into bed with your ex because you were thinking about me?”

  He heard the scorn in her voice and knew he couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. Looking at the situation now, he could see that it wasn’t the most logical course of action. But at the time, it was the only option he could see.

  “Yeah, because no other woman has ever haunted me the way you did. After only three days together, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Even weeks later, you were my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. And I couldn’t think about you without wanting you. It’s never been that way before, not with anyone else. So when Sara called, I wanted to believe that I wasn’t missing you specifically, I was just missing being with someone.” He pinned her with his gaze. “I was wrong.”

  “And yet, a few months later, you married her.”

  “I knew it was probably a mistake,” he acknowledged. “But I knew that if I chased after you, I’d be making a bigger one.”

  She drew in a sharp breath and rubbed a hand over her breastbone, as if to assuage an ache, and he cursed himself for hurting her yet again when that was exactly what he’d tried to avoid from the beginning.

  “Well, that’s a flattering assessment.”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It would have been a mistake because the timing was all wrong. Dammit, Kelly, I didn’t want you sacrificing your education or your career because you thought you were in love with me.”

  “I did think I was in love with you,” she agreed. “But I fell out of love quickly enough when reality hit.”

  “You’re never going to forgive me for what happened thirteen years ago, are you?”

  “On the contrary, I’m grateful to you for what happened thirteen years ago, for giving me Ava.”

  “But you can’t forgive me for not being there for you—even though I didn’t know there was any reason to be there.”

  “And i
f you had known? If I’d responded to the news of your engagement with ‘That’s great, Jack—you’re getting married and you’re going to be a father,’ what would you have done?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “I do,” she told him. “You would have freaked because my unplanned pregnancy could have destroyed everything you wanted—not just your relationship with Sara but your name on the door of her father’s law firm.”

  “Maybe I would have,” he acknowledged. “I was young and stupid—and no way was I prepared to be a parent.”

  She just nodded. There was no need for her to point out again that she had been even younger and equally unprepared to be a parent. And yet she’d done what she needed to do.

  “What about now?” she asked.

  “I don’t feel any more prepared now,” he admitted. “Why do you think I panicked when you told me about Ava? Maybe part of it was that I wasn’t ready to believe she was my child, but a bigger part was because I don’t know how to be a father. But...I want to try.”

  She nodded again. “Thank you.”

  “You probably shouldn’t thank me just yet,” he warned.

  “You have your faults, Jacks, but I’ve never known you to give up on something just because it wasn’t easy. And Ava really needs a father.”

  * * *

  Kelly didn’t push her daughter to make conversation the next morning. After everything that had happened the night before, she figured Ava was entitled to be quiet and introspective, but she was hopeful that a day at camp would improve her mood. That hope was short-lived as Ava barely spoke half a dozen words on the way home at the end of the day, and those were only in response to direct questions.

  “How was camp today?”

  “Fine.”

  “What did you do?”

  “The usual.”

  “What was for lunch today?”

  “Cold pizza.”

  “Is Laurel going back next week?”

  “Yeah.”

  Thankfully it wasn’t a very long drive from camp to home, so while the silence the rest of the way was awkward, it wasn’t interminable. And then she turned onto Larkspur Drive and saw a familiar vehicle parked in front of the house.