I’m sorry to interfere in your life. I understand it’s no longer my right to do so. That said, I do love you and always will. Getting to the truth of your childhood will explain so much about the dynamics of your family. It might even convince you of your worth, instead of believing the lies your mother has told you about yourself.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am about how things turned out between us. I don’t know if this is a comfort to you, but I’m happy. For the first time, I’m living my life completely authentically. Having the courage to accept the truth about myself has set me free. I hope these results will do the same for you.
Star wants you to know how sorry she is to have hurt you. Neither of us wanted that. You’re the best man we know. I hope someday you’ll have what we have together. Maybe then you’ll be able to forgive me.
All my love, Addison
With shaking hands, he set aside the letter. His first instinct was to call Sophie. His second was to toss the letter in the trash. He did neither. Instead, he picked up his puppy and sat in the middle of the floor and wept.
Addie had been right. His parents were not his.
Months before their called-off wedding, she’d suggested the idea of DNA testing. It was in the car driving home to their apartment after a particularly horrible family dinner. His mother had been terrible, telling stories about all his failings as a child. How they feared he’d never quit wetting the bed. His obsession with collecting seeds from plants. How he’d let the cat out on accident, resulting in her death by coyote.
Addie had lost it at dinner. She’d actually yelled at the formidable Mrs. Bentley. Despite leaving him for her best girlfriend, Addie had always felt protective of him and had been good to him. She’d loved him very much, just not in the same way she loved Star.
But that night was before all that. They were recently engaged. He’d accepted a dinner invitation from his parents. They’d gone so Addie could get to know them better before the wedding. Unbeknownst to him, Addie had swiped the straws from his parent’s empty daiquiri glasses. Then, apparently, she’d sent them in for testing.
On the way home, she’d ranted about his mother. She couldn’t understand how a mother could be so cold to one son and so loving to the other. She had good instincts about people. Cop-like instincts, honed from her years in the LAPD. Something wasn’t right. She was sure of it. No one favors one sibling over the other so blatantly, she’d said. Unless one of them is not like the other.
It was true that he’d always felt like an outsider in his own family. He’d suspected many times that he wasn’t wanted. Their preference for his younger brother had been obvious. Nico had always assumed it was because Zander was inherently more lovable than he was. In addition, Nico was so different from the rest of them. They were all attorneys who hated the outdoors. He was a landscape designer who spent every moment he could outside. They’d cut him off when he’d chosen design school over law school.
With this knowledge, so many events and dynamics made sense.
His mother had had a sister who died at fourteen from suicide. No one talked about her. The only photographs were in his grandparents’ bedroom. They had lived north of San Francisco in a house that had seemed perpetually dark. Now he knew. In the shadows were secrets.
When he was ten, during a rare visit to their house, he’d asked his grandmother who the girl was in the pictures. She’d picked up the photograph of the little blond girl with the wide, sad eyes and brushed the top of the frame where dust had settled.
“That’s your aunt Tina. She died at fourteen. Hung herself.” She’d delivered this news without any emotion. Not unusual. She was a stern, religious woman.
That day, he’d wanted to ask why. Had Tina been sad? Did something bad happen to her?
Now Jen licked his face as he held her against his chest. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with this seismic shift to his life.
He wouldn’t do anything. What did it matter? It wasn’t as if he had a close relationship with them. They’d barely spoken since he moved to Cliffside Bay. Knowing the truth didn’t set him free. He would go on with his life just as he had since he moved here. Only now he’d have a dog to keep him company.
If only she had the power to take away his feelings for Sophie Woods.
“Can you do that, girl?”
Jen wriggled, then whined.
“Yeah, I don’t think so either.”
2
Sophie
* * *
“It’s not like I’m the Virgin Mary,” Sophie said to Nico as they reclined on her couch. “But you’d think I was by the way people stare at me in this town.”
Nico smiled as he swirled a generous pour of 2013 Walla Walla Syrah around a Riedel glass. “It is unusual to have your brother’s baby.” Long-limbed and muscular with a kind of lazy sexiness that seemed innate rather than honed, the boy rocked a pair of loose-fitting jeans and faded Bruce Springsteen T-shirt that clung to his trim waist and wide chest.
He looked good here in the apartment above her bar and grill. The decor that mirrored the grays, soft blues, and tans of the Northern California coast reminded her of Nico. They were his colors. Most things led back to Nico these days.
She forced herself to look away from him before he caught her gawking at him. Instead, she glanced out the windows that faced the northern slope of town. Tonight, lights from the houses built into the hill sparkled good-naturedly in the comforting blue twilight. Warm summer air drifted in through the open windows, bringing the scents of eucalyptus and the seaside.
“Immaculate conception is one thing, but I was a surrogate. Totally different.” Sophie had simply been a surrogate for her half brother and his wife, carrying the baby made from his sperm and a donor egg. Nothing seedy or scandalous, but you’d never know it by the way people in Cliffside Bay chattered about how Sebastian Shaw came to be.
Curled on the rug at Nico’s feet, Jen lifted her head to give them an appraising look before dropping her chin into her paws and closing her eyes. A month had passed since the fateful day they brought Jen home from the shelter. She’d filled out several inches in every direction in the past few weeks. The vet had estimated she would reach about twenty-five pounds when fully grown. For now, she was about the size of a medium-sized cat but looked bigger because of her fluffy fur.
“Man, this is a small town though,” Nico said. “People love to gossip. There are no secrets, that’s for sure. A little old lady at church last week trapped me at the coffee station to tell me how sorry she was my fiancée left me for a woman—and would I be interested in meeting her grandson?”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard me right,” he said, talking and laughing at the same time. “She thought that if my fiancée was gay then I must be, too. I’m not sure how she worked that out in her mind.”
A giggle escaped. “That’s pretty funny.”
“Or embarrassing.”
“Your particular situation was also unusual,” she said.
“True enough.” He grinned at her. “Apparently, that’s our thing.”
She clinked her glass against his. “To us.”
“To us.” He took a sip of his wine. “How did this come up? Did someone compare you to the Virgin Mary?”
“Not out loud, but guys watch me when I’m behind the bar,” she said. “Like I’m some kind of freak of nature. Like I’m scary.”
“Wait a minute. You think they’re afraid of you?” He turned just his head while remaining in his languid pose. His pale blue eyes were doing that twinkly, laughing thing they did when he thought she was funny. Most of the time, she had no idea why.
Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. As always when she was near enough to smell the spicy scent of his cologne, she had to keep herself from touching him. His face seemed molded from the finest clay and smoothed into shape by a sensitive and gifted sculptor. There was no wasted space, no features made without the greatest care to detail.
/> She tipped her glass to watch the legs on the wine, hoping to distract herself from the ones attached to Nico. “I mean, yes, I did something nice for the family I love, but I’m no one to be intimidated by.” She suspected the tanned man taking up more than his share of her couch might be put off by what she’d done. Maybe that’s what was mixing up their signals. Why else would they have spent so much time together without him making a move when they were so obviously meant for each other?
“I don’t think that’s it,” Nico said.
“What else could it be?” she asked.
“Sweetheart, are you for real?” Nico asked.
“Of course I’m for real.” She studied him while pretending to breathe in the nose of the Syrah. “Why are you laughing at me?
“I’m not,” he said, then erupted in laughter.
She flushed with heat and longing. He was so delicious when he laughed. She wanted to crawl onto his lap and kiss the amusement right out of him. “It’s not nice to make fun of a friend, you know.”
He covered his mouth as if that would hide his amusement. “I’m sorry. It’s just you’re too cute for words.”
“Cute?” She didn’t like the sound of that. “Like Jen kind of cute? All fluffy and tail-waggy?”
“That’s not the kind of cute I meant.”
“What kind of cute am I? Like the ridiculous kind?”
He cocked his head to the side and raised one eyebrow. “Nothing about you is ridiculous. But you’re a little naive at times.” He smiled, revealing laugh lines around his eyes. She wanted to run her fingers over every one of them. “And somewhat quirky.”
“I’m not naive. Not exactly. I’m definitely not quirky. I’m boringly normal.”
“There’s nothing normal about you. That’s a compliment, by the way.”
A warmth spread over her. No one made her feel the way this man did when he looked at her with those kind eyes. She set aside her wine and reached over the back of the couch for the lighter, then lit the candles on the table. The wicks sputtered and flickered to life. When she turned back to Nico, she caught him watching her. His gaze flickered away.
He’s the one. My one true love.
When Nico Bentley showed up at a table in The Oar, Sophie had recognized him immediately. The blue eyes and his mouth so quick to smile were an exact match. It was him. The one. She’d felt it deep inside her soul. When he ordered a glass of a red blend from Washington state, she was pleased to know that not only was he made for her specifically, but that he had good taste in wine. This was a bonus.
She’d thought everything would unravel as it should. However, there was a problem. Nico Bentley didn’t recognize her. Clearly, he’d never had a dream or a vision. Or he’d come to her crushed by life already, rendering him blind to the one he’d been looking for all along. He no longer believed in magic or miracles.
When she proposed this idea to her mother, Rhona had suggested patience. “Sometimes soul mates take their own sweet time seeing what’s right in front of them. Especially male soul mates.”
And then there was the problem of the dog. He didn’t have one. She’d taken care of that well enough. Now she needed to move this relationship from friendship to the love match they were fated to have. Tonight, she’d vowed to tell him how she felt.
She settled back into her spot and picked up her glass. So far, her confession of her undying love for Nico Bentley wasn’t going so well. She shouldn’t have brought up her virginity. She could see that now. Just because he was as easy to talk to as it was to breathe didn’t mean she should tell him everything. She was doing this all wrong.
“Make the night romantic,” her mother had advised over the phone. “And wear something pretty.”
She’d dressed in a short jean skirt that showed off her long, tanned legs and a peasant blouse that dipped into her cleavage. She was pretty sure the outfit was a good choice, because Nico’s gaze had darted to her chest when she opened the door to let him into the apartment.
Nico sipped his wine. Darn that mouth with those full lips. They taunted her, pulled her toward him as if she had no control of herself. She would give years of her life to feel them pressed to her own.
He shifted, removing his feet from the table as he draped one arm over the back of her couch. “I can guarantee you that’s not why guys are staring at you—at the bar or otherwise. They’re staring at you because you’re smoking hot.”
She brought her glass to her mouth, buying time to think through this response. If he thought this, why did he treat her as though she was too holy to touch? “Then why doesn’t anyone ever hit on me?” Why don’t you hit on me?
He looked away, the way her little niece Jubie did when she was contemplating telling a fib.
“Nico?”
He let out a long sigh, then turned back to her. “What would be a reason guys would be scared to ask you out?”
“That’s what I’m saying, I don’t know.
“Think about it this way. Who in your life is intimidating?” He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer as if that would prompt the right answer. “Can you think of anyone who doesn’t want guys hitting on you and would make sure everyone knew it?”
She stared at him. Please God, let him be talking about himself. “Is it you?”
His eyebrows came together as he shook his head. “What? No, Soph, I’m talking about your brother.”
“No, Zane wouldn’t do that.”
A muscle twitched on the side of his face. “You might be surprised. That’s all I’m saying.”
Zane wouldn’t interfere in her love life. Anyway, that wasn’t where she was going with this. She needed to circle around to them. “What about you? Why don’t you ever cross the line?”
He dropped his chin into his neck and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
No going back. She’d made a plan to get her feelings out in the open, and nothing was going to stop her. “Why not?”
Growing up, she’d grown accustomed to being singled out and even talked about. That’s what happened when a baby was abandoned on the steps of a firehouse and raised by a high-profile music producer and his wife. She was “that” girl. The one in the newspapers. The one who’d helped launch the safe house initiative. The one who’d won the proverbial lottery when she was adopted by a couple in the top 1 percent. Money aside, her parents were wonderful. She’d had a magical childhood.
Then, at age twenty, there was the discovery of two half siblings. Not totally unheard of but somewhat unusual. What made it special was how immediately bonded they’d felt. Zane had given her 50 percent of their family restaurant, The Oar. Maggie had brought her fully into her life and family.
Everything went her way. That was just the truth. But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out the man in front of her. She knew he was the one. How come he didn’t know it?
She tucked her bare legs under her and spoke softly. “Nico, look at me.”
He glanced over at her, his eyes reflecting the flicker of the candle’s flames. His brows scrunched together before he looked back to his lap.
“Why not us?” When she was a child, there had been music everywhere, drifting up from her father’s recording studio or on the old turntable in the family room. Even in the car, her father had played the folk and country music of his artists and others. A constant soundtrack to her life played through her mind, even when everyone else heard only silence. Now an old Judds song played through her mind. “Why Not Me?”
“We’re too different,” he said.
Her throat hurt as she asked the next question. “Is it because I had a baby?”
He stared at her with widened eyes, clearly stunned. “One hundred percent no. Putting your life on hold like you did was incredible. You gave Zane and Honor the best gift in the world. I admire you more than you can imagine.”
“I’m talking about my appearance.”
His head jerked backward. “Oh, no. God no. You
’re perfect. Every inch of you.” One side of his mouth rose in a wry smile. “That tiny bit of cloth you call a bikini hides nothing from me or any of the other men drooling over you.”
She raised her eyebrows in an attempt to sound flirtatious, even though she wanted to cry with frustration. “You sound jealous.”
“I don’t appreciate the leers, no,” he said, closer to a growl than speech. “You deserve better than that.” He threw up his hands. “Anyway, this has nothing to do with how you look. To me, you’re perfect. So damn perfect. I’ve never known a more beautiful woman, both inside and out.”
“Then what’s stopping you from ravishing me?”
He choked on his wine. “Ravishing you?”
“Yes. Like a throwdown, hotter-than-hot ravish.” She set her glass on the table and stretched both legs out on the couch. Her toes brushed his thigh, and a jolt of desire traveled up to her core. “We have a great time together, right?”
“The best.” He stared down at her bare toes.
“And we have a ton in common. We’re both surfing foodies who love wine, coffee, and thrillers.”
Still gazing downward at her toes, he chuckled. “True.”
She waited until he looked up at her to continue. “We spend all this time together and I keep thinking you’re going to kiss me but then you don’t. Do you need permission?”
“Permission?”
“Yes, permission. If so, I’m granting it right now.” She gazed into his eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest, but she wore it on her damn sleeve.
“Don’t do that.” He put aside his wine and covered his face with his hands.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” he said through his fingers. “I’m weak, Soph.”
“I’m a little in love with you. Not a little. A lot.”
His head jerked up as he turned toward her. “You’re in love with me?”
“Completely.”
Jilted Page 2