Lush Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 8)

by Marysol James

  Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.

  “Annie… please, princess…”

  “Don’t call me that,” she hissed as she turned back to see Sam right behind her. He’d shut the front door of the house, so she felt OK about raising her voice a bit, sure that Cindy wouldn’t hear anything. “Just don’t, Sam, don’t call me anything. Why didn’t you ever tell me about her? About them?”

  “Because until an hour ago, I didn’t know! I didn’t have a fucking clue that Cindy even existed!”

  “Really?” she shot back. “You mean to tell me that you – a fucking doctor – totally failed to notice that your live-in ex grew a entire human in her body for nine months? And that she then looked a lot skinnier? Oh, and she had a tiny person attached to her boobs 24/7? I think you need to go back to med school, Sam, because you seem to have missed some important shit about anatomy!”

  “Annie… look…”

  “No.” She practically ripped the door off the car. “Fuck off.”

  “Annie.” He held her door with his entire arm, not letting her jerk it open enough to slide in. “We broke up because she was cheating on me, OK? I ended it and she moved out and I never saw her again until today. She sure as hell never told me that she was pregnant, and frankly, I have no idea if Cindy is even mine.”

  That stopped Annie dead in her tracks. “What?”

  “She could be the kid of the guy that Kathleen was cheating on me with, right? I mean, he was with Kathleen all through the pregnancy, and raised Cindy as his for almost three years. It’s more than possible that he’s the father.”

  “Oh, yeah? And where is he, anyway?” Annie snapped. “Has he noticed that his wife and kid haven’t come home for the past couple of days?”

  “They never married, apparently. And he died. Cancer. About two months ago.”

  “And so, what? Kathleen has moved on to Daddy Option Slash Meal Ticket Number Two?”

  “Annie.” Sam was pleading. “Please, honey, just come back inside. We can go to the bedroom, just the two of us, and we can talk, OK? I’ll tell you everything that I know, everything that happened, and after Cindy goes to bed, then we can talk to Kathleen too, alright? See what she wants, what she’s doing here now, why she never said anything before today, what proof she has that Cindy’s even mine.”

  A wave of tiredness just crashed over her, and the next words came out of her mouth before she had the strength to come up for air and stop them:

  “That sweet, beautiful little girl has your eyes, Sam.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I know it’s possible. The timing of the pregnancy, Cindy’s age, her eyes… I know, honey.”

  “Right.” She shook her head. “I’m not coming in, Sam.”

  “Princess –”

  “No.” Now she was calm, calm to the point of being numb. On the whole, it was a metric fuck-ton better than being hurt, and she’d take it. “I agree that there’s a lot of talking to be done, but it doesn’t involve me. You need to talk to Kathleen, get some straight and honest answers. Find out why she’s here now, if she’s got any kind of documentation that you’re a father to that little girl. If you are, you need to figure many, many things out, between the two of you. Those things don’t involve me.”

  “They do involve you.” He tried to take her hand, but Annie pulled away. “Annie, please… I want you here…”

  “No.” She took advantage of him reaching for her and got the door open. She jumped into the front seat, jammed the keys in the ignition. “This is between the three of you now, Sam. I’m leaving so you can talk.”

  “You should be here too, Annie. You’re a big part of my life, honey, and you have a say what’s going to happen next. You have a place here, with me.”

  “No, I don’t.” She slammed the door, hit reverse so fast that Sam had to jump back to avoid getting his foot run over. The snowy road in front of her blurred as the tears fell thick and fast now, and her next words were just puffs of smoke in the freezing air. “If she’s yours, then I have no say, and no place with you at all.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jax brought Annie a cup of coffee, pretended not to notice how pale and wan she looked, how much her hands shook as she took the mug. The woman looked like she was nursing one hell of a hangover, if Jax was being honest, and he couldn’t say that he blamed her. God knows, after Sarah had left him, he’d gone on more than his fair share of alcohol-fueled benders.

  “So,” Sarah said. “Are you going to call him this morning?”

  “No.” Annie sipped her coffee, grimaced as her stomach lurched. That third bottle of wine with Talia had seemed like such a great idea the night before; now, not so much. “I can’t call him at all.”

  “Mom… he’s going to need you. He’s just had a huge shock, and his whole life has just been turned upside-down. I know you wanted to get out of the way yesterday, leave them to sort it out, and I think that was the right course of action then, OK? But you can’t pretend that you two don’t have things to discuss.”

  “What’s to discuss? At least until paternity is confirmed?”

  “So… you want to wait for the DNA test?” Jax asked. “Then talk?”

  “Yeah.” Annie sighed. “I mean, look… if that woman is lying, then it’s all over, right? But the thing is…” She paused, drank some more coffee. “The thing is, I think that little girl is his. In fact, I know she is.”

  “Mom, you can’t” –

  “Oh, I can,” Annie said softly. “I so can. Her eyes, Sarah… I’ve spent enough time looking into Sam’s eyes, and I know them like I know my own heartbeat. When Cindy looked up at me, all I saw was Sam. She’s his, guys, and I’d lay my life on it.”

  “Maybe the other guy had brown eyes too,” Jax pointed out. “If this woman was sleeping with two guys at the same time, then who the hell can say anything for sure?”

  Annie shook her head. “I know you two are trying to help, but really… there’s nothing to talk about, nothing to be done. A little girl just lost the only man that she’s ever looked up to, the man who raised her as his own, and now she may have just been thrown into a situation where she has a whole new father, in a whole new city, and that bitch of a mother of hers has already trained her to call Sam ‘Daddy’. You think for one second that I’m going to confuse her more? Make things harder on her?”

  “But you –”

  “I’m an adult,” Annie said, cutting Sarah off. “And I can set aside my selfish wants for someone else’s needs. Especially a child who is hurting.”

  Sarah and Jax looked at each other, at a total loss what to do or say now. OK, yeah, Annie was right in many ways. It was better for her to step aside and let Sam and Kathleen sort shit out, because from what they’d heard about that woman, she had it in for Annie anyway. No way Annie being present would make things better or smoother or easier, and the last thing that anybody wanted was for Cindy to see the adults fighting.

  But Annie was wrong, too. Wrong to just write Sam off like this, wrong to assume that if he was a new and surprise Daddy, that Annie was out. How the hell did that even make any sense? Was it because Annie had sacrificed everything for Sarah and Noah – her own happiness, her own health, her own sanity – and she was working on the assumption that every parent adopted the slash-and-burn approach to child-rearing? Or was it because she thought that in the hierarchy of Sam’s new life, she was dead last? Or maybe it was that she wasn’t up for the fight – she didn’t want to get into it with Kathleen, didn’t want to negotiate how much time she got with Sam, how a romantic relationship worked around Cindy?

  Whatever it was, she seemed pretty certain that things with Sam were over, and Sarah and Jax had no clue how to begin convincing her otherwise.

  Just then, there was a knock on the front door. Jax shot to his feet, sure that he knew who was standing out there. He was right.

 
“Sam,” Jax said. “Glad to see you, man. How you doing?”

  Sam stepped into the house, looking exhausted. “Been better, I can say that for sure. Thanks for asking, though.”

  Sarah scrambled to her feet, grabbed her coat, nodded at Jax, who was lingering by the still-open door.

  “Hi!” she said to Sam. “Bye!”

  “Bye,” he replied. “Good to see you, for a whole six seconds.”

  She grinned, bolted out the door, Jax shut it behind her. And then there they were, Sam and Annie, all alone and staring at each other.

  “Hi, honey,” he said quietly. “Can we talk?”

  “About?”

  “C’mon, Annie. Don’t, OK? Just… don’t. A few things got decided yesterday, and I want you to know. Don’t make this any harder than it already is. Please.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She got to her feet, uncaring that she was still in pajamas and had morning-after-wine-breath. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  She looked at him, and despite herself, a wave of love and worry washed over her.

  “Sit, Sam. You look dead on your feet.”

  He nodded, subsided onto the sofa. He accepted the coffee silently, then they just sat for a few seconds, drinking and looking everywhere but at each other. Sam broke the silence by setting down his coffee and clearing his throat, and Annie looked over at him. Waited.

  “OK, so… the first thing is that they’re going to live with me.”

  Annie dropped her eyes and nodded. That wasn’t a total shock, but it still hurt in some ways. The thought of Kathleen in Sam’s shower, sleeping next door in the guest bedroom, using Annie’s favorite coffee cup – these small, almost stupid things pierced her.

  “The understanding is that they’ll stay while we wait for the DNA results,” Sam said. “I swabbed Cindy’s mouth this morning, and I’ll go to the clinic to drop all the samples off as soon as I leave here.”

  “How long does it take to get the results?”

  “Usually a week or so, but I’m going to pull out my doctor cred and put in a rush. Shouldn’t take more than three days.”

  “OK.”

  “Once we get the results back, well…” He opened his hands. “Then we’ll see where we are.”

  “If she’s not yours?”

  “Then they’re out faster than Kathleen can blink.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “No. She’s got money, she’s got plenty. They wouldn’t be homeless and destitute, baby, I promise you. It wouldn’t be like you and Sarah and Noah being kicked out in the dead of winter, after your slimeball husband sold the house out from under you, alright? I’d make sure they were settled and safe, but that’s as far as my responsibility would go.”

  “And if Cindy is yours?”

  He paused. “Then – then it gets a tad complicated.”

  “They’d live with you?”

  “That’s what Kathleen wants.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You, princess. I want you.”

  “No.” She backed up a few inches, jammed herself against the sofa arm. “I can’t –”

  “Why?” he demanded, his calm and control slipping at long last. “Why the fuck can’t you, Annie? Just what the actual hell is going on here?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes!” He glared at her. “I’m not totally in the dark here. I get that it’s a game-changer, alright? But I don’t get why it shuts every single goddamn thing down between us! You do know that parents are allowed to have love lives? Sometimes even with people they don’t actually have their kids with?”

  “I know that, Sam.”

  “Then why are you acting like I have to choose between you and Cindy? I don’t have to, I sure as hell don’t want to, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’re trying to make me.”

  She stared at the sofa, trying to hide her tears. Sam saw them, though, and he softened.

  “Annie. Please. Stay with me through this, OK? I need you, princess. I need you in my life, in my bed, in my arms. Don’t you know that?”

  “Sam, if that little girl is yours, then she needs you in her life.” Annie swiped at her eyes. “The man that she called a father just died, and now here you are, like some kind of Daddy runner-up, in a whole new place, living a whole new life. She’s got to be hurting and scared. I want you, I freely admit that, but she needs you. It’s not the same thing.”

  “You don’t need me?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Annie?”

  Annie steeled herself for the lie; it was a necessity, though, it was what she had to do to get him off her sofa, off to the DNA lab, off to his new life with his daughter. “No, Sam. I don’t need you, and what you need to do now is be a father, because DNA test be damned, Cindy is yours. You know it, I know it, and we both know that even though it’s not what you want, that you never wanted a child, you’re a good man and you’ll do the right thing by her.” She stood up, adopted her briskest tone. “So, go do that now. Go do the right thing.”

  “Annie…”

  “Goodbye, Sam.”

  He stared up at her, and he knew that this was done, at least for now. He got to his feet, then hesitated.

  “When I get the DNA results… can I call you? Tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you – will you wait for me? Wait for the final answer, wait before you give up all hope in me? In us?”

  She paused and his heart broke, sure that she was going to say no, but then she smiled. She smiled that radiant, shining smile, the one that he was so in love that he actually ached from seeing it, and the fact that she was hurting so much and so hard and so deep, and she still managed to give him a smile from the heart, just made him admire her, adore her, love her all the more.

  “I waited for you for years, Sam, and if this whole thing ends up being a pathetic and vindictive little game that Kathleen is playing, then I’ll be waiting right here. But understand this, and understand it well: I won’t stand between a child and her father, or between you and your child’s mother. If there’s any chance at all that the three of you can be a family, then you should be.” She braced herself to say the next words. “Promise me that if there’s even the smallest chance that you can be a family, then you’ll choose them over me.

  “No.” Sam was horrified. “Annie, no. Never.”

  She knew that he would, though, if it came right down to it. Sam didn’t understand it yet, not the way that Annie did, but the blood and love bond between parent and child was a powerful one – almost definitely the most powerful bond in the world. If Sam had to make peace with that bitch of an ex of his for the good of his daughter, then he’d do that too. He’d do anything that Kathleen asked of him to make a family, to forge a relationship with Cindy. He’d cut Annie out, he’d forget her name, he’d forget her face.

  He’d choose them.

  Of course he would.

  Of course he should.

  And if he wouldn’t make that choice on his own, then Annie was going to make it for him. For his own good; for Cindy’s good.

  He’d understand that choice one day, she knew. Maybe he’d even be grateful.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Twelve

  3 days later

  Victor ‘Scars’ Innis poured his younger brother a shot of whisky, raised his eyebrows. Sam nodded wearily, and Scars made the drink a double. He set the glass on the coffee table in front of Sam, plunked himself down on the sofa. He raised his own tumbler, both men tossed the alcohol back.

  “Argh.” Sam shuddered. “Urgh. Dear God, that’s revolting.”

  “Another?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Scars grabbed the whisky from the kitchen counter, poured the shots, kept the bottle on the coffee
table this time. He stretched his long, jean-clad legs out in front of him and surveyed his kid brother. Sam looked like shit, and Scars knew that he didn’t need more than one guess to know why. He sighed.

  “Positive for a match?” Scars asked.

  “Positive for a match.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck indeed.”

  Both men threw their drinks back. Scars sighed again.

  “So why’d she say nothing until now? Where the fuck has she been for going-on four years?”

  “Miami.”

  “With that guy?”

  “Keith. Yeah. She told him from the get-go that Cindy mine, and he was totally OK with it, even when she left the ‘father’ part of the birth certificate blank. Raised Cindy like his own.”

  “Doofus. Why would he do that without question or problem? Pussy whipped?”

  Sam grimaced. “That’s my best guess, yeah. She didn’t really explain that part. All she said was that they were deeply in love, and I suppose he decided that if he wanted Kathleen, Cindy was part of the package, though it does sound from Cindy like he genuinely loved her.” Sam removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “He sounds like a really decent guy, actually.”

  “And when he died – what? Kathleen needed you to step up?”

  “You got it. She as much as said so. Told me straight-up that she’s after years of back-pay in child support.”

  “Yeah?” Scars was surprised. He’d met Kathleen, of course, met her many times when he’d gone over to Sam’s all those years ago, and he’d always thought of her as a sneaky, manipulative little bitch. A beautiful one, of course, but still – the woman was a fucking snake, and the thought of her being honest about anything was astonishing. “She figured that she couldn’t hack it as a single Mom and came to cash in?”

  “Sounds that way. She didn’t give the solo parent thing much of a shot, of course. She just sold everything on craigslist, sold the house they shared, bought two plane tickets, and packed Cindy up. Appeared on my doorstep and totally rearranged my world.”