Victoria stepped into my cubicle and cleared her throat. “Arizona. Your father would like to see you in his office.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I said.
She nodded, gave me a flicker of a smile and then walked off, and I stared after her, completely mystified. She was off her game. She hadn’t said a single bitchy thing to me in a few days now, and I wondered if our little chat the other day had actually had some effect.
I walked up to Roy’s office and knocked.
“Come in,” he called out.
He was sipping on a tumbler of scotch at his desk, and I raised my eyebrows.
“Bit early to be drinking.”
He gave me a rueful smile and gestured for me to sit. “How’s your day been, darling?”
“Busy, but good,” I replied. “By the way, where’s Layla been? I haven’t seen her around the house for a couple of days.”
He looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. “She’s err…she’s had some meetings to take care of in New York. Anyway, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”
I sat down and watched as he drained the rest of the amber liquid, and I wrinkled my forehead, wondering what it could be that he needed to discuss. It must have been serious if alcohol was involved at two in the afternoon.
“Tom Keller has been transferred to a prison right here in Rhode Island,” he remarked, studying my face for my reaction. “Seeing as this is the state where he committed the crime, this is where he’ll be tried and sentenced.”
I looked down at my lap. “Oh.”
“I was thinking that you might want to go and visit him.”
My head jerked up. “What? Why would I do that?”
Furthermore, why would he of all people want me to go and see him? Maybe he’d had one too many drinks. Even billionaires must be susceptible to bad drunken decisions.
He held his hands up. “This is…err…difficult for me to say, but I think it would end up being for the best. You must have a lot of questions for him. Questions that only he can answer.”
“I don’t want to see him. I never want to see him again,” I said, color rising in my cheeks.
Roy sighed. “I can understand that. Just hear me out.”
He poured himself another scotch and then continued. “I spent the last nineteen years hating whoever kidnapped you, Arizona. When Tom Keller took you, he took all those years from me. Worse, he took them from you. You could have had so many different opportunities in life that he prevented you from having. I will never forgive that man for what he did, but for some reason, I cannot bring myself to hate him any longer.”
“Why not?” I asked, my eyes wide. Out of anything that I might have expected him to say, it certainly hadn’t been this.
“When you were gone, I had no idea where you were or what happened to you. I spent countless sleepless nights wondering if you were scared, being abused, or even dead. When we finally found you again, and it turned out you’d never been hurt, it was like this crushing weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Like I said, I’ll never forgive Tom Keller for what he did, but in an odd sort of way, I am grateful to him. That man kept you safe from harm all these years. He kept you fed, clothed, and under a safe roof, which is the best thing I could have hoped for under the dire circumstances. You had a happy childhood, didn’t you?”
I frowned. “Well, yes, while my Mom was still alive. Sorry…Angela Keller. Tom was a bit of an ignorant drunk after she was gone, but he never did anything to hurt me.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Hate is a very powerful emotion, Arizona. It twists you on the inside, consumes you, and can turn you into someone you don’t recognize. I don’t want that burden on your shoulders. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life carrying around all this hatred, and I don’t want to see you become bitter and twisted. You don’t have to forgive him, but I think it would be cathartic for you to at least go and see him and get all the answers to your questions.”
“Um,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. My head was spinning like crazy.
“What I mean is, I know you’re settling in here very well, but I think you’re still clinging on to the past at the same time. I don’t think you’ll be able to fully get over that part of your life unless you face it head on,” he said. “Have a think about it. If you do decide to go and see him, I can have a car pick you up and take you to the prison as soon as you’re ready to go.”
I mulled it over. He did have a point. I still had a lot of unanswered questions, and only Tom could answer them. Now I knew why Roy was drinking so heavily this early in the day. Anyone else would have been baying for blood, so it must have been incredibly hard for him to sit here and say these things to me. He was even trying to put a vaguely positive spin on the situation in order to convince me to go and see the man who’d stolen me from him as a newborn, just so I wouldn’t end up having my heart filled with hate for the rest of my life.
If Roy could be this brave, then so could I.
“You’re right,” I said, nodding slowly. “I should go and visit him. Let’s get it over with.”
He nodded, a flicker of pride in his hazel eyes. “I’ll call and have it set up.”
***
My hands would not stop shaking as I signed into the prison, and the correctional facility guards did nothing to allay my fears. They were angry-looking bears of men, and they tersely told me that I’d have half an hour to speak with Tom and not a second more. Fine by me. I followed them through a dimly-lit corridor, and goose bumps broke out over my skin as I stared around at the dull grey brick walls. This was by far the most depressing place I’d ever been.
Tom was sitting at a table in the visitor’s room, and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, just like I’d always seen in movies about prisons. My heart raced as I took a seat across from him, and the guards watched us carefully.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said in a gruff voice.
“Neither did I,” I replied truthfully.
“So what are you doing here?” he asked, ice blue eyes narrowed.
“I…I came to get some answers. I want to know exactly why you did it. How you could have lived with yourself all those years. And I need to know if Mom knew.”
He chewed his lip for a second and then sighed heavily. “All right. Guess I owe you that much. Your Mom had no idea. Never even suspected you were anything other than a prom night dumpster baby.”
“But she must have heard on the news that a baby had been taken from a hospital.”
He looked down for a second and then focused on my face again. “You don’t know what she was like back then. She was so depressed. All she wanted was a baby, and she couldn’t have one. She never even watched the news or any TV at all. She just…she just sat there. She quit her job and everything. When I brought you home and convinced her that we needed to keep you rather than tell anyone what I’d supposedly found, it was the first time I’d seen her smile in a year. She was a good woman, Arizona. If she ever heard or suspected you were that kidnapped baby, she would have said something, even if it killed her to do it.”
Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes as much as I tried to stop them from coming. The woman who’d raised me wasn’t to blame for any of this, and now I knew I had no reason to feel bad for still loving her even though she wasn’t my ‘real’ mother. She’d taken me in when she thought I’d been abandoned and loved me like I was her own, and that made her a real mother, whether we shared blood or not.
“So you couldn’t have just adopted like anyone else?” I asked, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
“We didn’t qualify. Those adoption agencies only like upper middle class families.”
“That’s not always the case. You could have fostered some children.”
His nostrils flared. “No. She wanted a baby. Her own baby to hold and keep forever. I loved that woman more than anything, and I did what I had to do to make her happy.”
“So you don
’t even feel bad? You just consider what you did to be ‘something you had to do’?”
He slammed a hand down on the table in front of him, and I jumped at the sound.
“Of course I felt fucking bad. I never stopped feeling guilty. I could barely look at you. All those years, and all I could see when I looked at your face was my mistake.”
“Is that why you drank so much?” I asked. “Is that why you always told me you never wanted kids?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” he said, his gaze steely. “Had to do something to try and hide from myself. Y’know, it doesn’t even bother me that I’m in prison now, to be honest. Without your Mom, my life was basically one giant prison anyway.”
I paused, letting his words sink in.
“So you didn’t love me. Ever. You just did it all for Mom.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“Well, did you?” I asked, my voice rising to a shrill pitch. “Did you ever love me?”
I didn’t know why I cared, but for some reason I couldn’t help it.
He was silent for a long time, and he couldn’t meet my eyes. “I cared about you,” he finally said, evading my question. “I did what I could to keep you safe. Always chased away any neighborhood boys roaming around looking for a piece of you. Made sure you went to school. Always made sure you had food. But with all the guilt I felt, there wasn’t much room for anything else.”
Tears were rolling down my cheeks in earnest now, and my voice was barely above a whisper as I choked my next words out. “So you admit it? You didn’t love me?” I said. “Just tell me I’m wrong. Tell me. Just say it once. Say that you loved me even a little bit.”
I was bordering on hysterical, and I stopped talking and stared at him, my eyes wide. He was silent again, and I abruptly stood up to leave. Roy had been wrong. Coming here was a bad idea. I’d found out what I needed to know about my Mom, but it had come at a high cost. I’d always had a more-than sneaking suspicion that the man I’d thought of as my father for so long didn’t really want me, but to actually sit here and have him basically admit he didn’t love me and never did was too much. After all this time, I still couldn’t help but see him as a father figure, and it hurt like hell to face him now.
“Arizona!” he called out as I turned around.
I faced the opposite way for a second to wipe my face and compose myself, then spun around to look at him again.
“Are you ever gonna come back?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not meeting my eyes as the guards approached him to take him back to his cell. “I’m sorry for everything I did. I just wanted to make Angela happy.”
And that was it. We were done.
My legs were shaky as I left the prison; hell, my whole body was shaky. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip during the drive back to Rosacorp, but as soon as I got out of the car and put my feet on the sidewalk, my eyes once again filled with tears. They were hot and stinging tears of despair, rage and disappointment, and suddenly I was sobbing so hard my chest hurt, so hard that I was sure my heart would literally split in two.
It was the late afternoon rush in the city, and cars, bikes and taxis whizzed past me on the street too fast for me to see more than a blur. Several passersby stared at me, obviously thinking I was insane, and I stood by a sidewalk tree, trying to regain my composure. Cold sweat trickled down my palms, and I took several deep breaths and mopped up my tears with my cardigan sleeve.
As soon as I felt like I was centered enough to go back into work and tell Roy what had happened, I set off down the sidewalk in the direction of the main office doors and accidentally barreled straight into an unfortunate person. I felt a hard chest, and I tilted my head up to see the man’s face and apologize for my clumsiness. My breath hitched as two green eyes stared curiously down at me.
Mason.
I was sure I had mascara streaked down my face, and I must have looked a mess. My throat clenched, and another flood of tears tried to fight its way out of my eyes as I uttered a choked word.
“You.”
“Arizona,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
I wanted to tell him to piss off like I usually did. I wanted to push on his muscular chest and tell him to mind his own goddamned business. I wanted to turn on my heel and walk away from the spoiled asshole who thought all women were sexual objects for sale, but I couldn’t do that.
To my complete and utter shame, I buried my head in his expensive grey shirt and cried.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MASON
I stood on the sidewalk, frozen in place as Arizona put her head on my chest and cried, her shoulders shaking from the sobs. I’d never really had to deal with a crying woman before, and I wasn’t sure how to react. Should I put my arm around her? Pat her on the head?
I felt a twinge in my heart as she continued to cry, and I wrapped my arms around her, gently holding her as the tears flowed.
“Shh,” I said, rubbing one hand up and down her back. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Usually being this close to a smoking hot chick would make me think of one thing and one thing only. Sex. But not now. In this moment, all I could think was how worried I was about her, and how much I wanted to fucking kill whichever bastard had made her so upset.
I opened my mouth again to ask her what had happened, but before I could say anything she pulled her head away from my chest and whispered in a ragged voice.
“I went to see my Dad.”
I frowned. “Roy upset you? Wait, you mean…you went to see Tom Keller?”
She nodded and wiped her eyes. Black makeup was smeared around her eyes from all the tears, making her look like some sort of panda impersonator, but she honestly didn’t look any worse than half the chicks at the clubs I’d been to who purposely ringed their eyes with that much eyeliner and shadow in an attempt to look sexy.
No, Arizona was just naturally beautiful, panda-eyes or not, and believe me – I’d looked at a lot of women’s eyes in my life. I didn’t tell her any of that, though. Right now she was vulnerable, and I knew I needed to take care of her despite any differences we’d had in the past.
“Come on,” I murmured, ruffling her hair and linking my arm in hers. “You need some food and a stiff drink.”
“I have to get back to work,” she said as a solitary tear trickled down her cheek. I wiped it off her tearstained face with my thumb and raised my eyebrows.
“There’s no way you’re working when you’re like this. Roy will understand. I’m taking you for an early dinner. No arguments, ‘kay?”
She nodded and sniffed. “I guess you’re right. I am kinda hungry. And I could definitely do with that drink you mentioned.”
I smiled and pretended to doff an imaginary cap. “Well, follow me, milady.”
Fuck, I sounded like an idiot, but I was just trying to act all stupid in order to cheer her up a bit. It must have worked, because she gave me a watery smile and accompanied me down the street to an old Italian restaurant that had never failed to fill me up on good food and good wine.
My hand was resting on the small of her back in a sort of protective gesture, and my heart beat just a little faster as the sweet scent of her perfume filled my nostrils. She was wearing a tight grey pencil skirt that made her ass look like perfection, although I was sure it was perfect without clothes on as well.
Shit. I needed to dispel these thoughts right away. This was probably my one shot at getting her to like me as a stepbrother, so the last thing I needed to do now was fuck it up by letting those kinds of thoughts creep back in, courtesy of my male stupidity.
The hostess at the restaurant noted my arrival and directed me to my usual table at a cozy booth tucked away in the corner, and Arizona nervously fingered her cardigan.
“I feel like I should be all dressed up,” she said.
“Nah. You’re probably overdressed for this place,” I said with a grin. “
It looks nice, but it’s actually pretty cheap. Good food too.”
We flicked through the menus, and I settled for my usual chicken carbonara. Arizona pressed her lips together in thought and then looked up at me.
“What should I get? I have no idea what’s good here.”
“Depends how hungry you are. The pastas are all pretty filling, but if you want something a bit lighter, anything with chicken or fish is a good bet.”
“Hmm…yeah, I think I’ll go with the involtini di pollo.”
A waiter appeared a moment later with a wine list, and I asked for a bottle of my favorite pinotage before putting in our dinner orders.
“What’s pinotage?” she asked as the waiter left.
“It’s a red wine from South Africa,” I explained. “Really nice stuff. The one I ordered is supposed to have subtle hints of heather and candy floss.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure it does. Wine experts say stuff like that, but they all taste the same to me.”
“The experts or the wine?”
“Very funny. The wine,” she replied.
“Trust me, you’ll be surprised,” I said.
She shifted nervously in her seat and looked at me, her hazel eyes almost melting me in their intensity. She was trying to put on a brave face, but I could still see how sad she was.
“This feels weird,” she said. “I feel like I should be throwing something at you and telling you to piss off, not having dinner with you.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’m still kinda shocked you agreed to come. You ever gonna tell me why you’ve been such a bitch to me since you arrived?”
She cast her eyes down to her lap, and I backtracked. “Fuck. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a bitch. I mean, you kind of are, but I probably deserved it.”
Mine - A Stepbrother Romance Page 9