by Skye Jordan
“It’s not manipulation,” Josh said. “You like her, right? I mean you told me you two had an amazing night together.”
“We did. And, yeah, I like her. I mean, I did before all this happened. Now… Shit, now I don’t know which way is up.”
Marshall’s rented Lexus pulled into the parking lot. One problem at a time, he reminded himself. “Marshall’s here.”
“I suggest you get over it,” Josh told him as he glanced toward Marshall’s car. “Do what you have to do to keep your kid, dude. If you don’t, you’ll spend your whole life regretting it. I’ve seen it happen enough to know.”
Josh emitted an aura of supreme control. Maintained the mindset of walking away a winner like no other option existed. He was looking at Zach with his back toward the door, but he seemed to know the moment Marshall stepped in the bar. His smile turned edgy, and he muttered, “Game on, sucker.”
Zach waited until Marshall looked his way to wave him down.
His agent came up to the table with his normal upbeat-but-rushed air. “Hey, guys.” He offered his hand to Zach as he slid his briefcase onto the seat beside him, then took up residence on the other side and flagged a waitress. “Hey, gorgeous, whiskey and Coke for me.”
“How’d filming go today?” he asked them.
“Good,” Zach answered.
“Fantastic. You’re blowing the studio away, man. We’re narrowing down the options.” He tapped his briefcase. “I’ve got their boilerplate contract right here. I know filming’s keeping you busy, but we need to carve out time to go over things.”
It burned Zach that this man had a hand in the deal that would turn Zach’s dream into reality and take him into a whole different phase of his life.
“I need to talk to you about another contract issue.” He shifted in the booth and leaned his shoulder against the wall, angling toward Marshall. Zach channeled Josh’s grounded, controlled confidence as best as he could.
“Oh, yeah?” Marshall sat forward and clasped his hands on the table. “What’s that?”
“It involves a woman named Corinne Westerly.”
Marshall darted a look between Zach and Josh with a shake of his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Remind me. What company is she with?”
“He’s going to deny it, they all do,” Josh had counseled Zach beforehand. “He’ll try to change the subject, divert to another issue, turn it around. Just keep going at him, stick to the facts. He’ll break. It’s all about perseverance.”
“She’s not with a company. She’s a woman I hooked up with after the party in Huntington Beach when they inducted me into the Hall of Fame.”
Marshall’s high-energy aura slipped a little. He frowned, shook his head, then sat back as the waitress served his drink. “Thanks, darlin’.” He took a sip. “Man, that’s a long time ago. Hell, I don’t even remember who I hooked up with that night.”
He thought he was funny, but Zach stayed the course. “You would have remembered her when she came to you a year later, looking for me.”
“Man, you two are awfully serious.” He sipped his drink again, his brow folding into a hard frown. “What’s going on? Why are you asking about some hookup from four years ago?”
“Because that hookup ended up pregnant,” Zach told him, “and wanted to tell me I had a kid.”
Marshall sat back, palms facing Zach. “Whoa, what? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Zach’s anger flared.
Stick to the facts.
Josh’s advice helped Zach maintain control.
The clink of something hitting the floor drew Marshall’s gaze.
“Sorry,” Josh said. “Silverware.”
While Josh was picking up his utensils, Zach said, “I just want to be crystal clear here. You’re saying that while I was working in Sumatra doing a shoot and article for Surfer magazine, no woman contacted you to get ahold of me?”
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but, dude, four years? I mean, I could look back at calendars for meetings, but I’d remember a chick claiming to be your baby mama.”
“What about paying her to go away? Would you remember that?”
“What the fuck?” Marshall picked up his drink and slammed it back, then cracked the table with the glass and looked at Josh. “Can you believe this? Did he hit his head on a reef or something?”
“Or something,” Josh replied.
Marshall turned to Zach, and all the fake lightness he’d come in with vanished. “It’s been a long day. Call me when you’re ready to go over the series contract, but I wouldn’t wait. There are a lot of surfers in this town who’d kill to get this part.”
He reached for his briefcase, but his hand hit the seat. Marshal looked around. “What happened to my—”
“Briefcase?” Josh held it up on the other side of the table.
Marshall looked between them. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Zach picked up a file folder he’d tucked beside him and pulled out the copy of the check, sliding it in front of Marshall much the way Tessa had done to Zach a couple of nights before. “What is this?”
Marshall framed the paper with his hands, studying it like he’d never seen it before. “I have no idea. It looks like a cashier’s check from your account.”
“Look at the date.”
“What about it?”
Patience. Perseverance. “It was drawn on the account while I was in Indonesia. While I was working and traveling for four different projects. While I didn’t have so much as one bar of cell service eighty percent of the time.”
Marshall turned his head and narrowed his eyes on Zach. “Are you accusing me of—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you did it,” he lied. Zach might be ninety-nine percent sure of it, but he was holding on to that one percent uncertainty before he went all in after his kid. It was a huge cliff, and he didn’t want to dive until he knew he was going after his daughter. “I’m giving you a chance to tell the truth. And before you think about lying again, I’ve already had the bank print the daily activity of that account during the months I was out of the country. I already have proof of you transferring in twenty-five grand. And of that twenty-five grand being pulled out in this cashier’s check the next day. Now, tell me—how could I have done that from bumfuck nowhere on the other side of the planet?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He stabbed his finger at the paper, his face growing red with anger. “That’s your account, dude, not mine.”
“You’re joint,” Josh spoke up for the first time. “Which makes it your account too. And we have video tape of you in the bank branch a mile from your house, making a transaction.”
Zach tried not to look shocked at that information, because they didn’t have any video tape. Josh must have seen something that told him Marshall needed a shove.
When his agent started to shake his head again, Zach’s patience snapped. He fisted the front of Marshall’s shirt and jerked him so hard, the buttons popped.
Nose to nose, Zach told him, “If you don’t start talking, right fucking now, I’ll have the IRS auditing your ass back to the Stone Age. But only after I have your ass thrown in jail for fraud. Which is a felony, in case you didn’t know. And when the IRS finds more instances of fraud—and they will, because we both know you didn’t pull shit like this just once—they’ll charge you for each incident as a separate offense. You’ll be looking through bars for at least a decade—”
Marshall shoved Zach back while leaning away, breaking his hold.
Josh was up and out of the booth so fast, Zach didn’t see him move. The former SEAL might not have done anything more threatening than block Marshall’s path to the door, but there was no mistaking the go-ahead-make-my-day vibes pouring off Josh.
Marshall held his hands up. “Okay, okay, back off. Jesus. I was just trying to help you. I knew she was a fake. She came in
, gave me the sob story, said she wanted to contact you. I told her you were unreachable, which you just confirmed.”
Fire flowed through Zach’s chest. It was true. Tessa had been telling the truth. Sophia was more than likely his.
Everything inside Zach shifted on a dime. His entire outlook on life, his plans for his immediate future, his short- and long-term goals, his outlook on relationships and family—everything.
He had a kid.
A daughter.
Holy motherfucking shit.
“Look, I’ve been through this before,” Marshall was saying. “When your face starts showing up in magazines, the broads come out of the woodwork with every accusation known to man, and guys get fucked over. When I offered her money, she took it and never showed up again, which is proof I was right. You should be thanking me. Hell, I even used my own money. I saw it as an investment. And look, it’s paying off. This role is your dream, Zach. You’ve been working toward this for years. No more worries about aging out of the scene or where your next gig is coming from. And it’s a springboard to more. We’re talking prime-time movies, Zach—”
He gripped Marshall’s shirt again. But this time, he couldn’t check his anger. He hauled Marshall to his feet, then shoved him with all his strength. The other man stumbled out of the booth, tripped backward, hit the bar, and dropped to the floor.
A sudden silence seeped into Zach’s consciousness. Everyone in the small bar stopped talking and turned their attention on the trouble spot.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Marshall groaned and rolled to his side. “You’re going to be the one in jail—for assault—”
Before Zach could lash out again, Josh pinned Marshall’s forearm to the floor with the sole of his boot. “I’d rethink that if I were you.”
The male bartender came out from the back. “Take it outside.”
“Everything’s under control,” Josh told him and pressed a folded bill into the bartender’s hand.
“I still want all of you outside,” he said, but pocketed the cash and returned to his job.
Zach bent down and hauled Marshall up by the arm, dragging him outside while Josh grabbed the briefcase and followed.
Zach shoved Marshall against the hood of his Lexus and pinned him there. “If you don’t want to see your blood on this rental, you’ll tell me everything that happened.”
“You already know everything. She was going to milk you. She even put your name on the birth certificate, which—in case you didn’t know,” he said, throwing Zach’s own words back at him, “is enough presumptive evidence to nail you as the father, whether you are or not. And that obligates you to mandatory child support. The only way out is to petition for a paternity test, which you couldn’t do when you were in bumfuck nowhere with no cell service.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when I got back?”
“Because she was gone. I paid her, she got what she wanted, and she didn’t come back, proving that I saved your ungrateful ass in half a dozen different ways.”
Zach pulled him up and slammed him against the hood so hard, Marshall’s skull dented the metal.
“Easy there, Tonto,” Josh murmured.
Zach got in Marshall’s face again. “She never came back because she had cancer, you fucking idiot.”
He released Marshall with one more shove.
Wincing, Marshall put a hand against the back of his head. “She never said anything about cancer. I swear.”
Zach spun toward him again, but Josh stepped between them. “Time to back off. We’re getting rubberneckers.”
Zach still stabbed a finger at Marshall’s chest. “You’re fucking fired, asshole.”
“If you fire me, you’re throwing away your dream role. I’m the reason they want you. I’m the guy with the contract.”
“You’re. Fucking. Fired!” Zach yelled. “That’s what you are.”
Josh put a hand against Zach’s chest, tossed Marshall’s briefcase onto the Lexus’s hood, and held up a file folder. “You’re also not the guy with the contract.”
Josh slapped the file into Zach’s hand, gripped his arm, and led him deeper into the parking lot where Josh’s car waited.
Once they were in the car and on the road, Zach dropped his head back against the seat and covered his eyes with his hand. “I’m so fucked.”
“No, man,” Josh said, “you’ve been getting fucked. Now, you’re a survivor. And survivors become warriors.”
After the last few days, Zach was pretty damned sure he didn’t have what it took to be a warrior. Only, the fight wasn’t over. In fact, he was sure the battle had just begun.
10
Tessa sipped her third glass of wine with her left hand and picked a card from the pile at the center of the Candy Land board game and turned it over.
“Two lellows,” Sophia said and picked up Tessa’s blue gingerbread man, counting, “One, two.”
“Well done,” Tessa said. “Your turn.”
Sophia picked a card, looked at the picture, and gasped. “Mommy, it’s the ice-cream cone!”
“Oh my gosh,” she said with melodramatic excitement for Sophia’s benefit. “You’re so lucky.”
Sophia moved her red gingerbread man to the image of an ice-cream cone on the ribboned path of multicolored squares.
“Sometimes I hope she never learns the y sound,” Tessa confessed to Abby, who sat on the couch flipping through a magazine.
“Right? Lellow. It’s so bloody adorable.”
Tessa drew her card and let Sophia move her marker. The first two glasses of wine had her relaxed and slightly loopy. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to master the fine motor skills required to get the gingerbread man from square to square. But she didn’t regret the wine. She would be pulling her eyelashes out one by one if she didn’t lean on some vice while she waited to hear back from Zach.
While Sophia was distracted with her turn, Tessa tapped the face of her phone to turn on the screen.
“Anything?” Abby asked.
“No.”
Abby sighed. Tessa wanted to rail with every passing minute when no communication came from Zach. “I’ll go over to his hotel again later.” After Miss Sophia had fallen asleep. “Maybe I’ll step out of the view of the peephole this time.”
“Or,” Abby said with a devilish grin, “I could pull the fire alarm, wait outside his door, and trip him on the way out.”
Tessa laughed. “I love your twisted mind.”
“One of my many charms.” She shut the magazine, sighed, and looked at their board game. “Hurry up and beat your mum, love. It’s bath time.”
Sophia pulled another card, looked at the board, looked at the card again… She gasped. “I won! I won!” And she triumphantly moved her gingerbread man the two requisite spaces across the finish line. Then bounced on her knees and clapped. “I won, Mommy.”
“Fair and square,” Tessa told her, ruffling her hair. “After bath, we’ll start reading one of your new Little Bear books.”
“A Kiss for Litter Bear,” she said definitively as she tried to straighten the cards in her little hands to put them away.
When the board game was packed into its travel box, Abby took Sophia into the bathroom and Tessa checked her phone again. She knew there wouldn’t be a message, but it still frustrated her. In fact, she was starting to get pissed off. Tessa was endlessly patient. She was compassionate. A gold-star mediator. But even she was about ready to implode after waiting for three days to hear from Zach.
She opened her laptop and glanced at the time. It was 8:00 p.m. She’d try his hotel room at ten. And at midnight. And at two. Hell, she was about ready to bring a blanket and pillow and sleep across the threshold. If that didn’t work, she might have to make a scene at the set. That might just piss him off enough to deal with this.
Her email was filled with updates on the Veterans Health bill from Gordon. She browsed them, relieved to hear the veterans lobbyists had found common ground with the
pharmaceutical lobbyists. They were closing in on the deadline set to introduce the bill, and she knew too well how many lobbyists would wait until the week before to raise hell over something missing in the language.
A knock at the door startled her. It was too late for housekeeping.
“Did you order takeout?” Tessa called to Abby as she rose to her feet. But with the water running and Sophia’s ramble about bubbles, Abby didn’t hear.
She checked the peephole and found…Zach? She stepped back from the door and whispered, “Shit.”
She looked like hell. Her hair was up in a messy bun and she was wearing old jean cut-offs and a tank. She took a deep breath and opened the door several inches. “Hi. How’d you know which unit—”
“I know the desk clerk.” He lifted his head to look her in the eye, and Tessa’s heart twisted. He’d obviously been sleeping just as poorly as she had. “We need to talk.”
A bubble of Sophia’s laughter floated through the condo, and Zach’s gaze cut behind Tessa. Her protective instincts pushed her out the front door. She closed it behind her, leaving a crack of space so it wouldn’t latch and lock her out.
He stepped back, then started pacing. He wore a Billabong T-shirt, board shorts, and his Reef flip-flops. Tessa gave herself a second to notice the way his chest and arms stretched the cotton before she forced her mind off him as a man and reframed him as the person standing in the way of the adoption.
Zach stopped and turned toward her. “I want a paternity test.”
An icy fist clenched her gut. “You…what? Why? A few days ago, you couldn’t stop denying she even existed.”
“Because I didn’t know. And before you start in on the check and how I paid the mother off—”
“Corinne. Her name was Corinne.” She wasn’t feeling much like a mediator tonight. “And think before you say anything about her, because she was my best friend, she’s the mother of your daughter, and she sacrificed her life for that child—literally.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. Corinne.” When he looked at her again, the exhaustion showed in his face. “I’ve spent the last three days figuring out what the hell happened. It’s a long story, and we can hash everything out when we have more time, but I want to get the DNA started. I understand it takes a while—”