“This way.” He directed her, watching those long legs as she brushed by.
They walked in silence to the front door and as he unlocked it, turning off the alarm, he felt a sense of pride for his accomplishments in life, now mingled with remorse for not knowing his son and his mother. Life sure throws you curveballs. He’d dealt with plenty in his life, and he’d learned that these struggles gave you strength through either accepting or overcoming them. “You want a drink? I have iced tea, water, or soda.”
“No beer? I could use a beer,” Kendra replied.
“I don’t drink so I don’t have it in the house, sorry,” Tom said, flicking on the living room light.
“Since when?” she asked.
“Since I found out that my dad pickled his liver. Haven’t drunk liquor in three years.” Addiction was hereditary, and he was already too much like his father. He would never end up a sad, sorry excuse of a man whose wife left him for a man with deeper pockets and who was sober. He didn’t blame his mother for leaving. But he’d never forgive his mother for leaving and not taking him with her. Why had she left him behind?
He shook away the insecurities caused by his childhood, remembering the day he’d heard about his father’s liver. It was the last day he drank. It had been tough, but he was nothing like his father and never would be.
Tom motioned towards the ugly gray couch against the far wall. “Have a seat.”
Kendra’s gaze roamed around the room, and her expression told him she hated the place. The distaste on her beautiful face made him laugh.
“Pretty ugly, huh?”
Kendra’s mouth curve upwards. “Yeah. Why do you live here when you’re rich?”
Tom said, “I bought it for the land. I’m going to tear this down and rebuild. I’ve always wanted to design my house and I want a large garage to play in.” He wanted to show the world he’d made it. He’d escaped to the right side of the tracks.
“Men and their cars… ” She stared outside. “It will be a huge house.” She eyed him incredulously. “For one man?”
He shrugged. Something deep within him wanted a big house. “I have nieces and nephews.”
She nodded and perched on the right end of the couch, so Tom took the left, the anger that had been building the whole drive home barely under control.
He’d earned a fortune working in formula one and when Marcus had suggested the concept of Bad Boy Autos he jumped at the idea. He would be the head mechanic and oversee the team, while Marcus would take on operations, marketing, and finance. Plus, it was the famous formula one world driver’s champion, Marcus Black’s name that would draw most of the clients. The perfect fit.
Their first year was looking extremely profitable.
Yet Kendra seemed to struggle financially, and he hated that.
“So, I’m responsible for you dropping out of law school and the estrangement with your father. Marcus kept me informed about your life when he learned you were pregnant. You really know how to hammer a guy. I have a son I don’t know, and you’ve waited all this time to tell me. All you had to do was tell Marcus and I would have learned the truth about those emails and phone calls.”
He watched as Kendra breathed deeply before replying. “I would have dropped out of law school at some point, anyway. I only went to school because father couldn’t get Marcus to go. He wanted one of his children to take over the family law firm. Getting pregnant was a blessing. It gave me the courage to stand up to my father.”
“Your father, like mine, is a bit of a bastard.” At least they had that in common.
“My father is a control freak, and while I have little respect for the man, he made sure I got the best treatment when I was battling cancer. I can’t forget that.”
Tom considered her words. “I think you have a lot of your father in you. You’re stubborn, and you also seemed to like controlling things. You could have told me as soon as I set foot in LA. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for not telling me I had a son sooner. I know I’ll never forgive myself for not reading your emails or taking your calls.”
Again, she was quietly considering his words, and then said, “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I thought you didn’t want us, and I worried about your business with Marcus. But you are right. I should have done this ages ago. Connor should have come first, not you or Marcus.”
Turning to her, some anger he held deep in his gut died. “Okay, start at the beginning, Kendra. And what I really want to know is why you didn’t tell me the minute I arrived back in LA.”
Connor was already three years old, and he’d missed his baby’s early years. How did he forgive that? He swallowed back his anger, knowing part of this was his fault. He should have responded when she’d contacted him years ago. He knew Marcus’s warning about his sister was merely an excuse. When he was younger, he was not willing to have a steady relationship. After the disaster of his parent’s marriage, he definitely didn’t want to go down that track at any speed. He’d planned to conquer the formula racing circuit with Marcus. It had been his dream for so long. Their dream. A dream that would prove he could rise above his upbringing and get away from his father.
And he’d succeeded.
So he could not blame her entirely.…
“Kendra?” he prompted.
She was playing with a small hole in her jeans. Tom still thought it was ridiculous how ripped pants were fashionable, but Kendra was concentrating on pulling them apart just as she started talking. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with men. You’re the second man I ever slept with. I hadn’t been with anyone for about four months before we slept together. I found out I was pregnant around seven weeks later. I called and emailed you right away, but you didn’t answer. I kept trying, but I never heard from you. So, after Dad threw me out, I had Connor by myself. My friend Stella helped me too.”
“What about your mum?”
Kendra scoffed. “She does whatever Dad says and he forbade her to see me.”
“You could have told Marcus. He would have let me know immediately.” With his fists, Tom thought darkly.
“I didn’t want to drag Marcus in to this. At the time he had a real chance of winning the formula one driver’s world title that year. His first ever chance. I knew if I told him it would tear you two apart and destroy the team. I could not do that to him. Thank God I didn’t, as bloody Jason Colter ended his career not a year later. It had been Marcus’s one and only chance.”
Tom’s gut clenched. He couldn’t deny Marcus’s only shot at winning the title could’ve been ruined if all hell had broken loose over Kendra being pregnant… by him. “A part of me understands, but the other part, the part that has missed out on my son’s first three years is pissed. What about after his accident? You could have told me then.”
“Marcus crashed. You were his head mechanic, and Marcus always said only you could feel the car like he could. I thought you’d be blaming yourself for the car spinning out and I couldn’t intensify everything with blurting out you were a father too.”
She had a point. He had wondered if the crash was his fault, and he’d not left Marcus’s side until he came out of ICU, but a replay showed Jason Colter had clipped Marcus’s car. “But once he was better.... You could have told him then. He could have got hold of me and told me. I would have—”
“What would you have done? Come home? I don’t think so. The circuit was your world as much as it was Marcus’s. By then I was coping okay on my own, and I didn’t want to be the one to bring Marcus’s world crashing down around him. I still don’t.”
He closed his mouth, unable to deny that racing cars had been his world—both their worlds. “I don’t know what I would have done, but now we will never know. You decided for me.”
She looked like she might cry. “I did what I thought was right at the time. And when you came home… I assumed you had read the emails and didn’t want to know your son. I must admit, I’ve never pictured you as a family sort of guy.”
Tom’s jaw clenched. “So, you let your parents disown you and kick you out so you didn’t screw things up for me? Even after you thought I didn’t give a shit that I got you pregnant?”
Kendra sat back a little on the couch. “What would you have done if you’d known about Connor?” She held up a silencing finger and answered her own question. “You would’ve come back and tried to be a family, which would’ve been a disaster. Neither of us was ready for that. That’s what. And you would’ve wound up hating me for keeping you from reaching your dreams.”
Tom propped his right ankle up on his left knee. “Hell, we’re older and supposed to be wiser. Sometimes dreams change, Kendra. I mean, look at Marcus. He can’t race anymore since he hurt his back in the crash, so he’s making a different dream come true. So am I. It wasn’t as much fun out on the circuit without Marcus, and we’d always talked about opening our own custom shop. It was the right time to make the move for a lot of reasons.”
Kendra shook her head. “You deciding, on your own, is far different from being forced to come back to LA because you found out you got a one-night stand pregnant and that you had a kid.”
“I never thought of you as a one-night stand.” He could feel a muscle in his jaw jump as his right fist clenched. “What if I hadn’t come back? Were you ever going to tell me, or were you going to keep my son from me forever? What made you tell me now?”
A look of such fear and sadness swept her beautiful face that for one terrifying moment he thought her cancer had returned. The idea of her being sick again made his insides churn and all thought of blame vanished.
She sighed. “Don’t look like that, I’m not sick. But my friend was in remission with me and now she’s sick, and it’s terminal. What if that happens to me? I owe it to Connor that he has at least one parent in his life.”
Tom’s mouth dried as the idea she could get ill again after being well for so long, hit him like an out-of-control car. “It won’t happen to you.”
She gave him a sad smile. “I hope not, but there are no certainties in life.”
“So what do we do now? I want to get to know my son. I want to be in his life.” He watched her for any signs she would stop him. “And I’ll have to tell Marcus.”
Chapter Three
Even though her first instinct was to snap 'no’ at him, Kendra remained calm. “Don’t tell Marcus, not yet. You and I have too much to sort out first. Marcus being the overprotective, angry big brother won’t help our situation.”
Ever since her scare with cancer, Marcus had been overprotective. She’d just been told she was in remission, and at sixteen her world was glowing with promise. She remembered the first time she’d laid eyes on Tom. Marcus had seen the attraction too and didn’t like it. She remembered the scene like it was only yesterday…
She’d stood on the terrace in her parent’s back garden, lifting her face to the sun. Six months in remission and she was in love with the world once more. Excitement engulfed her. Who would have believed at sixteen she had a life ahead of her once again, filled with endless possibilities? Determined to decide for herself what she wanted to do with her second chance at life, she now jumped out of bed each morning to greet the world.
She wanted to take risks and face her fears. After all, she’d faced the biggest fear anyone should have to face and kicked its ass. The world was there for her, and she wanted to conquer it.
“Come inside, Kendra, you’ll catch cold.”
Her smile faded. “Mother, it’s 82 degrees out here. Besides, Stella’s coming over soon.”
“Lovely. I like Stella. She was a true friend while you fought the cancer. She was always there for you. She’ll ensure you don’t overdo it.”
She grinned. There her mother was sadly mistaken. Stella would take Kendra’s side. She always had and always would.
“Let’s wait for Stella in the kitchen with a nice cup of tea.”
“I want a walk in the garden.”
While she tried to argue through the open French doors, Kendra walked down the steps into the garden until she couldn’t hear her mother any longer. She thought she heard her older brother talking with someone by the pool. At twenty, Marcus had just been hired to drive his first formula two race car with Honda. They’d thought so highly of his skill they had given him his own head mechanic, a guy around his age, Thomas Lorde. Mom told her Tom was staying the weekend too, but she’d yet to meet him.
Kendra looked over her shoulder, ensuring her mother wasn’t chasing after her with a coat, and followed the sound of her brother’s voice to see what he and his friend were up to. As she rounded the corner of the garden, she could hear they were lounging around the pool.
It was as if an invisible wall blocked her way as she stopped short, her mouth gaping open and her body flooding with heat. A near naked bronzed Norse God with fair hair, which at the moment because of her chemo was longer than her dark locks, was standing under the outdoor shower five feet from where she stood. He hadn’t seen her, thank god, because she imagined she probably looked like a dork right now with a woolen jersey on in this temperature, so she drunk in his broad shoulders, strong thighs, and ripped stomach. But what made her mouth water was the tattoo of an eagle in flight covering seventy percent of his chest. It must have hurt a great deal getting inked like that. She understood how painful needles could be! It was truly a work of art. Every time his pecs moved, the bird looked as if it was soaring.
“Are you going to swim or merely stand there staring?”
She started, heat invading her cheeks at being caught ogling him. His voice was gravelly and fluid, like rain falling on a tin roof.
“My mother would freak if I got in the pool.” She pulled her eyes away from his chest to watch a drop of water slide down his crooked nose. “I’ve been ill and my mother insists I don’t overexert myself.” Why’d she have to say that? She hated people knowing about her illness. They looked at her differently, before escaping as fast as they could, as if she could pass her cancer on to them.
He turned off the shower and walked towards her, water running down over his body and she’d never wanted to let her fingers follow that flow on any boy—man—before.
“I’m Tom, your—”
“I know who you are. I’m Kendra—”
“I know who you are,” he said with a sexy smile. He stopped before her with a genuine look of puzzlement on his face. “Marcus told me you’d beaten the cancer.”
“I have. Six months clear. I’m in remission.”
He eyed her up and down. “You look pretty healthy to me.”
“I am,” she said proudly. And she was proud. It had been a tough few years of constant trips into doctors’ offices and hospitals. Being kept in isolation, prodded, poisoned with chemo… She’d lost contact with her friends and a few were hard to connect with again, some people didn’t know how to interact with you when you were ill, when really all you wanted them to do was treat you like you were normal for a little part of each day, so you could forget that there was something eating away inside you. Luckily, she’d had Stella.
“So, what’s stopping you? If you want to swim get in.” When she hesitated, he moved so close droplets of water dripped on her clothes. “Swim or don’t swim I don’t care, but if I had ever let anyone prevent me from doing what I wanted to do, I would not be going with your brother to race in Europe.” His attention swung to the pool house as Marcus emerged with two beers in his hand. “Marcus tells me you’re a fighter, Kendra. Don’t let anyone or anything hold you back.”
Marcus must have told him about her illness and also told him how overbearing her parents were. “I can’t blame my family for caring too much.”
“No. You can’t. And you shouldn’t. But you can blame yourself for letting t
hem decide for you.”
With that, he sauntered off to grab his beer.
Kendra looked at the water and let the anger build. Who the heck did he think he was? It wasn’t as if she asked his opinion. But with a shiver, she knew Thomas was right. This was her life, and she’d fought hard to keep it, given everything she had gone through. And even now she knew the odds were still strong that she might have to fight the disease all over again.
Fight. And that’s truly what it was. The pain had been beyond bearable, and emotional, she wasn’t even sure if she would make it… it had been hard to keep her spirits up.
But she wasn’t a quitter.
It was a tough pill to swallow as a teenager. To learn that life was a constant battle. Six months ago she’d been tired, but now… now she was ready to fight for what she wanted.
She wanted her hard-won life on her terms.
She turned and looked at her brother and his hot, oh, so hot, new friend.
She might not know what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but right now she knew what she wanted—and he was sitting on a lounge chair ten feet from her.
It had taken her four long years to wear Tom’s resistance down. The night of her twentieth birthday, the day she’d signed to sing for James Tan.
What a night that had been. More so because he’d given her Connor. A child that she never thought she’d have after her chemo. She would never regret her son or the night that created him.
Tom cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”
“Just reminiscing. It’s so strange sitting here.”
“I wish I’d been in Connor’s life earlier. Look, it’s obvious you need help financially, but I won’t just be a silent partner who only contributes money. I want to be in my son’s life.”
She looked into his eyes and knew if she had to do it all over again, she would. “That’s good.” She should be happy, right? It’s what she wanted—didn’t she? Yes, but it would also mean he was in her life too. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
Reckless Curves: Bad Boy Autos (Drive Me Wild Book 1) Page 3