by Jeannie Moon
“I’m not ‘pissed,’ as you say. But I am disappointed. I raised you better than that, Kevin.”
“Better than what? Should I have introduced you to every one-night stand I had, Mom? It doesn’t work that way. How is it my fault that I didn’t know? As it is I can’t believe I have a kid. I didn’t ask to be a father.”
He had never been so angry. He came to his family hoping for support, and his mother was disappointed in him? He was getting a morality lecture?
His mom stood and came to him, taking his hands in hers. She was so tiny, and seemed to be getting smaller as the years went on. She was just sixty years old, and she had a busy life, but he knew she wouldn’t be here forever. The fact that his dad wasn’t around was proof that life could be gone in a moment. That lost time could never be gotten back.
“You care about her?”
“I . . . I do. I did, anyway. I don’t know what I feel right now. I have to get my head around the fact I have a daughter.”
“I can’t believe I have another granddaughter that I haven’t met. Harper hasn’t been around the same way she used to be. Now I know why.” Mom’s eyes filled with tears.
“She’s beautiful. Perfect.” Kevin felt his own eyes burn as he thought about his baby and about the millions of things he didn’t want to miss. His mother dabbed at her eyes and patted his shoulder, but she didn’t look happy. He wanted her to understand how he felt. Why he did what he did.
“I didn’t think not saying anything about us right away was a big deal. I thought we were just letting the relationship settle in before we told anyone. Then I signed my contract with San Diego, and I—”
That did it.
“I, I, I! That’s all you ever say! Get over yourself, Kevin. You have a child, and you are no longer the priority.”
He couldn’t respond. Was he that self-absorbed? He never thought so, but obviously his mother did. Talk about a whack upside the head. “I’m going to finish dinner,” she said. “Go play with Molly or something. Make yourself useful.” She started toward the kitchen and then his mother turned around and poked him square in the chest. “Oh, and I want to see my granddaughter. Don’t make me wait.”
Once his mother walked out, Kevin let what she said sink in. He hadn’t felt so much upheaval since his father died, and he hated it. Hated the disconnect he was feeling, the loss of control. Hated feeling . . . trapped.
Wow. Had Harper nailed it, or what?
He really did have to get over himself.
***
The flight attendant walked over, careful not to wake Anna. “Miss Poole, we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes. Your car will be waiting right at the hangar.”
“Thank you. What time should I be back here tonight?”
“The pilot would like to take off by five thirty, so an hour before would be sufficiently early.”
“Perfect.” Harper knew exactly how long it would take her to drive from the small municipal airport near Pittsburgh to the trailer park where her mother lived.
Harper hadn’t been back here in years mostly because she avoided her stepbrother at all costs, but since Hill had won enough money on a horse race to get him to Vegas for a weekend, her mom was alone, and she could visit for the day.
The day visit was possible only because Harper had the Reliance corporate charter at her disposal, and she felt a little guilty about it.
It was a nice little perk and one she would probably never have again, since Kevin was telling his family about Anna today. Because of that, it was a very real possibility Harper would be unemployed tomorrow.
She’d offered to go with him. Harper was willing to face the music, but Kevin insisted on seeing them alone. She didn’t know if he was trying to avoid the scene or if he couldn’t stand to be with her. Either way, it wasn’t good. So rather than sit home and worry about what was going on at Meg’s house, she packed up Anna and made plans to see Mama.
She stroked her finger over her daughter’s cheek and tried to get her to take a pacifier for landing so her ears didn’t hurt. Fortunately she did, sucking it right in and staying blissfully asleep. The child looked soft. Everything about her, from her pretty pink outfit to her dark hair to the long thick lashes that rested on her cheeks as she slept, was soft.
The baby slept right through the landing and as promised there was a small SUV waiting for her right near the tarmac. She’d worked hard for her life, and the payoff had been huge, but it wasn’t just about corporate jets, luxuries, and conveniences. Harper was thinking more about what it was going to be like without the Campbells in her life.
They had become so much more than employers. They were like family and now everything would be gone, and while not having to stress over something like a flight or a rental car was nice, it was the people she was going to miss.
For Harper that was growth. Three years ago it would have been all about the perks.
That was right around the time she started working for Jason Campbell. She’d met him at a tech conference in Chicago. They’d hit it off, had some drinks in the bar, and almost slept together. Thankfully that didn’t happen because as they kept talking Harper realized she had an interview scheduled with him the next day.
When she walked in the following morning for her meeting, she and Jason had a good laugh and then Harper blew him away and came on as his personal assistant. Within a year, she’d been promoted to director of operations at Reliance, having a hand in almost every department.
During that year she managed Jason’s crazy schedule, and arranged everything from his meals to his sleep to his “recreation.” It was a weird relationship, but it worked. Until he married Meg.
Harper’s role with Jason changed once his marriage to his former high school sweetheart became something fairy tales were made of, but in allowing things to change, Harper gained so much more.
She gained a friend in Meg. A sister of the heart, and she was fairly sure she was going to lose her over the secrets she kept. Meg was all about family, and Harper had spent the last fifteen years of her life avoiding it.
Getting the baby seat secure in the car, Harper turned out of the airport lot and headed for the interstate and the other big secret she kept from everyone. Where she came from.
Maybe that wasn’t totally accurate. She never outright lied about growing up in a trailer park—she never denied it because no one ever would have suspected the truth. She’d never told anyone about her alcoholic stepfather, her deviant stepbrother, or her mother, who didn’t know what was going on around her.
People assumed she was a privileged trust fund brat because that’s what she wanted them to believe. She’d started crafting her persona her first year at the University of Pennsylvania. She had a professor who understood where she was coming from and what she was all about—a wonderful woman who’d left her own terrible circumstances and reinvented herself. She told Harper the truth—that people would judge her and what they saw was her decision. It was the single piece of advice that changed her life.
Harper decided that if things were going to change, it was time to leave her old self and her old life behind. Her given name, Emmalyn, was no longer part of who she was. She’d legally changed her name, worked year-round, saved money, and made a transformation.
Kevin had said she didn’t let anyone in, and he was right. No one could get close to her because Harper couldn’t risk anyone knowing the truth. She’d buried her past, her problems, everything, so deep that there was nothing left of the girl who’d grown up in a double-wide near the Monongahela River. Nope. That girl was gone—obliterated by degrees from Penn and Harvard. Obliterated by Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade, and Ralph Lauren. Obliterated by the high-pressure, fast-paced life led by her alter ego.
There was nothing left of Emmy Poole, and Harper wouldn’t let her come back for anything.
Chapter 6
Kevin raised the sledgehammer with a ferocity that surprised him, and then let it hit the plaster wall. Dust and debris
flew, but he did it again. And again. And again. After everything that had happened the past few days, Kevin needed to break something. He’d restrained himself until he could get to his house and take a sledgehammer to the kitchen, which was scheduled for remodeling.
Pounding the daylights out of the old cabinets and plaster walls had to help. Something had to help him release the frustration that was strangling him.
The day before at his sister’s house had been a fucking disaster. He didn’t know what would happen, but even though he figured Meg would be hurt and would probably go off her rails, he never expected his mother to do it.
He was wrong.
The reaction was nothing he ever suspected. Never being the one with a temper, his mother’s anger wasn’t only surprising, it was terrifying. She swore, told him he was being selfish, which he didn’t think was fair, and then retreated in stony silence with just one task for Kevin. “I want to see my granddaughter. Don’t make me wait.”
Yeah. Like that was going to be easy.
He finished smashing one of the cabinets and dropped the sledgehammer to take a drink from the water bottle he’d shoved in his tool belt.
He surveyed the room. The place was really coming together, even if his life was going to shit. The old Victorian was a nightmare when he bought it six months ago, but room by room he was remaking the old place. He loved the challenge of redesigning each space, of making something new from the old. He’d learned a lot about construction shadowing his dad when they lived on the estate, and he was applying those skills here. He enjoyed the physical work and while he had to keep his home improvement activities from his manager and the front office, doing the renovation was keeping him sane. His whole life had been turned upside down in the past seventy-two hours, and he didn’t know how to react. Before he found out about Anna, Kevin thought he wanted to be with Harper and that they had long-term potential. But now that he was tied to her, that they had a child together, he was scared shitless.
“Be careful what you wish for, dude,” he mumbled to himself.
Kevin blew out a breath, took another drink, and hoisted the hammer onto his shoulder. He wouldn’t need the gym to stay in shape if he kept taking his frustrations out on his house. The gym. Shit! He was supposed to meet Josh at the club for a workout. Kevin dropped the hammer and reached for his cell phone. His friend picked up on the first ring.
“Yeah?” Josh answered the phone the same way he did in high school.
“Sorry, man. I forgot we were gonna meet today.”
“Yeah, I figured. Where are you? I called your place at least ten times.”
“At my house.”
“Your house? Since when do you have a house? Where is it?”
“Oyster Bay.”
“Is that so? You are just full of surprises, bro.” There was a noise and Kevin could tell Josh had covered the phone and was talking to someone in the background—Kevin’s sister, he guessed—which meant his house would be on the discussion agenda at next Sunday’s dinner. “Sorry. So, a house. Does that mean you’re here for the duration?”
“That’s the plan. I’m renovating it. I’ve had a couple of bad days, so I figured this was a good place to kick the crap out of some stuff.”
“Sounds like something to do,” Josh said. “Give me directions, I’ll help you.”
***
An hour later, Josh pulled into the driveway of Kevin’s house. He didn’t have any trouble finding it. It was situated on one of the more exclusive roads in Oyster Bay, a hamlet on Long Island’s Gold Coast and only a few miles from Jason and Meg’s house. The area was so named for the large number of estates, horse farms, and private schools. Kevin’s house, however, looked like something out of a horror movie. Shutters were hanging from window frames, the paint was peeling, and the grounds looked like a minefield. Josh had to laugh; it was just the kind of project to keep his friend happy. He’d have to remember to send Anton, his architect, out here. Kevin could definitely use a consult.
For that matter, he should probably ask Caroline to stop by so she could make sure the damn thing wasn’t going to fall off the foundation. His wife wasn’t working as much since she was pregnant and was actually getting someplace as a writer, but she was still an engineer to the core. Chances were she’d give Kevin hell for buying the place without talking to her first, and that was a guaranteed good time.
Josh shook his head and laughed. Kevin would never change. He loved three things in this life, baseball, his family, and building shit. He had no idea why his friend had majored in economics in school; he should have been an engineer or architect, then when he was done playing ball he’d have something to do.
Josh didn’t knock, but pushed open the front door and followed the sound of power tools to the back of the house. There was serious construction going on. The outside of the house may have reminded him of the Bates Motel, but he could see Kevin had been spending most of his time on the inside. A new staircase graced the front hallway, and the large living room off to the right was freshly painted and awaiting molding.
When Josh walked into the kitchen he saw Kevin crouched down next to a base cabinet. He was wearing an old baseball cap and safety goggles and was letting a reciprocating saw tear into the wood. When the cabinet popped free of the wall, Kevin ripped it back the rest of the way, pulling a chunk of plaster in the process.
Kevin knelt on the floor and examined the area under the cabinet. “Shit,” he muttered.
“Problem?” Josh asked.
“Oh, hey.” Kevin ran his hand over the floor. “Termite damage. I’ll have to replace this section.”
Josh walked over and glanced at the disintegrating wood. “That sucks.”
“I was gonna try to save the original plank floors, but there’s no way.”
Josh extended a hand and pulled Kevin to his feet. “You never change, you know that? You get pissed off and you want to beat the shit out of something. I think the barn walls at my parent’s house still have marks from the two-by-four you used when your parents told you they decided to leave the estate.”
“I don’t know. I think I’ve changed too much.” Kevin pulled off the heavy work gloves and reached for a cooler. “Want a beer?”
“Sure.” Josh accepted the brew, flipped top off the bottle, and leaned his hip into a sawhorse. “So when did you buy this house and why are you beating up on it?”
Kevin took a sip of the beer and glanced down at his hands. “I closed about six months ago. I know it’s a wreck, but it’s got great bones. I had to have it.”
“Okay, but you still didn’t tell me what’s crawled up your ass.”
Kevin took another pull on his beer. “Harper.”
“Got it. Your sisters have been talking about nothing else since yesterday. You had to do Harper and you had to get her pregnant? Didn’t we learn about protection in health class?” Josh leaned against one of the old cabinets waiting for details.
“It happens. What makes the whole thing suck is that she didn’t tell me. I would have wanted to know. I’m not the guy who doesn’t take responsibility for things, especially when one of those things is my kid.”
“You met Anna the other night?” Kevin nodded and Josh rubbed his palm along his jaw. “How did that go?”
“How do you think it went? I found out I have a kid. A daughter. I still don’t know what to think.”
“She is a cutie.”
“She’s gorgeous.” He rocked the sledgehammer back and forth on the floor. “But shit, man. I’m not supposed to have a kid.”
“But you do.”
“You guys didn’t tell me she’d had a baby.” Kevin was more than a little pissed at his family for not telling him that, although he wasn’t sure why. He felt like it was something he should have been told about.
“Kev, we didn’t even know you two even liked each other. Why the hell would we mention it? I mean you and the Harpy, man . . .”
Feeling the hair on his neck stand when J
osh used the insulting term to refer to Harper, he snapped at his friend. “Don’t call her that.”
Josh stopped and looked over to see Kevin pick up the sledgehammer with one hand and swing it against the wall. The old plaster collapsed and Kevin threw the hammer over his shoulder ready to take another, more violent swipe. “Kev, step away from the wall and tell me what’s on your mind, okay?”
“The baby is mine. Harper had my baby and didn’t tell me. Fuck.”
Josh really felt for his friend. It was hard to watch someone who always had his shit together be at a loss for what to do. Josh remembered talking to Kevin very briefly after Kevin’s father died. This had the same feel. Kevin was lost. “What did she say about it? About why she didn’t tell you?”
“Yeah. She invited me for dinner to do just that. Apparently, she was going to tell me, but then I signed with San Diego and she saw us going nowhere . . .”
Josh nodded and took a pull on his beer. He didn’t say anything because he figured if he did Kevin might aim that sledgehammer at him.
“Are you going to say anything or just stand there like a block of wood?”
“Kev, what do you want me to say? I didn’t even know you two had been together. I mean, when did it happen?”
Kevin hesitated, looking around the room trying to avoid the answer. “At your wedding.”
Josh took a step closer. “You mean after the wedding.”
“No, I mean at the wedding. We went to the wine cellar and . . . well. We made a baby, obviously.”
“Holy shit. Caroline is going to flip out.”
“Don’t tell her the details. This whole situation is a mess. I don’t want the details out there.”
Josh grinned. “Ah, come on. It’s a great story.”
“Not really.” Kevin would never forget their time in the wine cellar; he’d never been with a woman who made him so hot, but he wasn’t going to let the story become fodder to be told at Thanksgiving for the next twenty years.
“So what made Harper tell you? She wants support, what?”