by J. Kenner
Once they had proven they could walk down the aisle without tripping over their own feet, the minister pronounced them ready, and the large group immediately broke into smaller clusters. Carpool plans to the rehearsal dinner flew, but Nick could only concentrate on Victoria as she disappeared through a small side door.
He detached himself from the party, moving toward that side door.
"Taylor! Wanna ride with me?"
Kipp's invitation was as loud as the Hawaiian shirt he wore. Normally, Nick would want nothing more than to catch up with his oldest friend, but this was Victoria, and that changed everything.
"Nah, I need to check on something, but I'll catch you at dinner, okay?"
Kipp hesitated, but Lolly tugged on his arm, and they headed out the front with the rest of the bridal party.
Kipp had never met Tori when they were dating. The Taylors and Houghtons had belonged to the same country club since he and Kipp were in diapers, but Kipp had gone to an East Coast boarding school for high school and had been living in Belize during that unforgettable summer after undergrad. He'd heard about her--there had been times Nick had talked of nothing else--but his friend had no reason to suspect the prim wedding planner Victoria was actually Nick's Tori.
The side door led to a small dressing room filled with clergy robes and natural light. Victoria had her back to him, one hand braced on the window frame when he entered. God, she was gorgeous. He'd forgotten the line of her neck, how sensitive she was there.
His fingers itched to touch and he closed the distance between them, giving in to the urge. "Hiding?"
At the first brush of his fingertips, she whirled away, putting half the small room between them. "What are you doing?"
"I don't know." Nick flexed his hand. "I just ... I've missed you."
"You could have fooled me."
He deserved the bite in her words. "Things got complicated after I left," he said, reaching for the words to explain.
"You think?"
"With everything going on--" His father's fraud arrest ... His mother's flight to a non-extradition country ... And him struggling to keep his head above water in law school... "I thought a clean break was better."
"Better for whom?" She held up a hand. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. You'll be gone on Monday. Just stay away from me until then."
She stalked past him, but he caught her arm, sliding his hand down until he held her fingers. "Tori--"
A hidden door he hadn't seen in the north wall creaked open.
"Mom? Are we going soon? I'm done with my homework, and the wedding people are leaving."
The girl looked about ten. The skinny arms and legs sticking out of a school uniform were brown as a beechnut. Her hair was Victoria's wild midnight mop--and her eyes were the color of whiskey.
About ten.
Nick stared, his mouth going dry as realization slammed into his gut.
I have a kid.
VICTORIA STARED AT NICK, willing him to keep his mouth shut. All it would take was one careless word for Lorelei to realize he was her absentee father. Lore had always wondered about her daddy. It was only natural. But Tori had kept her answers vague--loved him very much but circumstances pulled us apart before we even knew you were on the way.
Standing in the vestry of First Presbyterian wasn't how she wanted her daughter to learn her father was actually a self-centered asshole who'd abandoned them both.
"I'm almost done," she said to her daughter, amazed her voice didn't crack under the strain. "Why don't you wait for me in the entry? I'll be out in a minute."
She spoke to Lorelei, but her gaze stayed on Nick, silently pleading with him not to speak. Not to ask. Either her psychic powers were improving or he was silenced by shock, because he didn't say a word as Lorelei mumbled okay and trudged out with her bulging backpack slung over one shoulder.
His gaze followed Lorelei, staring after her long after the door clicked shut and her footsteps faded away.
When he swung to face Victoria, his eyes were hard. "How could you fail to tell me I had a child?"
She tugged her hand free. "I told you I was pregnant. A kid is the standard result."
His amber eyes flared like he was the injured party. "You never told me. It's not the kind of thing I'm likely to forget."
"Are you kidding? I called. I emailed. For five weeks, I did nothing but tell you."
He opened his mouth to retort, anger sharpening the lines of his face, but realization rolled over his face like a cloud, and he went still. "I deleted them," he whispered.
"What?"
"It was September. My father had been indicted, my mom skipped the country, and I was about to flunk out of my first semester of law school. I knew if I heard your voice or saw even a single word of sympathy from you, I'd give up and run back to California with nothing, so I deleted everything without opening them." He stepped away, falling onto a chair as if his legs would no longer hold him. "I never thought--Christ. It was for the best. I was so sure--"
"So you ignored me until I went away."
"I was twenty-two and my life was falling apart."
"Funny. So was mine."
"I didn't know you were pregnant."
"Would it have made a difference?"
"Of course it would have!" He surged to his feet, pacing in the tight space. "You know it would have. You know me."
"No, I don't. Not anymore." She tried to keep the words firm, but her voice was shaking. She was shaking.
She'd entertained the idea, over the years, that he might not have known about Lorelei--usually as part of some fantasy in which he'd been abducted by the Dread Pirate Roberts and fought tirelessly to get back to her side--but now hearing him claim he really hadn't known rocked the foundations of her carefully constructed world.
She'd built a life for Lorelei and for herself. What happened now? Would he want to know his daughter? What if he wanted more? What if he wanted joint custody and every other weekend in Manhattan?
She hadn't missed the designer cut of his suit or the glitzy watch that probably cost more than she made in three months. If he decided to make it a fight, he could pay for a more expensive lawyer in a custody battle. What if he tried to take Lorelei away?
She fought to take a full breath. She wasn't thinking clearly, hadn't been since Nick Taylor burst back into her life.
A reminder chime on her phone rang. The rehearsal dinner. She needed to get to the restaurant to make sure everything was going perfectly, but first, she had to drop Lorelei at her mother's to be spoiled rotten tonight and tomorrow while Tori ran the wedding.
She had a job to do. Already Nick had distracted her too much. Normally she would have been guiding the rehearsal, but she'd let Pastor Jim run the show because she was too flustered by Nick, standing beside the altar, looking like several million bucks and ten thousand regrets in his dark gray suit. She'd retreated to the vestry to get her composure back, but she couldn't seem to get herself together. Memories of the past were colliding with fears for the future and leaving her present an unholy mess.
"I can't deal with this right now. I have to work."
She didn't give him a chance to reply, rushing through the sanctuary without looking around. She collected her daughter and hustled her out to her car.
Lorelei flung her backpack into the backseat before flopping into the front. "Was that the groom?"
"Just the best man."
"Do you like him?"
Tori sucked in a breath as she pulled out of the lot, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. What must her daughter have thought when she walked in to see Nick holding her hand? Lore never saw her with men. Between taking care of her daughter, establishing her business and forgetting about Nick, Tori hadn't had the time or energy for relationships. She'd only been on a handful of dates in the past decade. "He's just someone I knew a long time ago."
Her daughter hummed knowingly--a mannerism she'd, unfortunately, picked up from her grandmother. "If you say so."
"I do," Tori insisted, and quickly changed the subject. Maybe it was cowardly, but she wasn't ready to discuss Nick Taylor with his daughter. Not until she could figure out exactly how she felt about seeing him again, because as much as she wanted to hate him, it sure felt like some part of her heart was still his.
HE HAD A DAUGHTER.
The food at the rehearsal dinner was divine, but he barely tasted it. Activity flowed around him, but all he saw was a little girl with skinny arms, Victoria's hair, and his eyes.
He'd had a daughter for ten years, and he hadn't known.
He wanted to blame Tori, but she was right. He had cut her off when he'd left California to go to law school. When she'd tried to get in touch with him, he'd assumed she was calling to offer sympathy because his life was shit and he hadn't wanted to hear it. All that had mattered to his twenty-two-year-old mind had been carving out security so it could never be yanked out from under him.
Sure felt like the rug had been pulled out now.
That little girl changed everything--and he didn't even know her name.
"Taylor!" Kipp slung himself into the empty seat beside Nick, beaming like he'd won the lottery--and from the way Lolly looked at him, maybe he had. "You okay, man? You seem out of it."
"Just happy to be here." The last thing Kipp needed on the night before his wedding was to hear Nick's drama.
He was a good guy, Kipp Houghton. A loveable teddy bear of a trust-fund baby who had never had a blow that wasn't softened for him. But he was also the only person from Nick's old life who had stuck by him through all his family shit, even when Nick hadn't made it easy to do. And whenever Nick had asked him why, he would shrug and say Nick wasn't his parents.
And now he was a parent. Christ.
"You thought about the offer?" Kipp asked, dragging him out of his thoughts. "I know I said I wouldn't bug you until we got back from the honeymoon, but Lolly says it doesn't hurt to ask and ya gotta listen to your wife-to-be, right?"
The offer. One look at Victoria and all thoughts of business had flown. But he was supposed to be using this weekend to make up his mind about Kipp's offer to join his expanding company as chief legal officer.
He'd been fence sitting, uncertain about returning to California even though his life in Manhattan was all work and no life. He didn't date--except when he needed someone on his arm for a work function. His sole focus for the past decade had been building something solid and real, as far from his father's sleight-of-hand brand of success as possible. But now ...
The little girl with skinny brown arms and his own whiskey eyes flashed in his mind. "I'll take it."
Kipp's jaw dropped. "Wait? Are you serious?"
"Yeah. It's time I moved back." A lightness filled his chest at the thought--not just of seeing his daughter and Tori again--but at the idea of leaving New York. Coming home again.
"Dude. I can't believe it." Kipp teared up, slapping him roughly on the back. "You don't know what this means to me. Best freaking wedding present ever."
"It's not a gift." Nick caught a flash of a midnight updo at the opposite end of the room. "You're great at what you do," he said, and it wasn't a lie. Kipp might be a loveable teddy bear, but he was a teddy bear with a Midas touch who had turned his gaming hobby into a cutting-edge game design company. "I'm honored you want me to be part of expanding GottaPlay. And I need a change." The teal dress tugged at his attention. "But right now I see someone I need to talk to. Congrats on the wedding, buddy."
"Thanks, man." Kipp grinned. "I gotta tell Lolly."
He galloped off, bouncing with enthusiasm to tell his bride. Nick wasn't sure he'd ever been that excited to share his life with another person. Even before that awful first year of law school, when he'd constructed granite walls around himself to keep out the whispers and stares, he'd never let another person that close to him. Even Tori. She'd been an amazing girlfriend, but she'd been a part of his life, not his whole world. And he'd cut that part out when it felt like an anchor dragging him back to a past it felt like weakness to remember.
He owed the mother of his child the mother of all apologies.
Nick threaded through the crowd, stalking that curvy figure in the teal dress.
She was being hunted.
Tori was hyperaware of Nick, so she knew the very second he rose from his chair and began weaving toward her. She'd dropped off Lorelei at her mom's place and rushed to the restaurant only to find everything was going perfectly. Venue? Lovely. Food? Delicious. In another half hour the party would start breaking up, and she'd be able to escape.
She'd hoped to avoid talking to Nick tonight, but as he prowled in her wake, that hope died. At least she could control where they spoke. Her personal affairs would not be aired in the middle of a client's rehearsal dinner.
Victoria stepped off the private patio reserved for the rehearsal dinner and along the gravel path around the building. It was a pleasant night, but a chill breeze caught her as she rounded the corner of the building. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing she hadn't left her blazer in her car. There was salt on the air, carried on the breeze from the beach to the hilltop restaurant. Victoria inhaled, taking comfort in the familiar scent, even as the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path behind her made every muscle in her body tense.
"Tori--"
She turned, cutting him off. "Are you going to try to take my daughter away?"
"What?" He stopped moving so fast his feet might have taken root. "How could you think that of me?"
"I don't know you anymore." She wrapped her arms tighter around her middle. "Lorelei doesn't know you at all."
He moved closer, shoes crunching the gravel. "Lorelei? You named our daughter after your favorite television character?"
She glared at him. "Forgive me if it seemed appropriate to name my baby after the Gilmore Girls. I was hormonal. You're lucky I didn't name her after the vodka we were drinking the night she was conceived."
"Lorelei is a beautiful name," he said, and it got harder to stay mad. "I want to know her, Tori. I'm moving back to California."
Her stomach plummeted. She'd been thinking he was only here for the weekend, believing if she could make it through to Monday, everything would be fine. Normal. Or as close to normal as a situation like this could be. But if he would be living here ...
She could handle her feelings for him when he was the absentee father, but if he was there, living down the street, helping out with the carpool ... she didn't know if she could do it.
And if he vanished on Lorelei like he had vanished on her ...
"I'm not going to forbid you getting to know your daughter, but she's my world, Nick. She doesn't know much about you, but if you come into her life you have to stick. You can't make her care about you and then abandon her like you did me. I will hunt you down and gut you if you ever make her feel unwanted, do you understand me? You don't get to hurt her. Ever." Tori knew all too well what it felt like to have a father who walked away. She never wanted that for Lore.
"I won't. You know me better than to think I would."
"I thought I did, but then you ran away to Manhattan and stopped taking my calls. I don't know what kind of person you are these days."
His jaw worked as he nodded. "I deserve that. I'm sorry. I was barely keeping it together, and I thought you would talk me into moving back here--"
"I wanted to be with you. I didn't care where."
"You made it pretty damn clear you weren't leaving Eden."
"Because you never asked me to go with you!"
"Because you kept talking about how you could never live in New York!"
His voice echoed over the hill. Tori cast a nervous look toward the party. Very professional. The wedding planner causing a scene with the best man at the rehearsal dinner. "I can't talk about this here."
Pulling her arms tighter around her, she strode toward the parking lot.
"Victoria ..."
It wasn't supposed to hu
rt like this, eleven years later. Time was supposed to dull everything, but where he was concerned, her feelings were as sharp as ever.
His feet crunched on the gravel, trailing her.
"Tori. Stop." His voice was close, just over her shoulder. A hand closed on her arm, pulling her around, his other hand cupping her opposite shoulder to hold her in front of him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then his gaze dropped to her lips.
His eyes darkened. His grip on her arms firmed. And she was fifteen again. About to be kissed by Nick Taylor for the first time.
The world simply fell away.
He lowered his head slowly, and by the time his lips brushed hers, so hesitant and sweet, she had forgotten everything she'd ever known except the taste and feel of him. He murmured something, too soft for her to hear, and deepened the kiss, angling, pressing, coaxing for more--and she gave him more.
She gave him the piece of her heart that had always had his name carved on it--the part she thought she'd excised years ago but that had been lying dormant, waiting for him to reappear to start beating again.
Suddenly she was too warm, the chill completely banished. This. This was what she had tried to forget. No one had ever kissed her like Nick. All that focused intensity. All that single-minded devotion. The attention that went into every stroke and touch.
He'd always been hell on her equilibrium. No wonder she'd wound up pregnant--
Tori jerked away.
Lorelei.
It wasn't just her anymore. She couldn't fall into his arms because she had always felt at home there. This wasn't just Nick, the boy she'd loved. This was Nick, the father of her child. And he wanted a relationship with Lorelei. For Victoria to get involved with him ... No. It was too complicated. Too many things could go wrong.
"I can't," she whispered and fled, thanking God he let her go, because she wasn't sure she would have been able to push him away a second time.
"VICTORIA! I HAVE A mission for you. I need you to help me set up my maid of honor with the best man."
Tori froze with her hands wrist deep in lace. She kept her back to Lolly, pretending to be absorbed in rearranging the veil until she controlled her expression. "Taylor?"