His Long-Lost Family

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He heard the vulnerability in her tone and he knew that, even after so many years, his reconciliation had hurt her. But the truth was, he’d never thought about Sara—not once—throughout the weekend that he was with Kelly. So instead of nodding and letting her believe it was true, he said, “I wanted you to believe that.”

She frowned at his admission. “Why?”

“Because we’d both agreed, at the end of the weekend that we’d spent together, that it couldn’t ever happen again. And then you called, and I could hear in your voice that you’d changed your mind, that you wanted more.” And in that moment, as much as he’d wanted her, he knew there could be no future for them together. Not at that time and definitely not in light of the conversation he’d had with his brother.

“And you didn’t want more,” she guessed. “Not with me.”

“What I wanted didn’t matter,” he told her. “You were still in school and barely twenty-one years old.”

“You’re right—I was twenty-one years old.” She paused to draw in a deep breath before looking up at him. “And I was pregnant.”

Chapter Three

Jackson stared at her for a long moment, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was telling him. When he finally spoke, his tone conveyed as much confusion as his words. “You were…pregnant?”

She nodded.

He frowned but didn’t say anything else.

“On the way from the airport, you asked how old Ava was. She turned twelve in February.”

“Are you saying…?” His question trailed off, as if he couldn’t bear to speak the words out loud and acknowledge the possibility.

But Kelly had been holding on to the secret for too many years and she wasn’t going to hide the truth for even a minute longer. “She’s your daughter.”

His mouth snapped shut; his face actually paled. But after another pause, which was probably only a few seconds but felt like hours, his gaze narrowed and he shook his head. “Nice try, Kelly.”

She felt her back go up. “What is it you think I’m trying to do?”

“Suck me into paying twelve years of child support.”

“Child support?”

“I know you came back here to work at Richmond Pharmaceuticals, but losing your job in Seattle must have—”

“I chose to leave my job in Seattle,” she interjected.

He shrugged. “Regardless of the reason for your financial difficulties—”

She couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of his allegation. Because the truth was, between the inheritance left to Kelly by her grandmother and the trust set up for Ava by her former step-grandmother, she had no immediate financial issues. “You really think this is about money?”

“I can’t imagine any other reason that you would concoct such an outrageous story.”

“Maybe it seems outrageous to you,” she acknowledged. “But it’s not a story—it’s the truth.”

He snorted derisively. “Are you willing to submit your daughter to DNA testing to prove it?”

“Absolutely.”

Her immediate and unequivocal response finally seemed to give him pause.

“Trust me, Jack, if I got to choose a father for my daughter, I wouldn’t have chosen someone who’s made it more than clear that he doesn’t want to be a father.”

He considered that for a moment, then asked, “You really do think I’m her father?”

“You really think I had so many lovers I don’t know who fathered my child?”

“I wasn’t your first,” he said, in an echo of her own statement.

“No,” she agreed. She hadn’t been innocent, but she had been inexperienced. “You were my second.”

He winced. “How the hell was I supposed to know something like that?”

“You weren’t,” she admitted. In fact, she’d done everything she could to ensure he didn’t know. Afraid that her naïveté might put him off, she’d tried to make up for her lack of experience with enthusiasm. She’d been in love with him for so long, nothing had mattered to Kelly except that she was finally going to be with him.

“You told me you were on the pill,” he said now.

“No.” She felt her cheeks flush at the memory of that awkward conversation. “When the condom broke, you asked if I was ‘safe’ and I said yes.”

“But you weren’t,” he said accusingly.

“I thought you were talking about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.”

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “It would have been nice to have clarified that little misunderstanding thirteen years ago.”

“I was young and naive, but even if I could, I wouldn’t change anything that happened back then because it gave me my daughter.”

“Except that you’re now claiming she’s my daughter, too.”

She should have known this would be a mistake. She’d suspected that he would be shocked, and probably more than a little angry. But his disbelief cut her to the quick. She had never slept around and there was no possibility that anyone else was the father of her child.

Of course, Jack had no way of knowing that—especially considering that she’d had no direct contact with him over the past thirteen years. But that didn’t make his accusation hurt any less. She stood up. “I thought you had a right to know. I thought Ava had a right to know. But I’d rather she didn’t know the identity of her father than to know that he doesn’t want to be her father.”

“If I am her father—”

Kelly cut him off with a sharp expletive and turned away, but not before he saw her eyes fill with tears.

Jack tried to ignore the twist of guilt. He hadn’t barged into her place of work with outrageous accusations. Why should he feel guilty just because he wasn’t willing to accept her claim unequivocally? Well, he wasn’t. He had questions, and he damn well wanted answers to those questions.

And now she was just going to walk out?

The phone on his desk buzzed. “Donald Winter is here for his two-thirty appointment,” Colleen announced.

He pushed away from his desk as Kelly reached for the handle of the door. “Wait.”

“No.” She shook her head, refusing to look at him. “I’m done here.”

He slapped his hand against the frame. “You can’t drop a bombshell like that and just walk out.”

“You have a client waiting,” she reminded him.

But right now, Donald Winter and his legal issues were the least of Jack’s concerns. In fact, standing so close to Kelly, breathing in her hauntingly familiar scent, he could barely remember the client’s name. He tried to focus his thoughts on the here and now, on Kelly’s revelation and his response to it. But memories of that one long-ago weekend teased the back of his mind, and he felt something begin to stir low in his belly.

He dropped his hand from the door, curled his fingers into his palms so that he didn’t give in to the urge to touch her. Because he’d lied. When she’d asked if he’d ever felt the same zing with anyone else, he’d blatantly and unapologetically lied. It was true that he’d been attracted to other women—probably too many other women—but never had he experienced an attraction as compelling or intense as his desire for Kelly.

Even now, even when she was making wild accusations that could turn his entire life upside down, he couldn’t ignore the heat thrumming in his veins. And because he was standing so close to her, he could see the pulse point pounding at the base of her jaw, and he knew that she was feeling that zing, too.

“The client can wait,” he said to her now.

She finally looked at him, and he was relieved to see that her golden eyes were clear again, with no hint of the tears that had twisted knots in his belly. “There’s no reason to make him wait—we’re done here.”

“We’re not even close to being done.”

“I said everything I wanted to say and you’ve made your feelings on the subject more than clear.”

“Dammit, Kelly, I don’t know what I’m feeling,” he admitted. “But as an attorney, I’m finding it difficult to accept the word of a former lover without any concrete proof when I know there’s no way in hell I would let any client of mine do the same.”

“We used to be more than lovers, Jack. We used to be friends.”

“We used to be,” he agreed. “But I haven’t heard a single word from you in thirteen years.”

“Why would I lie about something that is as easy to disprove as it is to prove?” she challenged.

It was a good question, and one he probably should have considered. But his mind had been reeling since he’d heard her say “I was pregnant”—and frantically trying to reject the possibility that her child could be his.

Because kids weren’t anywhere in his plan. Sure, he’d considered the possibility when he was married, but when his marriage had fallen apart, so had the expectation that he would someday have a family. Now Kelly wanted him to believe that he was the father of her twelve-year-old child? His brain simply refused to wrap around the possibility.

“So you really want to do a DNA test?” he asked her now.

“No,” she said. “What I really want—and probably what you want, too—is to forget we ever had this conversation. Unfortunately, I know that’s not going to happen.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not. And if—”

Her steely glare had him biting back the words and frantically seeking another direction for his thoughts.

“If you have some time tonight,” he said quickly, “I could stop by and we could discuss this in more detail.”

She shook her head. “I’m not talking about any of this around my daughter.”

“Don’t you mean our daughter?” he challenged.

“Make up your mind, Jackson. You can’t deny paternity in one breath and use it as a weapon in the next.”

“I just want the truth.”

“And you need a DNA test for that? Did you even look at her?”

“She looks like you,” he said dismissively.

And though it was undeniably true, there was something about the girl that had—even at a first glance—nagged at him. “If that’s all you saw, maybe that’s all anyone else will see,” she said.

“So you’re just going to walk away?”

“I told you, Jacks—I thought you had a right to know. But I have no desire to force you into a role you don’t want to fill.”

“You can’t blame me for being suspicious,” he said. “It’s my job to ask the tough questions.”

“And you’ve obviously done well enough at your job to get your name on the door,” she noted. “Or was that a wedding present?”

His gaze narrowed. “I don’t remember you having a nasty streak.”

“We spent three days together more than thirteen years ago—there were a lot of things you didn’t know, never mind remember.”

And then she yanked open the door and walked out.

Jack met with Donald Winter, but he cancelled the rest of his afternoon appointments after that. Actually, he told Colleen to cancel his appointments on account of a family emergency—a request that had her jaw falling open. Because Jack Garrett never cancelled appointments for any kind of personal reasons, because nothing had ever mattered more to him than his career. But right now, he couldn’t focus on anyone else’s legal problems. He couldn’t think at all with Kelly’s words still ringing in his ears.

She’s your daughter.

He still had trouble believing it could be true. And yet, as much as he wanted to continue to deny even the possibility, deep in his heart he knew Kelly wouldn’t lie about something so monumental. Nor would she have made the claim unless she was one-hundred-percent convinced that it was true.

Which meant—Lord help him!—that he was the father of Kelly’s daughter. He had a daughter. And not a chubbycheeked infant or even a wide-eyed toddler but a twelve-year-old. For God’s sake, the kid was practically a teenager!

And to Jack’s mind, that was definitely a family emergency.

When he left the office, he did so without any kind of plan. He only knew that he needed some time and space, so he got into his car and drove. Since the death of his parents, family had been himself and his two brothers. Now that Matt was married to Georgia, that family had grown to include his new sister-in-law and her three children. And considering that Luke was a lot like Matt with respect to his ideals about hearth and home, Jack figured his younger brother would also hook up with one woman and have a family of his own someday.

But that wasn’t Jack’s future. When his marriage ended, he figured any chance of someday having a family had ended with it. And truthfully, he hadn’t been too disappointed. The whole wife-and-kids thing had never been his life’s ambition. But now it seemed he had a kid, whether he wanted one or not. And right now, he was leaning in the direction of “not.” He wasn’t proud to admit it, and he knew it wasn’t what Kelly wanted to hear, but it was true. He was thirty-seven years old, content with his life. Adding a child to the mix now would turn everything upside down.

Not that it was his choice to make. The fact of Ava’s paternity wasn’t something that could be debated. A test would either prove that he was her father or—dammit, he knew there wasn’t any “or.” In his gut, he knew that Kelly was telling the truth. The fact that she hadn’t faltered or flinched when he’d demanded proof of paternity convinced him that she had absolutely no doubt that he was the father of her child. Which meant that he had to accept not just the possibility but the probability that her twelve-year-old daughter was also his daughter.

He knew his responsibilities, at least in so far as the law was concerned. Despite Kelly’s claim that she didn’t want financial support, he understood that a father had a legal obligation to contribute toward his child’s maintenance—to ensure that she had food, clothing and shelter. And he would do so.

It was his rights more than his responsibilities that gave him pause. He was more than willing to write checks, but did he want to play any more of a role in the child’s life beyond that?

His practice in the field of family law had demonstrated to him time and time again that some people instinctively knew what it took to be good parents, and some people didn’t. And he’d often wished that those who didn’t would realize it before they made the mistake of procreating.

His brother, Matt, had always wanted to be a father, and when his girlfriend of only a few weeks told him she was pregnant, he hadn’t hesitated to marry her. He’d been a doting husband, catering to Lindsay’s every want and need—and thrilled beyond belief when Liam was born. Three years later, Lindsay admitted that Liam wasn’t really Matt’s son, that she’d already been pregnant when she seduced him. She’d chosen Matt because she knew he would want to be a father to her child, but once Liam’s real father was back in the picture, she wanted to be with him. Considering his brother’s experience, was it any wonder Jack was skeptical of Kelly’s claim?

Not that the experience had sidetracked Matt from his ultimate goal of having a family of his own. Not for too long anyway. Once he got over Lindsay’s betrayal and the loss of his son, he’d jumped with both feet into a relationship with his beautiful neighbor—a widow with three kids. In fact, Jack had stood up for Matt at his wedding to Georgia only a few weeks earlier, and though Shane and Quinn and Pippa weren’t Matt’s biological children, Jack knew his brother couldn’t love those kids any more if they were.

Which only proved to Jack how different he was from his brother. When faced with the news that he was a father, he didn’t feel the least bit paternal, just panicked. After his divorce, he’d accepted that fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for him and moved on. And he’d felt no twinges of loss or regret. In fact, he’d been grateful that he and Sara hadn’t had any children to fight over during the divorce. Not that they’d fought over much of anything. By the time she’d filed for divorce, it was obvious to both of them that whatever passion they’d once shared had long since burned out. Neither of them cared enough to take issue over anything.