Missing Hart (29 page)

“Remember the bookstore that I worked at in high school?”

After he nodded I continued, “The girl that I became such good friends with, Marissa, was Dillon’s wife. I got very close with them all and to this day Leah is my closest friend.”

I saw the moment that it clicked in his head and he tied the memory of Leah’s name to my hysterical breakdown all those years ago.

“I remember a Leah who broke you into tiny pieces. She doesn’t sound like much of a friend to me. Were you… was she your first girlfriend?”

Oh what a web we weave when at first we try to deceive.

“No, my first and last girlfriend was Tally. I lied to you that night, and Leah isn’t the reason that I was upset. She’s one of my favorite people in the entire world and you’re going to love her. She’s had a difficult life but she’s got the heart of a lion and is one of the kindest and sweetest people that I’ve ever known.”

Staring at me in shock he replied, “I don’t know what to ask questions about first. The fact that you lied about who upset you or the fact that you just told me you won’t have any girlfriends after Tally. What the fuck is going on ladybug?”

It was past time for me to be honest and take some responsibility. After taking a deep breath and telling myself to be courageous I said, “I’m not gay, Dame. My heart was given to a man a long time ago and I’ll never get it back. I couldn’t stand to be touched by any man that wasn’t him, but with Tally it wasn’t an issue. A lot of her behavior is on me because I did love her, but not the way that she needed to be loved.”

Making a dismissive hand gesture he said, “First of all, fuck that. Nothing you could have done should have warranted her telling you that this family doesn’t care about you. Secondly, why didn’t you just tell us all of this the night she turned up at the house? Now I feel like I shoved her onto you because I assumed she was the love of your life.”

That Tally thought that she could make me believe that my family didn’t care about me was laughably pathetic. As usual, my brother was so defensive of me that he was going to start beating himself up for things that happened in my life. I couldn’t allow him to do that.

“I’m almost twenty-three years old Dame, it’s about damn time I took some responsibility. I made a series of stupid decisions that led to this. You didn’t shove her onto me; I did that myself. I knew that the man that I love would never forgive me and I was just so tired of being alone. I’m not ready to tell you the whole miserable story, but I figured this was a start. No one else knows that I know Dillon or Leah and I’d like to keep it that way for a while. I know that I’m asking you to hold back a lot of information, but this even telling you this much was hard for me. Mama’s going to be able to find them easily without me having to provide any information, so don’t feel like keeping silent will delay getting in touch with them. I know it might seem selfish, but I just can’t go there yet. Emotionally and mentally this is very, very hard for me and I need to take baby steps. Can we keep this between us?”

He stared at me intently the entire time I was speaking, and I could see that he was trying to make sense of everything that I was saying.

“If that’s what you need, then of course the answer is yes. I always have your back ladybug, no matter what. I need something from you though.”

“What?”

“I want you to promise me that when you’re ready to talk, you’ll talk to me. I’m here for you no matter what and I want to help.”

Holding out my hand so that he would take it in his and shake it, I nodded.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

I was sweating bullets waiting for the knock at the door, and only thing that was keeping me in place was the fact that Delilah and I were holding fast to each other’s hands. Any minute now our father and our new brother were going to arrive at Dante’s house, and both of us were nervous wrecks.

Mama San had told us that he was a wonderful man, and that had us even more anxious to meet him. Having lived for ten years with a father that hated us, both of us were terrified that as great as Mama said he was, our real father wouldn’t care for us either.

When the door opened and he caught sight of us both and I saw his eyes fill with tears, I had such a feeling of relief that it was staggering. Delilah and I both ran for him at the same moment, and he cried when he had us in his arms. Over and over again he repeated, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…”

Delilah and I had both wondered what we would call Todd Rand, but seeing him in person, and understanding how affected he was and how much we already meant to him, it felt right to call him dad.

After he was able to let us go we went to hug our new brother, Flynn. He was tall and just as beautiful in person as he was on the TV and in magazines. When he told us that he had always wanted siblings, I shed a few tears.

I had been worried about what all of this would mean to Dante, but our dad went out of his way to thank all of my brothers for raising Delilah and me. His attitude put my brothers at ease, which was a relief. I couldn’t help but notice that my newly found father and my Mama San spent some serious time watching each other, and I giggled inside when Delilah poked me and gave me a nod to let me know that she saw it too.

Mama hasn’t dated since she moved in to take care of us twelve years ago, and Delilah and I have both struggled with feelings of guilt about that. She must have wanted her own children, but she gave that all up for us. We said as much to her once and she lost it, telling us in no uncertain terms that we are her children and she has no regrets. If she and our dad were interested in each other, I thought it would be a good thing.

My sister and I were like two little children listening to the pied piper when Flynn started talking about our grandparents and how amazing they are. We had no idea what having grandparents would be like, but Flynn assured us that we had the best set in the entire world and that we were going to love them.

“If you’ve got a good sense of humor, you’re going to love our Gram. She’s a straight shooter, a joker and the world’s best hugger. She’s got so much love inside of her and she is going to bust when we tell them this great news. Pop is the backbone of the family, a great family man and role model. Leaving them and dad when I go on the road is always the worst. I can’t wait for you to meet them because they’re going to be over the moon. Dad and I are going over to their house tonight after we leave here to tell them all about you. We were hoping that tomorrow you would come to lunch with us to meet them. Would that be okay?”

I felt Delilah shake her head at the same time I did, both of us more than ready to meet our grandparents. Never having the benefit of having a dad or grandparents that cared before, we were more than ready to immerse ourselves in our new reality.

The evening ended with more hugs and kisses, and I felt our dad’s sadness when he had to leave us. I think if we had said it was okay, he would have sat and watched us for days. We had a lot of time to make up for.

Curling up in my bed at Dante’s house later that night, I reflected on how amazing it was to have a dad. Delilah’s baby was going to have a grandfather and great-grandparents now, something that until a few days ago we would have said would never happen.

Inevitably my thoughts returned to Dillon. Mama had gotten all of the pertinent information on him and in another fuck my life turn of events, it turned out that Spencer had scheduled a meeting with him for this coming Friday. If he had walked into the office without me being prepared, it would have been disastrous.

I tried to settle my nerves and push down my anxiety, but in the back of my mind I was counting down the hours until I would see him in person again.

Lunch with our Dad, brother and grandparents was amazing. They were just like Dad and Flynn-happy, salt of the earth people who were thrilled to have granddaughters. They both burst into tears when they saw us for the first time, and Gram told us over and over again that we were two beautiful angels sent from heaven to fill her heart. Pop hugged us a hundred times and took pictures with his iPhone so that he could show his golf buddies his beautiful girls. When Delilah told them all that she was pregnant, you would have thought she had announced that God himself was coming to dinner. All of them were beside themselves with joy, and I had to suppress a pang of jealousy at how excited they were. Dad was ready to do cartwheels around the restaurant because he was going to be a grandfather, and Gram and Pop were all about being great-grandparents.

Gesturing to Flynn, Gram said, “My precious boy just met someone that I think might be ‘the one’, but until we met Tessa I was never sure we’d be so lucky as to have great-grandchildren while we were alive.”

Covering Flynn’s mouth with her hand to stop him from speaking she continued, “Appearances to the contrary, he’s a good boy… but the rock star lifestyle hasn’t been good for dating. If I told him once I told him a million times that he needed to keep it in his trousers long enough to find someone normal, but he couldn’t hear me over the sound of all those hussies telling him their room numbers. It’s a small miracle that he’s dating a girl who wants more from him than just the ability to say she got busy with Flynn Rand. Pop and I went to church on Sunday to thank God for that miracle, but now that we’ve met you two and we know there is a great-grandchild already on the way, I’d say God isn’t finished doling out miracles just yet!”

Flynn was right; she was an adorably straight shooter. He wasn’t offended by what she said at all. Instead, he laughed before responding, “Trousers, Gram? You are a nut. I haven’t worn trousers since the last time I let you dress me for a family photo. They’re called pants, slacks or jeans now.”

With a completely straight face she said, “Really? Because I see your fans on Twitter all the time talking about some kind of trouser snake. Should I post an alert telling them you don’t have one?”

The entire table burst out laughing. She was borderline inappropriate and it was hilarious. Getting to know Gram and Pop made it very clear why our dad and Flynn were well rounded, respectful of women, and funny as hell. It was also adorable that Gram and Pop held hands at every available opportunity and canoodled whenever they could.

Spencer came to pick us up when lunch was over and I stood back and smiled as everyone took turns touching Delilah’s stomach to say goodbye to the baby. Clearly both sides of our family had baby fever, and even though I for one was thrilled, it did give me a pang of longing. I had so loved the feeling of knowing that Dillon and I had created a baby, had loved being pregnant, and to this day I wake up from dreams where my stomach has grown rounder, the baby is fine and Dillon is right there at my side. The price of that loss can never be paid.

Forcing myself to think happier thoughts, I found joy in the fact that my grandparents also welcomed Spencer with open arms, and Gram insisted that he should think of her as his grandmother now, too. On the way back to Dante’s after lunch, Delilah, Spencer and I all agreed that we could eat our grandparents up with a spoon. They were awesome.

Collision Course

I’d been avoiding meetings with Hart International for over two years. Someone from the company would call or email requesting a consultation, and every time I found a way to get out of it by saying that there was no room in my schedule. Technically that was true, but for a company of that size and with the reputation that they had, it was going to become career suicide at some point. They built the best of the best and I landscaped it, so the chances of avoiding them forever were zero.

The reason that I had agreed to Spencer Cross’ request for a meeting was that I finally accepted that time had run out. Better to meet with him than one of the Hart brothers. Even though I hadn’t known that Dominique had been a high school girl, I still felt shame about it and would have felt guilt dealing with them.

Knowing that the meeting was approaching has made me dream about her and think about her twice as much as usual. Whereas before I had somehow managed to sleep through at least five nights a week without dreaming about her, now I was back to seeing her every night in my dreams.

Four years, four years, and I still hadn’t managed to loosen her death grip on my heart. I love her with my whole heart as much now as I did the day I realized that she was just a schoolgirl playing games with an older man. I never had a chance with Dominique. My heart chose her, and no amount of running away could ever make me love her any less.

Even knowing what I know now, my heart is still a stubborn son-of-a-bitch that can’t let her go. When I’d seen her at the hospital the night that Leah had been attacked it had hurt me physically not to hold her. I felt my wall beginning to crumble and I’d been seconds away from speaking directly to her… and then she up and left without ever even looking at me.

She was closer to Leah now than she ever had been, but she went out of her way to avoid me. Just two months ago I overheard Leah on the phone with Dominique talking about the fact that Leah didn’t like her girlfriend, and it felt like I’d been poleaxed. A girlfriend? Really? All that did was reinforce my belief that she was nothing but a fickle girl who wanted to live life loose and free. Did that make my stubborn heart yearn for her less? No, it did not.

My meeting was scheduled for the afternoon, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t nervous about the prospect of running into Dominique. Considering the fact that she had wanted to be an architect and I was meeting with the honorary brother that was the lead, chances were good that I’d see her at some point.

I was doing a pretty damn good job of keeping my nerves under control until I got to the front desk to check in and was informed that the meeting location had been changed from Spencer Cross’ office to Dante Harts. Great, now I had an uncomfortable meeting to look forward to.

The elevator pinged its arrival at the top floor, and after taking a steadying breath I went to step off. Everything stopped the moment that I stepped off the elevator and found myself face to face with Dominique. She was still the most heart stopping beautiful girl I had ever set eyes on. I was furious that even after all these years my first impulse was to reach out and touch her. She belonged to someone else now, some girl, and that was that. I shut down as much of my emotion as humanly possible and blank stared her, willing my arms to stay at my sides instead of reaching for her.