by Elle Casey
His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “No, she’s not the family dog. We were never allowed to have pets growing up.”
Unfortunately for him, I’m going to save that comment for another conversation, since I’m too interested in this one to be distracted.
“She your girlfriend?” I’m smiling really hard, trying not to let him see how nervous I am. I’m terrible at conversation and small talk, and this isn’t even small talk. This is big talk. I really want to know his answer, though, because if he says, “Yes, she’s my girlfriend,” it means there will be no more flirting coming from or accepted by me. I’ll probably have to call off the bet, too. And that’s good news in a way, but in another way it isn’t so much; I was kind of looking forward to the extra two hundred bucks. All I have to do is paint a tree, right?
“No, she’s not my girlfriend.” Sam stares at me, his jaw muscles bouncing out several times before he speaks again. “What’s your connection to the band?”
My hand goes up and touches my chest, my fingers trembling a little. He’s just thrown down a gauntlet. Dare I pick it up? Sadie’s not his girlfriend!
“My connection?” I try to laugh it off. “Why would I have a connection? I don’t work for them.”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” The intensity of his stare makes me think he can see right through me.
I shrug, hopefully looking way cooler than I feel. “My sister works for them. Apparently, she just got a promotion, too, so she’s a really big deal. And I support her one hundred percent.” I nod emphatically. This is all about her, not me.
He shakes his head, narrowing his eyes at me. “No, that’s not it. There’s something else going on.”
“Not really.” Technically speaking, there isn’t; they offered me ten million bucks, and I turned them down. Our business together is over—it was over before it even started.
“I can tell by the look on your face that you’re not telling me something,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Great.” I have no idea how I can be so good at bluffing at poker when it seems like everyone who meets me can eventually read my mind.
His mouth quirks up in a half smile. “Why do you say that?”
“Because.” I throw my hand up and let it come down to slap the table. “You’re just one more person who can climb into my brain and read my thoughts. Do you know how annoying that is? To never be able to keep a secret from anyone?”
He smiles, somewhat sadly. “No, I don’t know what that’s like. Nobody ever gets in my head.”
“Well, consider yourself lucky. I am never alone in mine.”
“Lucky you,” he says. “To never feel alone.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He’s twisting the meaning of my words, but it does make me stop and think. I suppose there could be a benefit to being so open that people you care about can read you; there’s less chance of a misunderstanding that way, less chance of hurt feelings . . .
The waitress arrives and takes our order as delivered by Sam. This will be my first pizza with anchovies. And now that we’re alone again, I can continue to pursue my line of questioning. I am on a mission to get into Sam’s head and find his buttons. Yeah!
“So, Sadie is not your girlfriend, and she is not the family dog.” I play with my napkin, doing my best to keep my hands busy so I can seem cool and unaffected by his presence.
He leans forward, his voice dropping into a very suggestive, sexy tenor. “And you have something to do with the band other than your sister working for them.”
I stop messing with the napkin and fold my hands in my lap. We sit there staring at each other, time slipping past, conversations flowing around us. The waitress delivers our drinks and I take a sip of my beer, trying to delay the inevitable.
If I want to know the answers to my questions about him, I’m going to have to give him the answers he seeks. Ugh. Why does everything with Sam always have to be all about give-and-take? Can’t he just give me what I want and let me stay quiet, private, and living in my own world?
“Sadie is my daughter,” he finally says. Then he takes a long pull from his beer, gulping several times before he puts the frosty mug down.
It takes me a few seconds to gather my thoughts enough to respond to his totally unexpected statement. “You have a daughter? Huh. Wow. I had no idea. Amber didn’t say anything to me about this.”
“Amber doesn’t know.”
This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. “I can’t believe Ty wouldn’t tell her that he’s an uncle.”
“Ty doesn’t know either.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It’s like Sam dropped a bomb in the middle of the conversation. My jaw opens, and all I can do is stare at him.
“You think I’m an asshole, don’t you?” He takes another drink of his beer, but he stares at me the entire time.
I shake my head, trying to get myself out of the weird daze I’ve fallen into. It can’t be the beer; I’ve only had two sips so far. “No, I don’t think that.” I blink a few times, letting it settle in that this man sitting across from me has a child and he hasn’t even bothered to tell his brother about it. I think their relationship is a lot more broken than Amber realizes.
Sam looks away, staring at the wall that has framed pictures of famous movie stars on it. The sadness I see in his face prompts me to quickly elaborate on my answer.
“No, really . . . I don’t think that at all. I am confused, though. I mean, earlier . . .” How do I finish this sentence? Damn, I suck at this.
He looks at me. “Earlier?”
“Earlier . . . you said Ty would jump into a fire for you, so it just seems kind of strange . . .” I shrug pitifully. I’m making him feel bad, I know I am. When did I get so judgy? Is this New York’s influence on me? Because if it is, I need to get out of here tomorrow.
“It’s strange that he doesn’t know I have a kid?”
I nod.
“Yeah, you’re right, it is strange.” He lets out a long sigh and then picks up his mug, finishing his beer. He lifts the empty glass toward the bar until the waitress recognizes what he’s after and nods at him.
“What happened between you two?”
He shrugs. “It’s kind of hard to say.”
I wait, knowing that I could very easily say the wrong thing. I sip my beer instead, silently willing him to confess.
“We had a tough time growing up. We took a lot of abuse . . . watched our mother take a lot of it too. Ty was better at dealing with it. He found a way to push it off, but I couldn’t.”
I nod, totally getting what he’s saying. Sam is a sensitive person. I could see him absorbing everything, much like I would. Amber is like Ty; she can see what happened with our mothers and compartmentalize it as their issue that happened in the past. I can’t do that; I’ve taken what the men of Red Hot did—or didn’t do—personally.
“Eventually, it got in the way of our relationship. I got angry with him just brushing it all off and never standing up for himself. We fought a lot. Said some things we shouldn’t have. I couldn’t stay and watch it anymore. I was so angry at everyone, and it was destroying me.”
“So you moved away to save yourself. And you had a child.”
“I guess.” He shrugs, looking away.
“Wow. That must be really tough,” I say.
“What? Having a kid?” His gaze comes back to me as he waits for my answer.
“Well, having a child, sure. But doing it without the support of your family? That must make it harder.”
“Yeah, it’s hard.”
Time stretches between us again. Before it was charged with a happy, almost sexual energy, but now, not so much. There’s a sadness . . . almost a hopelessness here, and I feel Sam pulling away emotionally. I can’t let him go so easily.
“You want to know what my connection to the band is?” I can’t not tell him now. That would be incredibly rude and hurtful. I know he’s just shared something huge with me, and now I want to do the sa
me for him.
“Yeah. What’s the big secret?” He perks up, sitting straighter, resting his hands on either side of his empty beer mug.
I lower my voice, paranoid that some Red Hot fan will be listening in from a neighboring table. Amber says they’re everywhere and that they love taking videos. “If I tell you, do you promise not to share the information with anyone?”
He leans forward and nods, dragging his empty mug toward his beard and resting his elbows on the table. “Sure. Your secret is safe with me.”
I give him a half smile. “Before you said my secrets weren’t safe with you.”
He points a finger at me. “I said that they weren’t before, that’s true. But now I’m saying they are. You can trust me. I don’t sell out my friends.”
I smile shyly, my face going warm. We’re flirting again, I think. It feels like we are, anyway. And he says we’re friends, but I’ve had friends before and it doesn’t feel like this. It probably doesn’t hurt knowing that Sadie is not his girlfriend.
“Okay, so the big secret is . . . ,” I try to breathe normally, but it’s not working, “. . . that for twenty-five years, I lived on this hippie commune and I had no idea who my father was, and then one day this lawyer named Greg Lister showed up at our house to tell me that I was the long-lost love child of a Red Hot band member.”
“Greg Lister?” Sam tilts his head. “That’s the guy who works for Red Hot. He’s the one who contacted me after I talked to Ty.”
“Yes. The devil himself.” I try to laugh my joke off, but it falls flat when Sam just stares at me, so I keep talking. “Anyway, he said that the members of the band just found out that we were alive, that we were all their daughters—Rose, Amber, and me—and they wanted to offer us some money.”
“Money? What for?”
“An excellent question,” I say a little too loudly. I take a sip of my beer, trying to calm myself down.
“How much?” He pauses. “Or should I not ask that question? Too personal, maybe . . .”
“You can ask. It’s part of the secret, I guess.” I take another sip of my beer and stare at the table. I hate this part of the story. “They offered each of us ten million dollars.”
He lets out a long hiss of air before finally responding. “Daaaaamn.”
“Yes, it’s a lot of money. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“What are you going to do with all of it?”
“I’m not doing anything with it.” I look up at him, angry at the very idea. “I wouldn’t touch their money with a ten-million-foot-long pole.”
“Are you insane?” He’s staring at me with his eyes bugging out.
“No. I’m perfectly sane, thank you very much.”
His response annoys me. He doesn’t seem to notice, though, because he keeps on going. “But think of everything you could do with . . .”—he drops the volume of his voice—“. . . ten million bucks. Hell, if you don’t want it for yourself, you could give it away to charity.”
He totally doesn’t get it, which is so disappointing. “Yeah. Sure.”
He shakes his head, sitting back in the booth and letting out a long breath, frowning so hard he looks almost angry. He runs his hands through his hair and then strokes his beard a few times, staring off into the distance. Then he looks at me and his face falls. His expression softens, almost turning him into a different man. “Sorry. I just got a little thrown off by that number.”
I have nothing to say to that.
He’s staring at me so intensely again, I have to look away. “You’re not the type to be thrown off by money, are you?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“You’re strong. I’m not sure I could say no to that kind of dough, even if it was the devil himself offering me some sort of payoff.”
I guess I shouldn’t fault him for being blown away by this information. It is pretty crazy. “I get it. Believe me, when we first heard the offer, it was shocking to us too. Never tempting, but shocking, yes.”
“Probably not as shocking as finding out that your father is in Red Hot, I’ll bet.”
Sam’s trying to cheer me up, and it would be completely stupid for me to resist his efforts. Besides . . . it feels good to be able to talk to someone outside of the family about this, especially now that it seems like he’s figured out the problem I have with the money.” He called it a payoff, which is exactly what it is. “You’re right. That was the most shocking part.”
“Which one is he? I mean, which one is your father?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “And I don’t care.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
I look around the room and then roll my eyes, a little embarrassed about this part of the story. “Our mothers—Rose’s, Amber’s, and mine—were groupies for the band, back in the day. There was a lot of free love and casual sex going on, and they kinda mixed it up a lot.”
“No way.” Sam laughs. I’m glad at least someone sees humor in the situation.
“Yeah way. And they all got pregnant right around the same time, and as a result, they don’t know who the father is for any of us.”
“That is unreal,” he says, shaking his head in amazement. “What are the chances of that happening?”
I find this part of the story especially annoying. “Probably about as good as us winning a really crappy lottery, but it happened. People win lotteries every day, you know.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He’s shaking his head in either disbelief or shock at my crazy story.
“And as soon as our mothers found out they were pregnant, they took off without saying anything to the band.”
“They took off ?” Sam throws his hands up. “Without saying anything? Why would they do that?”
“Yes. Thank you.” I throw my hand out toward him in frustration, glad that someone else besides me thinks it’s totally stupid. I focus on being charitable as I explain the rest of the story. “There were two things at play: First of all, our moms say they knew that motherhood and raising a family were not things they should be doing in that environment. And the second thing was that there was a guy named Ted who was the band manager . . .”
“Wait . . . Ted? I know a Ted. Is it the same guy? I talked to him on the phone, too. After Ty and Lister. He arranged my plane tickets and stuff.”
“Yeah, it’s the same guy. Ted was instrumental in getting our mothers some money so they could leave and start a new life without the band members finding out about it.”
“They just took off, though? They didn’t say anything to anybody?”
“Except for Ted and a guy named Darrell, who’s no longer with the band, nope.” I shrug. “I don’t know that I would’ve handled it the same way if it were me, but that was twenty-five years ago, so it’s hard to say. All three of our moms decided it was a good idea, and so they did it. End of story.” They always told my sisters and me that there’s no use crying over spilled milk, but I sure do feel like crying over this spill. What a freaking mess they made . . .
Sam is nodding slowly, like he’s piecing it all together. “So, here you are, twenty-five years later, paying the price for their irresponsibility. No father to raise you but a stranger standing there with a fistful of dollars, telling you to take it and forget what happened . . . or what didn’t happen, I guess.”
“Exactly.” I point at him and then let my hand fall to the table in a fist, banging it down. Suddenly, my mind is racing through memories of so many things: growing up on the farm, selling things at the farmers’ market, arguing with the city council about the boundary limits of our property and what we’re allowed to do on it, guests who have come and gone, the animals, my sisters and the growing up we did together. Seeing it all playing on a reel in my head like this makes it hard to stay mad at my mothers for very long. Yes, I grew up without a father . . . but how can you miss what you’ve never had? And I did have a good life. No . . . a great life. And that’s because of the choices my mothers m
ade.
“I really shouldn’t be so harsh about the whole thing,” I say, my body and heart softening. “We had a really great life, and these men appearing out of nowhere doesn’t change anything.”
“Looks like it’s changed some things for Amber,” he says softly.
A lump forms in my throat and I shake my head, unable to speak. Yes. My sister is gone and she’s never coming back. I have to face it, as much as it hurts.
“Well, I see why you’re so conflicted about the money. I guess it’s not as easy as just saying ‘I’ll take it’ and giving it to somebody else.” He pauses, searching my face. “It would be like saying that the fact they stayed away for twenty-five years is okay with you. And it’s not. It’s definitely not.”
I stare down at my beer and reflect on how nuts my life is in this moment. Sam totally gets me. It’s a genuine relief to have someone like him sitting across from me instead of one of my sisters telling me to get over it. How crazy is that . . . that I’d rather be here with him than with Amber or Rose?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I guess things are tough all over,” Sam says.
I look up at him, sensing a double meaning in his words. “How so?”
His next beer appears, and he waits until the waitress is gone before he answers. “My daughter . . . She’s not actually mine.”
“What?” I’m not sure I understand, but I definitely want to. I sit up straighter and lean in to hear him better.
“Biologically speaking, she’s not my daughter. But she is my daughter in my heart, you know?” He touches his fist to his chest a couple times and waits for me to respond.
“I think I get it,” I say. “You must love her a lot. You tattooed her name on your body.”
He looks at his arm that’s covered in ink. “Yeah. I’ve got a lot of other ones that don’t mean a whole lot compared to that one.”
“It’s all by itself there over your heart.”
“Yes. She means everything to me.”
“And she’s back in LA?”
“Yeah.”
“With her mother?”
He suddenly looks decidedly uncomfortable. “Yes and no.”
