by Laura Moore
Shit.
So either Ashley hadn’t deleted the sex tape, as Roger had demanded, or she’d let Chris watch it at some point before taking it into her greedy little head to blackmail him.
“She’s here, you know,” Chris said, nodding at the waiter, who placed another lowball glass in front of him.
Max took a slow sip of his vodka. No way was he going to let Chris faze him. “Who, Ashley?”
“The one and only. She’s got a part in a new reality show about rock and roll. Some director approached her about it because she’s been seeing Ryder Stevens—you know, the Ryder Stevens. He and his band have a gig this week at the Fillmore. I could call her. Even though she’s doing the nasty with Ryder, I’m sure she’d be happy to reconnect with you. For old times’ sake.” That smirk made another appearance.
Why, so Chris could jerk off watching another sex tape? “I’m married, Chris.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t even invite your best bud to the wedding.”
“It was private.”
His shrug was indifferent. “Word around town is you knocked her up. Always thought you were super careful—in that respect at least.”
Max stood and dropped some bills on the table. He noticed his hands were trembling. Hell, his entire body was shaking with rage. He wanted badly to rearrange Chris Steffen’s face and permanently wipe the smirk off it. “You might want to be careful yourself, Chris. You’re pushing your luck.”
“Am I, bro? Or maybe it’s that yours has run out. We’ll see, won’t we?”
—
Max spotted Dakota’s SUV in front of the airport’s small terminal. His carry-on and briefcase in hand, he strode quickly across the tarmac toward it. Shaking off his fatigue and blocking out his anger and frustration over Chris’s veiled threats, he focused instead on his need for Dakota, his outrageous and undeniable need.
She had the window down and he could feel her gaze on his as he closed the distance. He quickened his pace. Reaching the car, he jogged around to the rear and lifted the tailgate, tossing his bags into the cargo area. Then he was opening the passenger door and reaching for her as he slid in.
The kiss was fierce, a fevered mashing of lips, as if they couldn’t get close enough, her hunger as frantic as his. He was immediately, painfully hard.
He tore his mouth from hers. “Let’s go,” he said roughly.
She fumbled with the gearshift and then shoved it into drive. In the dark confines of the SUV, the harsh sawing of their breaths spoke for them.
He had thought he could hold on for the few miles to the house. He’d thought wrong. Dark woods bordered the road. No lights shone from houses, signaling the presence of potentially curious homeowners. Few cars passed them.
“Pull over and cut the engine, Dakota.” He didn’t explain; she didn’t question. The sexual tension gripping him was obvious.
The engine silenced, he said, “Get in the back.”
The opening and slamming of metal echoed.
He met her in the back, his hands already pulling her down and beneath him. She was wearing a skirt. She shivered as his hands traveled over her smooth legs, pushing the material up. Reaching her panties, he dragged them down, replacing them with his mouth.
He reveled in the creamy-salty taste of her, in the scrape of her fingers as they dug into his scalp, in the clamp of her thighs about his head.
His tongue lashed and probed, demanding she come apart for him, needing to hear her throaty cry of wonder. He needed that as much as he craved his own release. Another long, hard stroke and she bore down on him, screaming his name and bucking helplessly.
Before she’d even quieted, he’d shoved his trousers down. Grasping her legs again, he lifted them and shifted his weight forward. Feeling her welcoming heat, he gritted his teeth in anticipation and thrust inside.
He tried to hang on and prolong the exquisite pleasure, but it was too intense. Everything drew tight inside him, and then he was pumping and grinding his hips and coming in a violent rush that made him see stars inside the car.
Trembling, he placed a hand on the leather seat and levered himself up. His sluggish mind cast about for an explanation of why he’d gone at Dakota like a madman. His only excuse was the utter shittiness of the past eighteen hours and the recognition that once he was inside Dakota, all of it would go away. Because that’s what being with her did for him. She made the stinking rot disappear.
He looked down at her, hoping that whatever came out of his mouth might exonerate him. Her head was turned. But her profile revealed the wet spikes of her lashes, the tight compression of her lips. “Dakota?”
She turned, and her ravaged expression was like a gut punch. Had he done that?
“Christ, are you okay? Did I hurt you? Is it the baby?”
“No.” When she struggled to sit up, he helped her and then quickly righted his clothes as she pulled her panties back on and tugged her skirt down. Done, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed.
“Dakota, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t. I wanted it to be just like that, to be swept away. It’s just that—” Her sentence left unfinished, she looked out the window at the black trees.
He waited for her tension to ease, for her hands in her lap to unknot. Neither happened. “What is it, then?” he asked.
Her shoulders rose as she drew in a ragged breath. “I have a father.” And she burst into tears.
—
There were two people Max could cheerfully murder: Chris Steffen and Piper Hale.
It occurred to Max that they were like two sides of a very bad penny. Both were narcissists who didn’t care whom they hurt. They simply differed in their approaches to inflicting mayhem.
But at the moment, Chris and whatever nasty little schemes he was concocting were irrelevant. It was Piper who topped Max’s shitlist.
Upon hearing her tortured statement, he’d pulled Dakota onto his lap, and while she cried herself out, he rubbed her back and stroked her hair, helpless to do much else. Minutes passed and slowly she calmed, sporadic hiccups and sniffles replacing broken sobs. Then, opening the front passenger door, he got her settled and her seatbelt fastened. As he drove them back to Windhaven, she told him in a voice quiet with pain how she’d figured out Piper’s decades-long deception. Listening, he imagined how satisfying it would be to wring Piper’s neck. But maybe that would be too quick. He wanted her to suffer just as Dakota had suffered all these years.
He recalled the day he and Dakota had filled out their application for a marriage license. In the section where she was required to provide information about her father, she’d written Unknown in neat block letters. How many similar applications and forms had she filled out? And each time she did, had there been that slight but telling stiffness in her posture?
And then to discover that her mother had lied to her all these years, keeping her father’s identity a secret from her? Unbelievable. What a hell of a thing to do to a loved one…except Max didn’t really believe that the likes of Piper and Chris were capable of love.
But what about him? Was he any better? He’d fallen in love with Dakota, yet he, too, was keeping a secret from her. True, his secret was of a different kind, and he wasn’t actually lying to Dakota by withholding it. Nor did it involve her personally.
Yet in light of Piper’s deceit, his concealing important information from her made him feel dishonest. It was a condition he’d have to live with, however, because he couldn’t bear to reopen those wounds.
If not for Max and the baby growing inside her, Dakota would have been a complete wreck. Piper’s reluctant revelation was like a bomb blast, tearing apart everything inside her and destroying the relationship with her mother, dysfunctional though it was. Piper was all the family Dakota really had, her dealings with the other members of the Hale clan too toxic to endure. With Piper’s lie exposed, Dakota lost the mother she’d clung to. And the father she’d longed for? The one she’d dre
amed about? Well, now she had a name to attach to those fantasies, to whisper at odd moments when she was walking on the beach, the wind carrying it off to the sea.
Thanks to Max, she was able to replace fantasies about her father with facts about Diego Salinas. He’d suggested she approach Sam Brody, a friend of Alex Miller’s, who ran a highly respected security firm. He could hunt down the correct Diego Salinas and relay any information to her much more quickly than if she attempted to investigate on her own.
Two weeks later, Sam Brody mailed Dakota his findings in a twenty-page report complete with photographs and links to where she could discover more about her father.
The photographs showed Diego was indeed a handsome man. That was to be expected. Piper was far too shallow to ever be attracted to someone of merely average looks. But the physical similarities between her father and her nonetheless came as a shock. Dakota had inherited his eyes, his dark hair, and his olive skin tone. Like her, he was tall and athletic.
Her father came from Villa Dolores, a town located in the province of Cordoba, and he still played polo, though only on the weekends. The three restaurants he owned, popular with locals and tourists alike, demanded much of his attention, as did his wife and four children, the eldest of whom was twenty-four.
When Dakota reached that section of Sam Brody’s report, it was too much. To read about her younger half brother and sisters and think of all she’d missed not growing up with them in her life, even if they were five thousand miles apart, was devastating.
Setting aside the document, she’d gone to Max’s study and announced that she needed to catch some waves at Ditch Plains. One look at her face, and he’d closed his computer and gotten his gear and long board ready. They’d stayed out on the water until the sun was a gold ball sinking into a dark lavender sea, until she could breathe again. Then he’d brought her home and made love to her and held her in the comforting circle of his arms.
Max’s patience was incredible during this awful period where it felt like her head was going to explode and her heart shatter. He listened while she recited all she’d learned about Diego and his family. He let her vent her rage over Piper. And once she’d finished, he let her rewind and start all over again.
Her obsession was such that she took to checking flight schedules from JFK to Buenos Aires. She’d sit at the computer, her finger moving the cursor until it hovered over the purchase button. But instead of clicking it, she would abruptly close the laptop and dash upstairs to the shower, where she could cry about the father that she’d learned of far too late without Max hearing her anguished sobs.
Of course he knew what was going on. On the third night when she came back downstairs, hollow-eyed and damp-haired, to fix dinner with him, he casually offered to carve out time from work so he could accompany her to Villa Dolores. “It might make seeing your dad a little easier for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll think about it,” she said, shutting the oven door on the lasagna with more force than necessary.
He paused in the midst of adding sliced cucumbers to the salad. “But?”
“But I can’t. It’s too late. I can’t go to Argentina and show up on his doorstep and say, ‘Hi, remember that party at the Dakota in New York City you went to almost thirty years ago? The one where you hooked up with a beautiful blonde and then spent a weekend with her? Guess what—I’m the result.’ ”
“Maybe there’s another way you could introduce yourself to him.”
“It would be hard to leave out those crucial details. And the outcome would be the same.” Grabbing the loaf of Italian bread, she sliced it down the center, pulled it apart, and spread a paste of olive oil, butter, parsley, and freshly minced garlic on the insides, her movements quick and angry. So very angry. “My showing up, my existence, would cause turmoil for six unsuspecting people. I can’t inflict that kind of chaos on them. Chaos and pain are the Hales’ stock in trade. I refuse to follow their example. You’ve seen Piper in action. It’s exactly the sort of thing she would do—hop on a plane and barge in on the Salinas family and to hell with the consequences.”
He came over to stand behind her so he could loop his arms around her waist, which was now curved in a little bump that seemed to fascinate him. She felt her shoulders relax slightly when he kissed the side of her neck.
“Okay, I get your point, not that you could ever be confused with Piper or any member of your putrid family. So how about you write him instead? Just to let him know. You could say that you’d understand if he didn’t feel comfortable introducing you to his family. Which would hurt, of course, but at least he’d have the choice. And he’d be aware of your existence.”
“I—I’ll see.” She sighed tiredly. “I think it’s best if I give myself more time before I make any decisions. I’m still processing it all. I don’t know where I stand or what the right thing to do is. Damn Piper.”
And while Max’s idea of writing a letter was tempting, she could already anticipate the difficulty of finding the proper words and tone when she reached out to her father for the first time. The challenge would be to introduce herself in a way that didn’t shock him into hostility. If she failed, the silence of his rejection would be awful, worse than the pain she was going through now. For the umpteenth time, she told herself that she’d be better off simply letting it go.
Suddenly she caught her breath and the debate raging in her head went silent. Inches beneath the loop of Max’s forearms, something moved: a delicate flutter brushing the inside of her stomach.
“Max,” she whispered as tears made the kitchen swim before her. “I think I felt the baby.”
He went still and was silent for a second, doubtless as shocked and surprised as she. Then she felt his arms close about her protectively. He cleared his throat, but his voice was nevertheless rough and thick with emotion when he asked, “It moved?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“Light. Delicate. Fluttery. Like a bird in flight. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” She grinned, the anxiety surrounding what to do about her father and how to handle the betrayal by her mother eclipsed by the wonder of her baby stirring. “I can’t wait for you to feel it,” she said. “You’re going to be such a good father, Max.”
He gave an odd laugh and his arms dropped away from her stomach as he stepped aside. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.” He made it sound as if she were foolish to have faith in him.
“So how long until dinner?” he asked.
“We can eat whenever you want.”
“Can you give me another half hour? I have some emails to write.”
“Of course.”
Her smile slipped as he left the kitchen. For all Max’s affection, support, and interest in her and the baby, there remained barriers between them. He almost invariably withdrew, distancing himself emotionally when the topic of his own impending paternal role arose.
She couldn’t help but be frustrated. Fathers were on her mind a lot these days. After poring over Sam Brody’s report, reading page after page about Diego Salinas, her sense of loss was more acute than ever. One way she dealt with it was to look at Max and see all the potential in him. He was a good man. The evidence was everywhere, no matter how many times he shied away from her.
Her gaze fell on the Vitamix, a gleaming symbol of the care he’d taken when she’d been suffering the worst of the morning sickness. He no longer needed to concoct easily digestible protein-rich smoothies for her to sip, but she continued to use it nearly every day for the simple reason that it reminded her of his efforts. She had half an hour, more than enough time to make an apple crumble for dessert with the help of the super-blender.
She went to the cupboard, pulled out the ingredients, and carried them to the counter, placing them next to a ceramic bowl piled with fruit. Plucking several apples and then grabbing a paring knife, she got to work.
Given her current preoccupation, it was natural that she should wonder about
Max’s father, as well. She remembered how Max had spoken of him—the one time he’d mentioned him at length—on the afternoon he’d replaced her flat tire. There’d been affection and respect in his voice as he’d described the two of them working on the old cars his father brought home to restore. How could Max have cut all ties with the man who’d been so important to him? What had caused the rift?
The optimist, the fixer, in Dakota wanted to help him bridge the divide. How to approach Max about his nonexistent relationship with his father wasn’t clear, however. She understood too well the lacerating pain associated with family conflicts. Things were going so well between her and Max; would it be wise to press him about his father, especially when he’d demonstrated such patience and forbearance in dealing with her family drama?
Plus Max had a lot of work and it was clearly preoccupying him. Even in her meltdown over Piper’s lie, she’d noticed that when he wasn’t consoling her, he was on his phone with Roger Cohen and other associates she couldn’t identify. Now that she was living with him, she had an even better sense of the pressure cooker that was the life of a Wall Street financier. But recently there had been an added sense of urgency about him. When she’d asked him about it, he’d responded with a verbal shrug. He was just making sure Chris Steffen was doing an able job at Chiron’s helm.
If that hadn’t been enough, Max’s firm had suffered a disappointing IPO with one of the companies they’d acquired—not one of Max’s, thank goodness. The graveyard silence broken by the chirp of a lonely cricket that had greeted the company’s public offering had put the onus on the rest of the Summit Group’s partners to perform beyond expectations.
Max had told her the Summit Group’s chief, Bob Elders, was a type A personality to rival all others. He wanted the Summit Group to squash the competition.
Max obviously thrived on the intensely competitive environment; he wouldn’t be the success he was otherwise. But it was clear he was juggling a lot of balls, both professional and private. Would it be right to toss another one at him by bringing up the topic of his father?
