He was probably going to use this call as an excuse to beat a hasty retreat once he came out of her bathroom, but she couldn’t very well ignore the call. The more she thought about it, the more she felt that it was probably something important.
Resigned, she began her search, trying to determine where Dillon had dropped his phone.
The annoying beeping sound stopped. The caller apparently had finally given up, she thought. And then she saw it. His phone was lying face down on her floor. Dillon must have accidentally kicked it as he made his way into her shower because the phone was partially under her bed with only an end peeking out.
She picked up the phone, went to place it on the nightstand. But the contact and movement had caused the last series of unviewed texts to pop up on the screen.
The texts were all from the same person. Someone named Julie. The last text was written all in capitals.
WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME????
Hailey didn’t remember sitting down, but she must have. Her knees suddenly gave out and she found herself sinking back onto her bed.
She felt as if she had just been kicked in her stomach.
Julie.
The name seemed to dance in front of her eyes, mocking her.
Julie? Who was Julie?
Was Dillon already involved with someone else? Worse, was he married?
Was that the reason he had kept her at arm’s length—when he remembered his marital status? Because he certainly hadn’t acted like he was married last night.
She felt tears gathering in her eyes and she wiped them away. If Dillon was married, then why hadn’t he told her?
She was a great believer in privacy. Usually. But unable to help herself, she scrolled down through the messages that were available to her, the ones that had been sent and hadn’t been looked at yet. She couldn’t remember even hearing the phone beeping before now, but then, they had been rather busy last night, oblivious to everything else except each other.
The memory of that didn’t console her now. It made her feel as if she had been underhanded. Not as underhanded as Dillon, but hey, they couldn’t all be in his league, she thought, a stab of bitterness lancing right into her heart.
Again, she berated herself for reading his private messages like this. But in her defense, she was trying to find something—anything—to prove that she was wrong, that this wasn’t what it looked like.
But when the same message kept popping up all four times in progressively bigger text, she knew that this had to be exactly what it looked like. This Julie woman appeared to have far more of a claim on Dillon than Hailey did.
Hailey knew she had to be right because why else would he have kept this woman a secret from her?
Feeling progressively sicker, she desperately wanted to run away. She wanted to hide from this awful pain that was carving up her insides.
But damn it, this was her house, not his. If anyone needed to leave because of this awful discovery, it was Dillon.
Grabbing a robe from her closet, Hailey had just managed to shrug into it to cover herself and tied the sash at her waist when Dillon walked out. Bare-chested and barefoot, he was only wearing his slacks. His hair was wet from the shower.
Without saying a word to him, she got up and shoved his phone into his hand.
Dillon looked down at the screen. Seeing the row of texts, one after the other, he quickly retreated back into the bathroom without saying a word.
Feeling so awful that she found herself fighting a very strong, very real urge to throw up, Hailey sat back down on her bed, struggling to get a grip on herself.
She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t, she silently ordered herself. Hailey took in a couple of deep breaths, trying very hard not to dissolve in tears.
When Dillon came out again, she was just going to tell him that she wasn’t feeling well and would he mind leaving? Permanently?
Hailey fisted her hands beside her. She just couldn’t deal with this right now, she couldn’t.
But just as she couldn’t stop the tears that welled up in her eyes, she couldn’t lie or pretend that none of this was happening. She had just made love to a married man—or to a man who might as well be married. He was definitely involved with someone, which to her was the same thing.
The bottom line was she had made love with someone who hadn’t been honest with her. And to her, dishonesty was just about the worst.
Hailey jumped when the bathroom door suddenly opened. She swung around just in time to look Dillon straight in the eye.
“Who is Julie and why is she asking you to come home?” Hailey asked him in a shaky voice.
Startled, Dillon looked at her. “You read my texts?” he asked, surprised.
“That’s not the important part here,” she informed him in a strained, angry voice. “Who is Julie?” she asked again.
“It’s not what you think,” Dillon began, searching for words that wouldn’t escalate what already felt like a totally volatile disaster about to explode.
“I don’t know what to think,” Hailey cried, exasperated. “Because you keep shutting me out. Every time I think we’ve made a little progress, every time it looks like we’ve taken one step forward, you do something to push me back not one step but two. I’m through with you keeping things to yourself,” she declared, then, out of patience, she demanded, “Is Julie your wife?”
Dillon looked at her, stunned. “No, Julie’s not my wife,” he answered. “She is—”
He was talking too slow, Hailey thought angrily. She wanted to jump down his throat and physically drag all his words out.
“She’s what, Dillon?” Hailey cried, frustrated. “Your girlfriend?”
His blue eyes turning darker, he finally replied, “Julie’s my daughter.”
Hailey felt as if all the air had just been pumped out of her lungs. For a second, her head reeling, she was totally speechless and could only stare at Dillon, wide-eyed.
“Your daughter,” she finally said, repeating the words numbly. The import of what Dillon had just said hit her right between the eyes. “Oh, my Lord, I’m a home-wrecker,” she cried.
“No,” Dillon firmly insisted. “You’re not a home-wrecker, Hailey.”
He could see that she wasn’t convinced. That was when Dillon did something he never did. He forced himself to open up, at least a little, about his private life.
“There is no home to wreck, Hailey,” Dillon told her quietly.
“But your daughter—” she protested.
“Is the product of a teenage romance.” He could see that she was waiting for more so he forced himself to keep talking. “When I found out that my girlfriend, Maura, was pregnant, I wanted to step up and do the right thing. I told her that I’d marry her. Hell, I wanted to marry her.”
“So what happened?” Hailey wanted to know. Heaven knew that if he had offered to marry her, to give their child a father as well as his name, she certainly wouldn’t have hesitated saying yes to him. She would have said it so fast his head would have spun.
She found herself not liking this Maura person because she could see that the woman had obviously hurt Dillon.
“She didn’t want to marry me. I thought that maybe she was being stubborn, that she was embarrassed to be in this condition and didn’t want me to feel I had to marry her.
“But as it turned out, she really wasn’t in love with me. She didn’t want to get married just because it was the right thing to do, or just to give her baby a last name.” He smiled ruefully, remembering the scene as if it had been yesterday. “She told me that her baby would have a last name. Her last name.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Hailey confessed.
Though it was painful for him, Dillon continued telling her the story. “For whatever reason, Maura decided to keep me from having any contact with Julie. She disappeared
right after she had the baby. I tried to keep track of her and the baby because, well, after all, Julie was my responsibility, my child.
“I finally managed to track her down a couple of years ago and found that Maura had relocated not all that far away from where I lived. As it turned out, she had gone on to marry someone she did love.” He smiled sadly. “As for Julie, she turned out to be a very headstrong, stubborn girl. She got it into her head to look into finding me on her own. The internet can be a very helpful tool if you’re as resourceful as Julie is.”
There was no missing the pride in Dillon’s voice, Hailey thought. He really was a decent human being, she decided, relieved.
“It took some time, but Julie managed to track me down. She’s a stubborn girl. I guess she takes after me,” he said with a smile. “Once she did, she got in contact with me behind Maura’s back. We started exchanging cards and letters. That went on for two years and then she asked if she could see me. By then Callum had gotten involved with building up Rambling Rose and we were all about to relocate. He was counting on me for my help, so I told Julie that we would get together once I got back to Fort Lauderdale. She accepted it at first. Julie’s resourceful and bright, but she is still a twelve-year-old girl and they tend to be impatient at that age. I suppose that’s the reason she sent all those texts to me. She became impatient.”
Hailey ached for the little girl, thinking how she had to feel, finally finding her father and not being able to get together with him. “So what are you going to do?” she wanted to know.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Dillon admitted. “The one thing I do plan to do is see Julie. She deserves a father, her real father, and I don’t plan on abandoning her for a second time now that we’ve made contact of a sort. I’ve already missed too much of her life. I don’t intend to miss the rest of it.”
“And what about Julie’s mother? You said she wouldn’t let you see Julie. What if she doesn’t change her mind?” Hailey asked. What she didn’t add was that Dillon had said Maura had turned him down when he asked to marry her and then had married someone else. That had to have hurt Dillon, she thought. Maura had been his first love. Could he wind up changing his mind about her if she acted as if she regretted her initial decision?
As if reading her mind, Dillon told her, “Anything between Maura and me has long since died. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am Julie’s dad and Julie wants a chance to get to know me. Maura is just going to have to find a way to deal with it,” he said with finality. “I guess,” Dillon continued after a moment, “getting kicked in the teeth that way at seventeen permanently destroyed any tendency I might have had to view romance with any sort of a positive, rosy attitude.”
She knew what he was telling her. That he wasn’t able to open himself up and care for her the way she wanted him to because he’d been permanently scarred at a young age. She fought the urge to tell him that she wasn’t like Maura, but she sensed that he had already opened himself up far more than he had intended to and that she shouldn’t push it. So she refrained.
Instead she said, “Not everyone is like Maura.”
“No,” Dillon agreed, “they’re not. But putting myself out there and possibly setting myself up for a fall is just too painful. Besides, since Julie is in Fort Lauderdale, my place is there if I ever hope to form any sort of relationship with my daughter.”
He took a deep breath and looked directly into Hailey’s eyes. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m not free to start anything that would lead to a relationship between us. I can’t promise you that I’m going to stick around,” he said flatly. Dillon took her hands in his. “As a matter of fact, I can probably promise you the exact opposite.” He looked at Hailey seriously. “I’m not about to give up on Julie.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Hailey replied in total sincerity.
Dillon knew she thought she meant that, but things had a habit of changing. There was a time he could have sworn that Maura loved him, but he had turned out to be wrong.
“That’s what you say now,” Dillon began, “but—”
Hailey placed her finger to his lips, stopping him before he could say anything further. “Why don’t we just take this one day at a time and see where it leads?” she suggested.
In his heart, he welcomed that because he really didn’t want to just walk away from Hailey. Not while they could still see each other. But he did have his doubts about the arrangement.
“You’d be okay with that?” Dillon asked her in surprise.
“Yes,” she answered with a smile. “Look, I know we’re in Texas, but I’m not about to throw a lasso over you and hog-tie you so you can’t get away. Listen,” she continued, “I wouldn’t want you if you were uncomfortable being in this relationship just as you wouldn’t want me if I was uncomfortable.” Then she added what she felt was the clinching argument. “Just as you let Maura go because she said she wasn’t comfortable being in a relationship with you.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Hailey was making a valid point and it was definitely something for him to think about. But he still knew in the back of his mind that he was going to have trouble putting his fears to rest. Like the very real fear that, if he suddenly decided to stay and opened up his heart to Hailey, something might still happen to make her abruptly change her mind and terminate any sort of relationship that was growing between them.
Once burnt, twice leery...
Still, for now, Dillon felt himself relenting...just a little.
“Like you said, one step at a time,” he replied, nodding his head.
Last night had shown her that Dillon knew exactly how to set her world on fire. If he couldn’t just leap headlong into a relationship with her without looking back, she was just going to have to find a way to live with that, Hailey told herself.
Live with it and hope for the best. She was going to show Dillon how steadfast she could be and, more importantly, that she was nothing at all like the woman who had crippled his heart.
Chapter Sixteen
Dillon and Hailey continued seeing one another during any free time they could find and stitch together. It was a tall order between his construction projects and her work at the spa. The latter was currently deemed to be another success for Callum and the company, but that didn’t mean she had the luxury of dropping the ball either figuratively or literally. She worked exceeding hard, which made any free time she spent with Dillon that much more precious and sweet.
However, whenever they did find small islands of time to spend together, Hailey couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t really alone. The specter of Maura and Dillon’s failed romance was always there with them in the background, like a nebulous prophesy of doom.
And then, after what had been a promising start, their relationship stalled like a manual transmission stuck in second gear.
Try as she might, Hailey couldn’t seem to convince Dillon to loosen up and really take a chance on them.
Added to that was another concurrent problem. Maura continued to throw a wrench into any headway their relationship could have made by refusing to budge on the subject of Julie. The woman was determined that Julie just wouldn’t have any sort of a relationship with Dillon.
Ever.
All this made Dillion leery of beginning a new romance. The only time he’d fallen in love, he’d made a mess of things. How could he expect a different result now?
He hadn’t expected his twelve-year-old daughter to indirectly provide a solution by finding a way to work around every roadblock Maura put in their path.
For more than two years Maura kept the cards, letters and gifts that he had sent from reaching Julie. For reasons that would forever remain a mystery to him, Maura didn’t destroy them. Instead, she locked them up in a box she kept hidden in the back of her bedroom closet.
And then, as fate would have it, when Maura went i
nto the hospital for an appendectomy, Julie accidentally came across a letter he had mailed to her while her babysitter was in the other room. Since it was obviously addressed to her, Julie read it. Surprised, stunned and exceedingly happy that her father cared enough to write to her, he found out that Julie became convinced that there had to be more letters she hadn’t seen. A relentless search through her mother’s things led her to find the other letters that Maura had hidden.
When he received that first letter from his daughter, he couldn’t begin to describe the immense joy he experienced. Although he didn’t approve of deception, he felt this was the only way that he and his daughter could get to know one another so he sent the girl money and told her how to set up a postal box in a local office supply store, so that he could send his letters to her there.
The hope was that until Maura could be convinced to allow him to meet their daughter face-to-face, they would continue making contact this way. He knew he could take this to court and fight for visitation rights, but he didn’t want an all out war with Maura because he didn’t want Julie caught in the middle. It would only hurt her. But neither did he want Julie to feel that he was giving up on her, so he kept writing to the girl.
But he never gave up trying to convince Maura to let him into Julie’s life.
Once she was aware of what was going on, Hailey encouraged him to keep working on Maura.
* * *
“No luck?” Hailey asked after she watched Dillon terminate yet another phone call to the girl’s mother.
Dillon shook his head, frustrated. “She still refuses to let me see Julie, or even talk to her. If she ever realized that Julie and I were communicating, she’d probably disappear with the girl just to spite me. I’d wind up never hearing from Julie again.”
Hailey ached for him and the pain she knew he had to be going through.
“Maura can’t just take off like that,” Hailey said, trying to make him feel better. “You said she was married, right? Her husband has a job, doesn’t he?” she asked.
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