Chapter 3
Chapter Three
G abe opened his townhouse door Friday morning to find a woman standing there, her hand raised as if to pull the knocker.
In the nine years he’d been living there, he’d opened the door to many people. After the funeral, there’d been a procession of family members and friends with casseroles and takeout. Occasionally, there’d been dates and girlfriends. Regularly, delivery people. But not once had he opened the door to a stranger as breathtaking as this.
He stood there, blinking like he’d been hit in the face. By a fairy princess. With cascading golden hair that skewed to reddish like a winter sunrise and long-lashed sky-blue eyes, she was almost too beautiful to be real.
She blinked those big eyes twice, tangling the lashes, and then stuck out her hand. “I’m Sunny.”
“Of course you are.” Shit, what’d he said? He shook the loose bolts out of his sleep-deprived brain. “I mean, good morning.” He shook her hand. Had he forgotten an appointment?
“You’re Gabe, right?” she asked. Her hand was so small, so soft in his meaty one. He gentled his grip.
“Yes.” Was she one of the Beach Island performers?
“We talked on the phone yesterday. About your family.”
What the hell? He yanked his hand out of hers like she’d electrocuted him. That voice. He knew it. She was the reason he’d tossed and turned all night. That he felt like a stranger in his own skin. That he’d almost called in sick today because he was a fraud to be going to Beach Island. Like he belonged there.
“Hang on.” She held her delicate hands out in front of her, palms out. “I—I know this must be weird for you.”
“Weird?” His voice rose, louder than he’d intended. “You told me I wasn’t who I thought I was. And now you show up on my doorstep? Am I being punked?” God, he hoped he was. That a camera crew would jump out of his bushes to tell him, Just kidding. You really are an Armstrong and CEO of Beach Island.
When nothing like that happened, only silence and the calm gaze of those blue eyes, he edged back toward the threshold. Those DN-YAY commercials had said nothing about doorstep service. It’d all seemed so impersonal, swabbing his cheek and tossing it into a postage-paid envelope he’d later dropped into a blue mailbox. Nothing had prepared him for this beautiful demon to flip over his equilibrium like a pretzel loop.
“No, it’s just me,” she said. “I wanted to give you this.” She held out a couple of printed pages.
Gabe took another step back. If he took them, it’d be real. With enough work and enough bourbon, he could forget yesterday’s phone call. But he couldn’t ignore black-and-white facts. Proof, maybe.
“I don’t want it.” He put his hands up, a barrier against the papers. “I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“It’s your family.” She shook the pages. “Maybe they’re looking for you.”
A sharp pain erupted in his chest. “I’m thirty years old. Don’t you think if they wanted to find me, they would’ve by now?” That was the torturous thought that’d kept him up. If what this woman said was true, there was at least one person who knew it: his biological mother. Clearly, she hadn’t wanted him then. And if she’d changed her mind later, she’d have turned up by now.
“I—I don’t know much about it. About adoption. But I have information now that’ll help you find them. Don’t you want it?”
His body was a block of ice. And not from the January cold outside. “No. I don’t.” He backed into his foyer and shut the door in her fairy-princess face. He strode as far away as the small place allowed, into the kitchen, where he pulled out a stool and collapsed onto it. He scrubbed his hands over his face like he could erase the imprint of Sunny and her words.
In the machine shop yesterday, with the scent of sweat and grease in the air and work that required his full attention, he’d almost forgotten the bomb she’d dropped onto his life. But when he’d come home to his solitary townhouse, her words had echoed in his brain.
You have two brothers and a sister, all still living. You can meet them.
Did he believe her? If so, did he want to meet this other family, the one who’d given him away? Brandon had been almost like a brother to him. Wasn’t the family he knew enough?
But was the family he knew even his? Was what his parents had left him—Beach Island—his to inherit? His to manage? No one had ever said anything to him to hint that he wasn’t really an Armstrong. Not his parents, not his aunts or uncles, not his grandparents. Surely they’d have told him if he wasn’t one of them.
He glanced at the cabinet over the fridge where he kept the whiskey. Then at the clock on the range. Eight a.m. A workday, and he was late.
If he believed he belonged with the Armstrongs, he’d go to work. Sign off on payroll. Review the summer job applications. Do the work that needed to be done to keep the family business running, to keep everyone employed, the way everyone expected him to do.
He was responsible for Beach Island and its two hundred sixteen full-time employees, plus the four thousand seasonal people he needed to hire by May first. He had to focus on that, not on DN-YAY and this person who’d inexplicably brought the world-upending news to his doorstep.
He glanced at the clock again. Seven minutes after eight. She had to have left by now. He grabbed his keys, shouldered his satchel again, and trudged back to the front door. He expanded his chest and opened the door.
To find her still standing there, shivering. “H-hi, Gabe.”