Five
Linc
I was smoking a fucking cigarette. Leaning against the hood of my F-150, I inhaled deeply in hopes that something would help take away the tension radiating through my body. My eyes stayed locked on the second floor of the motel, not taking them off the door that read 210. I didn’t trust the woman. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights and ready to take off running. Which didn’t make me feel better. It only heightened the dread slowly working its way through my veins.
She might not know who the father was, but it was clear in those eyes of hers. What the fuck color were they? Jade? Was that even an eye color? You sure as hell couldn’t call them green. That was too basic of a description. Something about them tugged at a memory that seemed to be dangling just out of my reach.
Scowling, I pulled more of the poison into my lungs. It wasn’t like I hadn’t pulled up that face hundreds of times since the night we’d fucked. My memory just hadn’t been doing her justice. Which I thought had been impossible. Until yesterday, I’d assumed the opium high had created that perfect face in my memory. But fucking nope. She was even better than the fantasy.
None of that mattered. If the kid was mine, that meant she’d not taken the pill I’d left for her, knowing she had no way of ever contacting me if she was pregnant. I’d been used.
I took the cigarette from my mouth before I bit off the tip. Fuck! What was I going to do if that little girl was mine? Letting her walk away with my daughter and allowing some other man to raise her would be best for her. That had been her plan after all. The marriage certificate had led her to me, and she hadn’t come to tell me I had a kid. She’d just come for the divorce. So, she was guilty of not only having my kid, but also keeping her from me.
The silver Mercedes sedan pulled up beside my truck, and I dropped the cigarette to the concrete before covering it with the toe of my boot. Burl was here. The urge to send him away and let this go was there. But I’d not be able to get it out of my head. I’d think about the kid. Guilt would creep in, and it would eat me alive. I had to fucking know.
Dr. Burl stepped out of his luxury vehicle, and his gaze swung to mine. I hadn’t given him any information other than I needed a paternity test. In the past, I’d had to call him to do this for one of the guys, but not me. This was going to be a first.
“Morning,” Burl said, tipping his cowboy hat back on his head.
He looked like he had been down at his stables. His worn jeans were dusty, as were his boots. Unlike the family, Burl didn’t have a stable full of thoroughbreds that he bred and raced. He had quarter horses and a couple of Tennessee Walkers. His wife had once been a champion barrel racer and now taught riding lessons.
“Are we testing a baby or a kid?” he asked me.
I glanced up at the door. “Four-year-old girl.”
“And, uh…” He cleared his throat. “Which one of the guys do I need to swab?” The hesitancy in his voice gave away his unease at having to ask me that.
I cut my eyes back to him. “Me.”
The flicker of surprise was gone as quickly as it had come. He was a master at shutting down his expression and masking his thoughts around us. “Okay. Then, we can go ahead and swab your cheek before we go to the room.”
He set his small case down on the hood of the truck then reached into it. When he turned back to me with the sterile cotton swab, I opened my mouth so that he could rub the tip inside my cheek several times. I’d never had to do this since fucking without wrapping my dick up was something I didn’t do. My one exception with the blonde goddess, who I’d fucked like a damn dog in heat, had brought me to this.
There had been two condoms on the floor that morning—the only ones that had been in my pocket—which I tossed in the trash. I walked away, knowing that the memory of her tight, hot, wet pussy as I had taken her raw wasn’t a hallucination since we had fucked many times. Not just twice. Yet I told myself that she was most likely on birth control. If she hadn’t been, she’d have said something.
I’d gone to the nearest pharmacy and gotten the morning-after pill, just to be safe. Covered all the bases.
When Burl had the swab in its container, he put it in the case, then closed it. “The child’s mother is with her?” he asked.
Legally, the mother had to be with her, but Burl knew I didn’t care about legalities. He was paid well to overlook the times he was asked to break a law.
I nodded. “Yeah. She’s expecting us.”
I started toward the stairs, and he fell into step beside me.
“You think this is another female looking for money?” he asked.
I fucking wished. I shook my head. “No. I’m the one demanding it.”
“Oh.”
The startled sound in that one word wasn’t lost on me.
We climbed the stairs in silence, and the closer I got to the door, the more the foreboding squeezed my chest. I didn’t have to do this. I could sign the fucking divorce papers and let them walk. My lawyers had verified that they were in fact legal. They suggested that I file a petition for an annulment since we never lived together and the marriage wasn’t valid. If not, then they needed to prepare paperwork for her to sign, stating she gave up all rights to my assets and money.
Before a decision was made on that, I needed to know if the kid was mine. Because if she was, it would change things. I might not have wanted another kid, but if I had one, I would support her. Even if her mother didn’t want my money, she’d goddamn take it. Another man wasn’t going to financially support what belonged to me.
Burl didn’t ask any more questions, but then he never did. He didn’t pry; he only knew what we shared with him. He wanted it that way too. The less he knew about the workings inside the family, the better. He handled all our medical needs that we didn’t want taken to the hospital, as well as being available for things such as this. Making house calls for our convenience.
I rapped my knuckles against the door. There seemed to be a struggle on the other side with unlocking it, and I glowered as I waited. When the door eased open, Branwen wasn’t standing there. My eyes dropped to see blue eyes staring up at me, along with a big grin, causing dimples in her cheeks. There was a sprinkling of freckles over her nose that I hadn’t noticed yesterday.
“Hello.” She paused and scrunched her nose. “Mommy is in the bathwoom.”
Burl cleared his throat behind me, masking a chuckle.
The kid was fucking cute. She was going to be a beauty, like her momma. The unease that she might be mine and the males in her future rattled me. I hadn’t thought about that. What if I had a daughter? Especially one who was going to grow up to look like her mother. Fuck. I’d end up murdering teenage boys with my bare hands.
“I’m watching SpongeBob ,” she informed me. “And I don’t nawmally get to watch that show. Mommy says it’s wude and ’noxious.” Her eyes were big and round as she shared that information with me. “But theah isn’t anything else for me to watch.”
She couldn’t say her r ’s.
She turned her gaze to Burl. “Who awah you?”
“He’s a friend of mine. A doctor, and he just needs to swab the inside of your cheek,” I told her.
She tilted her tiny body as she peered around me, trying to get a better look at Burl. Her smile had dropped immediately when I said the word doctor . Her brows puckered. “You don’t look like a doctow,” she told him. “You look like a cowboy.”
This time, Burl did laugh.
The door to the bathroom opened, and my eyes swung up from the kid to the woman walking out. Long legs, the perfect flare to her hips, narrow waist, and tits. Jesus Christ, the set of tits on her. Then, all those pale blonde locks draped over her bare shoulders, curling just over her cleavage. My hands were clenched so tightly that I could feel my short nails biting into my palms. It seemed my cock didn’t care that she might have lied and intended to keep a child she’d had without my knowledge from me. It just wanted to fuck her again.
“Vivi Lu!” she called out. “You know better than to open a door without me.”
The little girl spun around so fast that her blonde curls floated around her head. “But we awn’t at home. We awe at a motel,” she explained as if that made all the difference.
Branwen placed a hand on her hip, and I fought the urge to look at the small sliver of flat, tanned stomach that the shirt she was wearing flashed. The hem didn’t quite meet the waist of her blue linen shorts. “That rule goes for wherever we are. It’s dangerous. Someone bad could be on the other side and snatch you.”
I liked that she wasn’t sugarcoating it. The kid was too fucking adorable for her own good. She needed to be aware that she couldn’t trust people.
“I’m sowwy, Mommy.” She sounded remorseful. “But it wasn’t a bad guy. It was just Mista Outlaw, and he bwought a doctow that looks like a cowboy.”
Branwen’s light-green eyes lifted to me. I wondered if they would be so damn striking without that dark rim around the pale jade color. Why was I thinking about this? It didn’t fucking matter.
I tore my eyes off her and stepped inside so that Burl could follow me.
“This is Dr. Burl,” I told her, closing the door behind him.
When I didn’t say more, Burl moved farther into the room.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I heard him say.
“Uh, yes, I’m, uh, Branwen Hester, and this is my daughter, Stevie,” she replied. Her voice reminded me of a smooth, expensive whiskey.
Her last name was bothering me. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. When I had read it on the marriage certificate yesterday, I’d paused and tried to think of where I had heard it before. Not that it mattered. Highly unlikely the two were connected. It was just a surname.
“What is a swab?” Stevie demanded.
I smirked at the way her expression suddenly looked fierce.
“It won’t hurt,” her mother quickly informed her, bending her knees and lowering herself until her eyes were level with her daughter’s. She took the girl’s hands in hers. “I promise. This is quick and easy. When it’s over, we can go back to the park we found yesterday. Have another picnic and feed the ducks.”
The little girl looked from her mother back to Burl. “But I’m not sick. Why is a doctow hewah?”
The pink tip of Branwen’s tongue came out and licked her lips quickly, and she took a deep breath. I assumed she was trying to think up a lie to tell the kid.
“You’re right. You aren’t sick. But…” She paused, and the fear in her eyes gave away shit that only made me question this.
I could stop it. Let them go and forget about all of it. Sign the fucking papers. Never know.
There was only one reason she would be scared. And that reason would change my life. Immediately. It would change theirs too. If I let it. That was up to me. Branwen had already made it clear that she had no problem not knowing who the father of her child was. That, or she knew and wanted to keep it a secret.
It was going to shock the hell out of me if the kid was mine, and she knew it. Coming here and not demanding money from me once she had my name and could track me down wouldn’t make sense. Unless this was about the fiancé. He might be rich. I hadn’t taken the time to read the full background check that Wilder had pulled on Branwen. I got as far as the girl’s birth date and did some math. That was the main reason I’d wanted this test. The date of conception was spot-on with the time we’d fucked.
“It’s a test to see if you have more family. If there is someone else who might want to be a part of your life. Or just know about you.” Branwen’s eyes flickered to me briefly, then back to her daughter.
“I got mowah family than you and Hudson?” she asked, her voice going up an octave.
Hudson wasn’t her family. Not yet. Annoyance hit me—that her mother had let her think that he was her family—and I had to unclench my teeth and force myself to calm down. This kid might not be mine. That man was going to be her future stepfather. I had no reason to get pissed off because she thought that he was family.
Branwen bit her bottom lip. “Yes, baby, you do. Family that I couldn’t find before now.”
I held my breath as I narrowed my gaze. My eyes locked on her, as if I could draw out the fucking truth myself. That response sounded an awful lot like she knew who the kid’s father was and had looked for him. For me.
“Let’s get this over with,” I barked.
The little girl jumped, startled by my sharp demand, and her eyes swung up to my face. She studied me through her thick lashes. I rubbed my jaw, wishing I hadn’t been so damn harsh. But, fuck, I wanted to get this done. I was tired of all the what-ifs.
“You got tattoos on youwah fingaws,” she stated, studying my hand.
I dropped it back to my side. “Yeah, I do.”
She pulled her hands free of her mother’s and walked over to me, her attention captured by what she’d seen. “Mommy has a tattoo, but Hudson don’t like it. He said tattoos awah twashy and she’s gonna get hewahs taken off.”
My gaze lifted from the girl to see Branwen looking slightly pale as she stood back up. The tight smile she gave me didn’t meet her eyes.
“Let’s not talk about tattoos, Vivi Lu, okay? Let’s just get this swab done so we can go to the park.”
A faint memory of a tattoo on her body came back to me. It had been on her hip bone. I was pretty sure I’d licked it on my way to eat her pussy. What was it?
“But, Mommy, he’s got thwee fingaws tattooed. I just want to see them.”
Her tone sounded so damn pleading that I found myself fisting my hands so she could see the three tattoos on my fingers. She didn’t ask her mother as she quickly made her way closer to me to look at my ink.
“You like the lettah A?” she asked me, lifting her eyes up to my face.
My lips quirked. “I like those a ’s,” I replied. “That’s the ace of spades, ace of diamonds, and ace of clubs,” I told her. Then, I opened my hand and turned it over. The back of my ring finger was the last one. “And that’s the ace of hearts.”
Her eyes widened as she peered at it. “You got fowah on your hand,” she said in awe. Then, her eyes went to my arms. “Awah those chains around youwah awms?”
I nodded. “That they are. Reckon Hudson would think I’m the king of trashy.”
Her eyes darted back up to me, and I winked at her. A small giggle escaped her, and she covered her mouth, then nodded her head in agreement. I almost told her I had more, but then I figured the little curious beauty would want to see those, too, and I didn’t think taking off my shirt would be the appropriate thing to do.
Burl coughed, and I glanced over at him. The we need to do this look in his eyes reminded me why we were here.
I nodded at him to proceed.
He walked over to Stevie and dropped down to his haunches. “All right. I just need to stick this swab in your mouth and rub the inside of your cheek with it. That’s all. You open wide, and it won’t hurt a bit.”
She nodded, then gave him a serious frown. “You pwomise you won’t wub my thwaot with that thing? ’Cause that makes me thwow up and cwy. Don’t it, Mommy?” she said, looking back at her mother for confirmation.
Branwen smiled at her daughter. “Yes, but you aren’t getting tested for strep throat. This will not make you cry.”
“Or thwow up?” she pressed.
The kid was sharp. She was making sure she wasn’t being tricked. I smirked.
“Or throw up,” her mother assured her.
The girl seemed appeased with that and turned to Burl, then opened her mouth wide. I watched as a million fucking things went through my mind, like a herd of cattle stampeding out of control. She could be my kid. I’d know soon. What would I do with that? Just give her mom money? Did I want to know her? Have her in my life? Did I want to be a dad to her, or was this Hudson guy better? No. If she was mine, I didn’t think I could let some other man take my place. Even if he was a better choice. I blinked, then jerked my eyes off the kid as weird shit I wasn’t familiar with hit me in the chest.
“I’ll get this to the lab, and you should know within the next two hours,” Burl informed us both.
He looked at me for further instruction or permission to leave. My singular nod was all he needed. He smiled once more at Branwen and Stevie before heading for the door. I waited until it closed behind him to look at Branwen.
“I’ll let you know, and we can proceed from there,” I told her.
She didn’t ask anything more. “Okay.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Turning, I exited the small space, needing something more than a cigarette. I needed an entire fifth of whiskey.