Chapter 3
Theo
Bloody hell.
Never, not for a single moment, did I think the woman standing beside me and asking me to try heroin was Rebecca, the wayward daughter.
I knew Rick and Jessie well. I’d met Bronwyn.
All three of them fair and blond and solid.
So, no, it never occurred to me that the tiny, coltlike girl beside me at that grave—dark brown hair, olive skin—would turn out to be the daughter I’d never met.
Exotic. It’s a word you’re no longer supposed to use, but it’s the only one that comes to mind.
Lush mouth, those eyes the color of a summer storm, a dense charcoal gray.
Which is the problem with women like her in a nutshell: even with your whole life in ruins, they’re capable of blinding you to everything else.
Capable of making you wax fucking poetic about their eye color as you walk into a funeral.
Capable of convincing you to kiss them at a grave.
Bloody hell.
This was not the way I wanted to meet the woman I now co-own a company with.
A company that is probably going to wind up filing for bankruptcy, given that the show intended to save us is no longer happening and Baby Makes Three, our primary competitor, is telling their millions of followers we are “cursed.”
“I just saw you walking back with Rebecca,” says Linda, Rick’s assistant. “Is she okay? I don’t know how she’s holding it together, but I’m scared she’s on the cusp of falling apart.”
I swallow. “From what Jessie said, she’s been on the cusp of falling apart for most of her life.”
It’s true, but there’s a sharp pinch of guilt as I say the words. The girl I just met was so lost and broken she’d have fallen into an open grave if I hadn’t grabbed her arm. It’s hardly the time to be punching down.
Linda shakes her head. “I’ve known her since she was small, and the real Rebecca is nothing like that. And she’s got a heart so big, you’d give her a pass even if she was.”
That just makes me feel worse.
Was it my fault, what just happened? I could have stopped it faster than I did, certainly. She was out of her mind with grief and for a few regrettable seconds, my brain shut off and I ignored that fact.
“I really like you, Theo,” Rick said during our last conversation, not an hour before he boarded that train, “but I hope to God neither of my girls ever brings you home.”
And I kissed his daughter. At his funeral.
Bloody hell.