Chapter 15
Kyle’s heart stabbed. Stabbed again. Was this what a heart attack felt like? He looked at the girl more closely. Recognized the hair. Saw the same eyes that stared at him in the mirror studying him.
No. No. No. This couldn’t be—
It was insane to think that—
No.
He swallowed. Swallowed again, desperate to find moisture enough to speak. “Gen?”
She looked at him, eyes wide in shock. In fear. In acknowledgment of her deception.
Pain, betrayal, anger swept across him in strong waves.
She couldn’t have—
Surely she would’ve said—
Why?
“Who is this?” he rasped. He had to make sure, even though the confirmation was also staring at him. His mini-me.
Gen moistened her bottom lip. “I…”
He felt sick. How could he have wanted to kiss her and she’d kept this secret from him?
“Mommy?”
His heart stabbed again. Gen’s daughter. And from all appearances, his daughter, too. He blinked. “What’s your name?”
The girl looked at Gen but Gen seemed struck dumb, unable to answer. So the girl eyed him. “Bella.”
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
Gen reached for him, but he shifted away. “Kyle… I’m so sorry. Please, come in. Let me explain.”
He eyed Gen, the woman he had long thought was completely honest and upfront. More fool him. “Do I even know you?”
“Are you my mom’s ex-boyfriend?”
“Wow.” So Gen had told Bella about him but hadn’t managed to tell him about her. Unbelievable. He nodded, trying to not take his resentment out on Gen’s daughter. His daughter?
He thrust out a hand. “Hi. I’m…” pretty sure I’m your father. He swallowed those words. “Kyle.”
Bella eyed his hand doubtfully, then briefly touched her palm to his.
His daughter. His daughter. Why had Gen never said anything? Anger flared. His gaze shifted to Gen, his eyes narrowing. And maybe she recognized his anger because she seemed to shrink.
“Please. We can talk about this inside.” Gen glanced around, as if wanting to avoid being the subject of the neighbors’ speculation.
Well, too bad. After Minnie had left earlier, he’d had quite an interesting chat to Marco, the sports fan across the street, and discovered all kinds of things.
Like the fact the trio of Rivas females kept to themselves. That they’d lived here for five years. That both women worked hard, for long hours. Which meant that occasionally, during school vacation, the kid was left by herself during the day.
Anger had flared. “Who leaves a kid for hours alone?” Wasn’t that illegal?
“I keep an eye on her,” Marco volunteered. “We all do. Bella is pretty smart. Never any trouble.”
He’d had to bite his tongue, sure his shock was going to make him say something unwise.
He’d left Marco wondering aloud about just which hockey player he might look like, and returned to his car, waiting, as every second his doubts tangled with his fears. Fears that now were fully realized.
He followed Bella and Gen inside, and just as it looked from outside, so it continued its aged seventies feel inside. It was clean, tidy, but worn holes in the carpet and a taped-over window crack suggested that there wasn’t much spare money.
Was this what Gen had meant when she talked about her mother sacrificing so much for her? Suddenly it all made so much more sense.
Gen waved him to the living area, and he lowered himself into an ancient sofa that was about a million times the opposite of his apartment’s leather couch.
He was pretty sure a spring had poked him in the butt.
He shifted, eliciting a squeak, his gaze falling to those flowers he’d delivered earlier.
It felt like a lifetime ago. A delivery made with hope-filled promise to a woman he obviously didn’t really know.
His gaze lifted to where Bella continued to stare at him seriously. She really was the perfect mix of both of them. Gen’s features, his eyes. Gen’s slightly olive-toned skin, his hair.
His gaze veered to Gen. “She’s—?” He lifted his brows.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Mom? What’s going on? Why is he here?”
“Um, Bella, honey, would you mind going to your room? I need to talk to your—to Kyle for a moment first.”
“Is he the one you and Grandma were arguing about this morning?”
Gen bit her lip, jerked her head.
He folded his arms, sank back against the hard vinyl. Well, at least Gen thought he was worth arguing about. He didn’t think Minnie Rivas would ever be on his side.
Bella bit her lip, in an action so like Gen’s he had to bite his own tongue to stop himself from pointing it out. This was crazy. He didn’t have the capacity to filter so much of what probably shouldn’t be said.
He waited until Bella left the room then raised his eyebrows at Gen again.
She stared back at him, her expression miserable. The opposite of last night when she’d wanted more.
“She’s definitely mine?”
She dipped her chin. “I’m so sorry. I know I should’ve said something. I tried to last night—”
“You didn’t try very hard, Gen,” he snapped. “Let’s see, you had ten years to tell me. Ten”—he bit back a swear word—“freakin’ years.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Suddenly he couldn’t stay seated anymore.
He needed to move. Pace. Do something. Otherwise all the anger-fueled adrenaline roaring around him would make him explode.
He shifted to the window. With Bella nearby he needed to control his volume, even though everything within him wanted to yell.
“I cannot believe you hid this from me, Gen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“‘Sorry’ really isn’t cutting it right now. You can’t just simply apologize for this.” He gripped his head with both hands. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’d gone away, and I didn’t want you to feel obliged to me in any way.”
“Are you”—expletive—“kidding me?” He stabbed a finger in the direction of where Bella had disappeared. “She’s my daughter, and you hid that from me. For ten years. I don’t know what to say.”
Gen’s hair had slipped from its ponytail to hide her face. Her bottom lip quivered.
He steeled his heart against her distress. She was the one who had made the mistake. She was the one who had lied to him.
He dragged his hands down his face, wishing he could rip aside the reality and still exist in last night’s bliss. How could so much have gone wrong in such a short time?
“When did you know?” he asked.
“Two months after graduation. I was getting ready to move for college, and you’d already gone.”
“Don’t you dare make this sound like it’s my fault. If I’d known…” He shook his head.
Her eyes narrowed. “If you’d known—what? What would you have done? Would you have given up your NHL career to get a job so you could care for our baby?”
Well, no. But, “Maybe.”
She snorted. “Get real. We both know you wouldn’t have.”
“But I could’ve sent you money. I could’ve supported you so you don’t need to live in a place like this.”
She stood too. “And what’s wrong with a place like this? We’ve got a roof, we have food, we get by.”
“But… but… No. This is not okay. It’s not what I ever wanted for you, let alone the daughter I never knew I had.”
“But you don’t have the right to tell me how I should be living. You’ve never had that right. And I know that you always had a problem with where Mom and I used to live in Willow Springs—”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You made it obvious every time you came around. You thought I lived in a dump. And you know what? Compared to your fancy houses and your amazing apartment, maybe this place is a dump. But it’s my dump. And I like it.”
He scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“How dare you?” she snapped. “How dare you sneer at what my mother has worked her butt off to provide?”
Her eyes sparkled with angry tears.
Remorse creased his soul at his careless words. “Look, nobody is denying she’s worked hard—”
“She gave up her life so that I could chase my dreams of being a doctor. She’s sacrificed everything to care for Bella and me. Don’t you get it? I owe her everything.”
He got it. Could see how Minnie Rivas had shaped Gen into utter dependence on her. That wasn’t an argument he was gonna win tonight.
He had to change tactic. “What does Bella know about me?”
“Nothing.”
“Apart from the fact that I’m your ex?”
“We only talked about that for the first time this morning. She overheard me and Mom arguing when Mom saw my irritated skin.”
Huh. He stared at her, saw the faint redness of her chin, realized just what Minnie must’ve thought. How horrified she must’ve been to know that Kyle was back in Gen’s life.
He shook his head. “I really don’t know what to say to you right now.”
“Please, I know I don’t have any right to ask, but I don’t want to tell Bella just yet. Not like this.”
“Tell me what, Mom?”
Gen blanched, and for a second compassion twisted past his rage. A tiny part of him could see how hard this was for her. Could even understand her rationale for not telling him. But that was quickly swamped by the cascades of heated frustration he was only just managing to keep a lid on.
Well, good luck to her. She’d need it. “I’m gonna go. But don’t for a second think that we’re finished here.”
Gen resumed her seat, sank her head into her hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. So am I.”
For this woman was not the one he’d thought he could spend forever with. She was not the woman he loved. This woman? He didn’t know her. At all.
* * *
“Mom?” Bella turned from watching Kyle’s exit out the front door. “Why were you yelling?”
Gen bit her lip. How long had she tried to model grown-up behavior then just spoiled it all by acting like a child?
“I’m sorry.” The word for today. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
“It’s okay.” Bella drew near and hugged her. “I don’t think I like him.”
“Kyle?” Bella’s golden head nodded. “You need to give him a chance.”
“Why?”
Ah, the million dollar question. Because he’s your father wouldn’t cut it. Not yet, anyway. And pleading for her daughter to have understanding for a man she hadn’t even known about until this morning was a little bit of a challenge.
“Sweetheart, just trust me on this.”
“Are we going to see him again? I hope not. Not if he makes you cry.”
“I’m not crying,” she insisted, even as she thumbed away some persistent leaky tears.
“Mom.” Bella encased her in a hug, which did release her tears, even though she tried to hold them back.
This was what she was afraid of losing. If Kyle, or more likely his parents, were to pay high-priced lawyers that enabled them to get their clutches on Bella and tore her from Gen, she’d never forgive herself. And after all her mother had endured, she was unlikely to forgive Gen either.
Oh, Mom could never find out who had visited today.
“Bella, can you please do me a favor? Grandma can’t know Kyle visited today. Not yet.”
“You want me to keep a secret?”
Gen nodded, even though this went against all she had trained her daughter to do. Secrets could be dangerous. But in this case it felt more dangerous if Mom knew. There was no telling what lengths she would go to in order to protect her only grandchild.
“It’s just for a little while, until I figure out what to do.”
Bella’s forehead wrinkled, but then she nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m so sorry about all of this, Bella.”
“Is he… is Kyle my father?”
Oh, she should’ve known her smart daughter would soon piece things together.
She had the choice to lie, or deflect. But there’d been too much of both lies and deflections for far too long. She swallowed, bracing herself for the inevitable fallout. “He is.”
Bella shifted away. “But… but you told me he wasn’t around.”
Had she? Or had Mom? It was hard to remember exactly what had been said. Regardless, “He wasn’t.”
“But he looked like he would’ve liked to be.”
Yeah. He had. Tears welled again.
What had she done depriving Kyle of the chance to know his daughter? He’d missed so many significant milestones, all because she’d let fear—and Mom—keep him away.
“Mom, is he going to take me away?”
“Of course not, Bella. You’ll always be safe with me.”
But Bella was shaking her head, her mistrust in Gen obvious. “I… don’t think so.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Mom, I’m scared.”
She wasn’t the only one. “Come here, sweetheart.”
Gen clutched Bella to her. “You don’t need to worry.” But as for herself…
What would happen now? What would Kyle do?
What would his parents do? Oh, she didn’t dare think about that.
As soon as Philippa Tinker found out she had a grandchild, she’d be likely to spin things one of two ways.
Either one, blaming Gen—justifiably so—just as her son had done for keeping Bella’s existence a secret.
Or two, blaming Gen for being so reckless and making her only son a father way before it was time and trapping him into responsibility he didn’t want.
Exactly what both Gen and her mother had feared.
Now it felt like the world she lived in was made of cards and the precarious tower she had built for herself was starting to tumble down. Just like she feared.
And the thought that she’d failed on so many fronts—she, who had tried for so long to keep it together—made her inner wail loud as silent tears dripped down her face.