As I pounded the miles out on the treadmill, I think about what today will bring. This day has been years in the making and to say I’m excited about it would be an understatement. I’ve been looking for her for the last three years and I finally found her.
Smart of her mother to legally change her name before she died, making it harder for me to find her. Not that I would ever be a danger to her. No, I was tasked with finding her and arranging a way for her to meet her estranged father.
After finishing up on the treadmill, I grabbed a towel off the rack and began wiping the sweat off my body, all the while thinking about the beautiful picture that graced my desk two weeks ago. The moment I saw her, I knew that she would be mine. Her eyes, the color of the ocean on a sunny day, brown wavy shoulder length hair, her plump full lips, and a small, curvy body that can bring a man to his knees. I’m groaned aloud for the sexy woman I haven’t even met yet.
How could this siren garner my full attention when we haven’t been in the same room, let alone spoke a single word to one another?
Today, is the day that we start the process of integrating her into the company. Maddie Johnson will learn she is wealthy beyond reason, being the sole heir to the largest media company in the country and gaining control of her investments on her 21st birthday,
Maddie is soon to find out that she will never have to struggle again. I learned that she grew up with her mother’s best friend and her family in a small town about an hour and a half south of Atlanta. Sara was smart and planned ahead after Jason’s final rejection.
Only, she died before Jason was able to tell her the truth and to right his wrongs. When he got confirmation Sara was gone, he locked a part of himself away.
Yes, I know all about that fateful evening when Jason threw his own child out into the world alone. I also know that Jason had reasons to abandon his family. Reasons that seem impractical now, but at the time, were very serious.
The dossier said she is a recent graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business. Hopefully, she is as smart as her father and can handle the deep waters she will be expected to swim in.
I know she will fight this, but in the end, she has no choice. Jason made sure that she would be taken care of, long after he was gone. She can try to turn down her rightful place, but the money will still be hers, no matter what she decides.
I walked up the stairs from my basement and started the coffee pot brewing. As I stood at the kitchen island, I looked over Maddie’s file again.
I stared at her picture and I swear I feel my heart beating out of my chest as I stare into her eyes. They are expressive and full of life, even in a 2-dimensional photo.
When I first laid eyes on her picture, I felt a piece of my soul shift into place. My being yearned to hold her. Kiss her. Love her.
“Happy Birthday Maddie. I hope you’re ready for life as you know it to change” I spoke directly to the photo, stroking her face with my finger, willing it to speak back to me.
After I poured my coffee, I grabbed my phone and made a call to the one person who is more excited about Maddie being located than I am.
“Tell me you finally have some solid information for me” Jason growled into the phone. “Today’s her birthday and I’ve waited a long time to correct my mistakes with my daughter, I’m tired of no news.”
“Good Moring to you too, Jason. And yes, I found her. I was waiting to call you until I had the chance to go over all the reports,” I said to him, keeping my voice flat and professional.
“You found her! Where is she? What is she doing? Where the hell has she been?” Jason fired off questions without giving me time to answer.
“Jason, please calm down and I’ll explain everything. I’d hoped we could meet for coffee in about an hour so we could go over her file together, but if you want to know now, I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me now and I’ll still meet you in an hour. I want to know all about her. I need to meet her, Lucas. I need to make this right with her. She thinks I never wanted her or her mother, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Everything I did was for them.”
“Relax. I know the entire story of what happen. You’ve told me a couple of times, remember? Jason, look, are you sure that you want to do this? From all that I’ve learned, she has had a fairly simple life, living with her mother’s friend.”
“Sara. Her mother’s name was Sara.” Jason growled into the phone.
“I know her name. I was just trying to say…look, I’ll give you the basics and then we can have coffee to go over the rest.” Using my calmest voice, I tried to give Jason time to settle down.
“Okay, the basics then coffee in an hour. Let’s hear it.” he impatiently huffed.
“Her name is Maddie Johnson, age twenty-one, recent graduate of the University of Georgia School of Business where she graduated the top of her class. She finished her degree in two and a half years instead of the usual four. Apparently, she took college classes while enrolled in high school, allowing her to graduate just shy of her twenty first birthday. She lives with her best friend Caroline Johnson, daughter of Sara’s friend Lisa, in an apartment in downtown Atlanta. Caroline and Maddie are constant companions. They started and graduated college at the same time, they work at the same bar in downtown Atlanta, and she currently is single.”
I said the last part more for myself than him. It’s the only thing that calms me is to know there isn’t anyone else touching what is mine.
“Johnson? Her last name is Johnson? How?” shock evident in his voice.
“Sara had her name legally changed before she died and she wanted Lisa and her husband to adopt Maddie. They went to the courts before she passed and a judge signed off on it.” I delicately explained to him. This was why he could never find her even though he has been looking for over ten years.
“But, I was listed as the father on the birth certificate. Sara would have needed my signature to allow her to be adopted.” He asked, choking on emotion.
“Sara had her birth certificate amended and had you removed as the father. The judge agreed that since you had been absent since Maddie was three days old and after…well… that night, he saw no reason to leave you listed as her father. He saw the medical reports about Sara’s illness, Lisa desire to adopt Maddie, and your denial of her so he had the certificate amended. You were removed as father and then Sara passed away.”
I could hear the uptake of breath and knew that the news I’d just delivered was tearing him apart. He’d wanted nothing more than to go after them, to be a father to Maddie and a husband to Sara, but had to push them away, reject them, to keep them safe. He never had the chance to tell Sara how he really felt about her.
“Listen, let me get showered and we’ll meet. There is so much more that you don’t know and I want you to have the chance to look over everything before we try and make contact with her.”
“Fine, I’ll meet you at the Perk Spot on Peachtree in forty-five minutes.” He said before the phone disconnected.
I looked down at the phone and realized, that my life was about to change too. No more work trips around the country. No more anonymous one-night stands. No more being alone. Maddie was about to have her entire world upended, and I planned on being there to hold her through everything. She will be mine.