Chapter Three
“What’s he like?”
Cassidy should have expected the question. She’d given Emily the basic explanation of why she was being picked up from school, but the details? A description of the man? That was harder to explain. Pushy, aggressive, and thoughtless. Tempting, but not something a child should hear her aunt say about her father. She cast her mind back over their interaction. “Handsome,” she said.
Not her type, of course. Too polished, too smooth. But the man underneath the suit? Well. It was best not to think too much about that. “He’s very rich, I think.” She’d done enough research to know she was understating the man’s finances, but she was okay with that. Let Emily figure it out for herself, in due course. “It was family money to begin with, Google tells me, but he made quite a bit more for himself.”
Emily frowned, as if the concept of “family money” was as incomprehensible to her as it was to Cassidy, and Cassidy tried to sound more casual as she added, “I mean, he’s rich enough to pay for all the lawyers, obviously.”
They pulled into the alley behind the diner and Cassidy turned the truck’s engine off. Parking back there meant the truck would be in the way of deliveries, but today she didn’t much care. “Look, I’m sorry all this is happening so fast. If you want him to go away and leave you alone, I’ll try to make that happen. But—” She couldn’t believe she was doing this. “He is your father. I haven’t seen the test results yet, but I can’t see why he’d lie about them.”
“Was he nice?”
“Uh, well…that’s hard to say. We didn’t spend much time together. I’m not sure.”
Emily squinted at her. “You didn’t like him?”
Damn it. “I didn’t really get a chance to get to know him. We only talked for a minute or two, and then Deanna showed up. And we were both pretty tense. Probably neither of us were at our best.” She should get some sort of super-aunt medal for that kind of diplomacy.
“So you didn’t like him right then, but you might like him if you got to know him.”
The “might” seemed safe enough, so Cassidy nodded a cautious agreement and then pushed the truck door open. “You can be prep cook today, okay? You can stay in the back as long as you want, and if you do come out and people are asking questions you don’t want to answer, or if he shows up and you aren’t ready to talk to him, you can jump into the back room again.”
“Couldn’t he just follow me back there?”
“I have a lot of knives by the counter. He won’t follow you anywhere you don’t want him to.”
“I haven’t even met him yet. Don’t stab him until I get to know him.”
“No promises.” Cassidy unlocked the diner’s back door and gave it the hip check it always seemed to need these days before it would swing open. “Next step is yours, honey. You figure out if you’re ready to meet him, and how you want to do it, and I’ll set it up. Okay?”
“Yeah.” Emily dropped her school bag behind the door and lifted her apron off the hook. “But for now, can we make something good for the dinner menu? If I’m here all day, that’s extra time, right? So we can make something extra good?”
“Why are you being vague about it? Why don’t you just say, ‘Aunt Cassidy, I want to make enchiladas for dinner?’”
Emily grinned. “I guess I don’t have to say it if you already know.”
Cassidy resisted the urge to ruffle the girl’s hair. “Check if we have the ingredients. I think we’re okay, but be sure before you start mixing things.”
“Yeah,” Emily said. “Sometimes when you start something in motion, you can’t stop it.”
Cassidy was happy to have her own face covered for a moment while she pulled her apron over her head. “I’m really sorry I didn’t check with you first.”
The hug was more like a tackle, quick and fierce. Emily’s arms wrapped tight around Cassidy’s as the girl said, “You were trying to protect me. I know that. You wanted to get the facts before you got me excited.”
“And now?” Cassidy asked as she bent her arms and tried to at least pat Emily’s back, since she couldn’t get loose enough to return the hug. “Are you excited, or do you wish I’d just left it all alone?”
“I’m nervous.” Emily let go and took a half step backward. “But I’m excited, too. I want to meet him. I just want to know.” She looked thoughtful. “As soon as possible, I think. I mean, there’s no point in putting it off now, is there? We’re not waiting for new information or anything?”
“No. We’re just waiting for you to be comfortable with it.”
“I think I’m as comfortable as I’ll ever be. It’ll just turn into a bigger deal if we wait.”
“Okay.” Cassidy pulled the lawyer’s card out from the pocket of her jeans. “I’m calling,” she said, and Emily’s eyes got wider but she nodded. Cassidy dialed, the lawyer answered by saying his full name the way business people did on TV, and Cassidy said, “It’s Cassidy Frost. I’d like to set up a meeting for Emily and Mr. Connelly. Just Mr. Connelly, not him and a team of lawyers.”
“And you,” Emily stage whispered, and Cassidy nodded her agreement. No way was she leaving Emily alone with that man.
“He’ll need to bring the paperwork with him,” she added. “The test results. We’ll want to look at those.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the lawyer said, still far too smooth for Cassidy’s comfort. “What time is good for you?”
Cassidy tried to think. It was tempting to just close the diner for the day and get this taken care of, but there were hospital bills on top of the regular bills, a roof that needed replacing, people and animals to feed—she really couldn’t afford to lose the income. “This afternoon around two thirty,” she finally said. “At the house. Do you have the address?”
“We do,” the lawyer replied, his tone somehow making her believe that they knew a hell of a lot more about her and Emily than just their address. “This afternoon, two thirty, at your residence. Mr. Connelly will bring the paperwork.”
Cassidy realized that the lawyer was repeating the words for someone else’s benefit, not her own. Connelly was in the room with him, hearing what he said, and apparently agreeing to it. That made it all feel more real than she wanted it to. “Okay. I’ll see him then,” she said, and ended the call. She needed to be the calm one, she reminded herself.
“Nix the enchiladas. We’ll make something simpler so we can skip out for a while,” she told Emily, and made herself smile.
She was ready for the tackle-hug this time and got her arms up so she could hug back. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered into Emily’s hair. “We’ll make it work.”
Now she just needed to make herself believe it.
…
The house reminded Will of the diner. Small, clean, but a bit ragged. It was set well back off the road, and there was a shed with a fenced area beside the driveway. A nondescript brown horse stood there, watching him approach, and beside the horse stood a goat, also watching. Neither of them looked too impressed with his presence.
And neither did the woman standing on the front porch waiting for him. He found himself a little impressed by her, though. In the newspaper photograph, and even in the diner, somewhat, Cassidy’s lack of style had made her seem plain. She hadn’t done anything to augment herself, and it gave the impression that there was nothing to work with. Here, though, with the forest and the trees and the clear country air, she didn’t seem to lack a damn thing. She had a natural look because she was part of nature.
Just like a mother bear is part of nature, he reminded himself, and he approached her slowly, trying to look non-threatening. It wasn’t that he was afraid of her, of course, but he needed her to not fight him. He needed her to be on his side.
“Thanks for inviting me into your home,” he said when he was close enough.
She nodded cautiously, then stepped off the porch toward him. “We need to have some ground rules,” she said, “so Emily will feel comfortable. That’s the priority here, right? For both of us?”
“Absolutely. I’m sorry if I gave you reason to doubt that before. I am absolutely here to do what’s best for Emily.”
She didn’t look totally convinced, but she nodded. “Okay. We’ll go inside and sit down, and you two can chat a little. If I decide she’s had enough, I’ll say the meeting’s over, and it will be over. Not because I’m power-tripping but because I know her better than you do, so I’ll have a better idea of when she needs a break.”
“Okay,” he said. It wasn’t that hard of a decision. He liked to be in control of things, but deciding to trust experts was the best way to stay in control. He listened to his legal, scientific, and business advisors all the time. Today, he’d listen to his mother-bear advisor.
“And I need to see the test results before we go anywhere,” she said firmly. He handed her the envelope, and she flipped through the pages, and then almost whispered, “I have no idea what I’m looking for.”
He eased around so he could read over her shoulder, trying not to notice the smell of her shampoo or the tantalizing neck close enough to kiss. “Third page,” he said. “There, at the bottom.”
She was quiet for a moment, then nodded and thrust the pages back toward him.
“We can get another test if you want,” he offered. He wanted this to be clean, and he was surprised to realize he wanted her to like him. Not only for strategic reasons but because—well, just because. “Obviously this was a pretty irregular way to do the testing. We might want a more controlled setting. I guess I could have faked this, if I’d really wanted to.”
“Why would you want to, though?” She shook her head. “This is what I hoped for.” It sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “I wanted Em to have another adult in her life, someone she could count on. So this is good. This is good for Emily.”
He felt like there was something else he should say, something about trying to make sure it wasn’t bad for her, either, but while he was trying to find the best way to phrase the sentiment, she turned and started up the steps. After a moment’s hesitation, he followed her.
He was about to meet his daughter. Thirteen years old. Thirteen years without a father. Every milestone he’d missed, she’d missed something, too. Not as much as him, but still, something. Having her father there to watch her take her first steps, speak her first words, go to her first dance recital or horse show or whatever the hell it was she did. They’d both missed all that.
He was damn well going to make sure they didn’t miss anything else.