Chapter 3
Brian
I sit in Ryker and Gray’s driveway, drumming my fingers on the wheel…trying to work up some courage to tell them about Lexi. And it pisses me off that this is remarkably hard to do. It shouldn’t have to be hard.
On the one hand, my life changed drastically the minute Lexi walked into my office. Nothing is going to be the same again. Not for me, and not for Gray. But on the other hand, I’m filled with this amazing euphoria that I’ve got another daughter. I barely know her, and yet my soul recognizes her as part of me, as corny as that sounds.
We spent a few hours together, and while sometimes the conversation was awkward, most times it wasn’t. I found Lexi to be bright, free-spirited, and funny. While she’s independent to a certain extent, you can tell she clearly craves deep connections with people. No doubt she’s been incredibly lonely since her mother died, and it’s clear that she’s hoping to develop a bond with her newfound family. I don’t think she considers me a replacement, but I do think she might see me as a potential comfort to her existence.
The one thing that I believe to the depths of my soul is that Lexi isn’t looking for any financial gain. To the contrary, she seems happy with her simple and modest life.
I was able to get a brief glimpse into it when she took me to The Grind, the coffeehouse where she works. I’d actually driven past it on a few occasions and had thought about going in a time or two, but I never seemed to have the time to stop.
We went in.
We had coffee.
We talked some more.
My daughter—at least I believe she’s my daughter—is nothing like me. And I mean that in a good way. She’s down-to-earth; the type of person who could strike up a conversation with just about anyone. I tend to be a bit more reserved, and that’s probably just due to the fact that I’ve always been a businessman first, and just a man second. But I watched Lexi talk to the customers—some of them she knew, others she didn’t—at the curved bar that serves all kinds of coffees and teas, and she was genuinely engaged with all of them. More important, they were engaged with her. Drawn to her, actually.
Lexi is hilarious and witty. She can crack out a joke or whip out a pun during the middle of a deep conversation. Yet when she listens to you, she really listens. I’m not sure I’ve ever told a joke in my life, and while she had me laughing quite a bit, I kept thinking that I don’t remember laughing like this before. It made me realize just how staid my life has become, all work and no play.
Finally, she’s a free spirit. She goes where her mood takes her. While she was incredibly close to her mother, I learned that she was sort of a vagabond-like traveler, having lived in several places across the country. In addition to her hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, which is where I knew her mother, she’s lived in Portland, Tucson, Little Rock, Nashville, and Pittsburgh. She’s always worked in service-oriented fields like the coffee shop or as a bartender. Once she worked as a short-order cook at a diner in Nashville, but she said she was a horrible cook and then laughed about the fact she may have inadvertently given some of the customers food poisoning.
Bottom line: I was entranced by my daughter.
Before I brought her back to her car at the arena, she reached into her purse and pulled out a small box that contained the paternity test. Inside were two plastic tubes with flip caps that held cotton swabs. Hers already held her DNA, and all I had to do was rub the inside of my cheek on the other, mail it, and we’d have verification. I plan on doing that tomorrow and paying for express shipping, although it will be a few weeks before the results will be ready.
I expect they will tell me what I’d already figured out based on the timing of events with her mother and her classic Brannon chin and nose.
Lexi is my daughter.
Now I just have to break this news to my other daughter, and I don’t quite recall ever being this nervous before. Gray and I are close. As close as a father and daughter can be. It’s just been her and me for most of her life, and she’s not just a chip off the old block.
She. Is. Me.
Yet somehow I fear that she’s not going to be as overjoyed at this shocking news as I am, because if there’s one thing that Gray has more than me, is a healthy dose of skepticism as she evaluates things. She looks for the worst. She looks for the chinks in armor. She tries to figure out ulterior motives. It’s all a part of her business acumen, but sometimes that doesn’t necessarily apply to real life.
I know she sure has hell suffered from that skepticism when Ryker and she first started dating, and it held her back a bit from him at first. I only hope that she can keep an open mind about all of this.
With one last tap of my fingers against the steering wheel, I square my shoulders and exit my car. Gray isn’t expecting me, as I figured the surprise of me showing up to her house tonight will be long forgotten once I drop the real surprise on her.
After I ring the doorbell, I hear the pounding of little feet across hardwood get progressively louder, and then Ruby is swinging the door open wide, grinning up at me.
“Pop-Pop!” she exclaims, and then launches herself into my arms. “What are you doing here?”
While I have to say Ryker Evans becoming my son-in-law was an improvement to my already fantastic life, the real joy is that when Gray married him I got two little granddaughters in the deal. Ryker had been raising them as a divorced single dad when he met Gray.
It wasn’t long after Gray and Ryker got married that I was dubbed “Pop-Pop” by Ruby who is six going on twenty-one. Violet quickly followed suit. She’s eight and perhaps wiser than me.
“Dad…Gray…Pop-Pop’s here,” I hear Violet yell as she skids to a halt in front of the door. She also grins up at me, which showcases the tooth she lost on the top middle last week. I thought the tooth fairy should have brought her a hundred dollars, but Gray and Ryker firmly quashed that and she got five dollars instead.
I step into the house, put Ruby down, and then pick up Violet. She gives me a sweet kiss without me asking and I give her a squeeze before I deposit her back to the floor.
“Dad?” I hear Gray’s voice as she walks into the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “This is a surprise.”
“Not intruding, am I?” I ask.
“Not at all.” She smiles and then spins back toward the kitchen. “I’m just cleaning up after dinner. Have you eaten? I can make you a plate.”
“I’m good,” I say as I follow her into the kitchen, Ruby and Violet falling in right behind me.
Truth is, I haven’t eaten dinner yet, but I’m too wired over this news I’m about to deliver to think about eating.
When we enter the kitchen, I see Ryker closing the dishwasher. He turns with a smile and holds his hand out. “What’s up, Pop-Pop?”
“Smart ass,” I say affectionately as I reach out and give him a quick shake.
“Pop-Pop,” Ruby says as she tugs at the bottom of my suit jacket. “Want to come upstairs and see my spider collection? I just added a pirate spider. They eat other spiders and it’s really cool.”
I don’t miss the visible shudder that runs through Ryker’s body. He has a spider phobia, a fact I learned early on in his relationship with Gray. While he saved her from a psychopathic ex–Cold Fury player and thus earned my devotion for life, he once admitted to me that if it was a spider attacking her, he’s not sure he could have done it.
“I’ll come up in a bit to look,” I tell as I ruffle her curly hair. “But I actually need to talk to Gray and your dad about something important.”
I glance at Gray and see concern in her eyes, as I never show up at her house unannounced with “something important” to discuss.
“Why don’t you girls go upstairs and play, then Pop-Pop will come up in a bit,” Ryker says as he walks over to both girls, and with a firm hand to each of their backs starts pushing them toward the staircase that goes from the kitchen to the second floor.
There’s no grumbling from Violet and Ruby because they’re good girls. They both shoot me parting grins and then run up the stairs.
“Want some coffee?” Gray asks, and I shake my head. I had too much damn coffee today with Lexi at The Grind and probably won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight.
“Mind if we sit at the table?” I ask, but I don’t wait for a response, moving around the kitchen island to the breakfast nook.
Gray and Ryker take chairs around the square table, both of them looking at me curiously with no alarm or misgiving.
I’m getting ready to change that.
I take a chair opposite them, scooting it in so I can rest my forearms on the table. I glance at Ryker briefly, then at Gray. “I’ve got something to tell you and there’s no real way to prepare you for the shock of what I’m going to say—”
“Are you sick?” Gray interjects bluntly, her eyes now swimming with fear.
“God, no,” I quickly exclaim, and give her a reassuring but sheepish smile. “Sorry…it’s not bad news.”
My daughter quickly exhales, her entire posture relaxing once again. “You scared the crap out of me with your whole ‘I have something to talk to you about.’ ”
I nod in understanding as I take in the fact her guard is completely down now. That makes me feel utterly terrible for pushing forward and ripping off the Band-Aid, because my job is to protect my daughter, not cause her distress.
Still, it can’t be helped.
I cough slightly to clear my throat. “A woman came to see me today at the office. Her name’s Lexi Robertson. I’d never met her before. Didn’t know she existed. But she claims she’s my daughter, and I believe her.”
Gray draws in a sharp gasp of disbelief, her eyes rounding with stunned surprise. Ryker sits up straight and his hand immediately comes to the middle of Gray’s back, where it slides up over her shoulder for support.
“What?” Gray rasps. “How can that be?”
“About a year after your mother died, I dated a woman named Sybil Robertson,” I say softly. “It was a blind date set up by some mutual friends. We only saw each other for a few months, and we were intimate, but eventually I ended things with her. She apparently found out she was pregnant after I ended things and never told me.”
Gray gives a stubborn shake to her head. “And you just believe this woman that shows up, claiming to be your daughter, what, twenty-something years later?”
“She’s twenty-six,” I say. “And she didn’t know I was her father until about ten months ago. Her mother told her the truth just before she died.”
A quick flash of sympathy crosses Gray’s face for Lexi’s mother, but then just as quickly settles into a mask of stony silence, sparks of anger brewing in her eyes.
“And you believe her?” Ryker asks calmly.
Turning my gaze to my son-in-law, I say, “I do. I spent a good chunk of today talking to her, getting to know her. She looks a lot like her mother, but her chin and nose are mine—”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Gray murmurs, and there’s no doubt she’s rattled by this.
I look back to my daughter, reach my hand across the table, and hold it palm up. She refuses to move but I pin her with a hard, fatherly look and then nod down to my hand. Reluctantly, she slides her against mine, and my fingers wrap gently around her. “Gray…honey…I can tell. And besides that, she came prepared with a paternity test for me to take. We’ll have solid proof within a few weeks, but I know it’s true.”
“And what does she want?” Gray asks, some of the heat in her eyes dying down but still no denying the suspicion in her question.
“To get to know me,” I tell her frankly. “To get to know you too. She has no other family…not close family anyway.”
“And you’re not the least little bit curious as to what her ulterior motives are?” Gray asks me with a focused look. “You are, after all, a very rich man.”
I squeeze Gray’s hand and try to reassure her. “She doesn’t want my money—”
“How do you know?” Gray presses.
“I just do,” I tell her patiently. “And you’re going to have to trust me on that.”
She gives me a grunt of denial and pulls her hand from mine. “I trust you with my life, Dad, but I’ll have to form my own opinions about her.”
“Fair enough.” What else can I say?
What else can I expect?
Gray has the right to decide this for herself. She has the right to accept Lexi or not.
Gray has had me all to herself for most of her life. While I never exactly pined for another child, I can tell you it’s a wondrous thrill knowing I have another. I’m not sure Gray is going to feel that way anytime soon, but I’m sure Lexi can win her over the way she has me in just a short afternoon together.
If she’ll just give her a chance, get to know her a bit, she’ll see that she could have a solid relationship with her sister. I’m sure of it.