Mine

Not that Brandon accepted that excuse or liked it, but he did keep his distance from Rick, as if trying not to take sides. And how ironic was that.

“Yeah, the point is our safe house location was compromised.” The comment sufficed to give Brandon the flavor. Gabe decided he didn’t need to know everything.

Brandon smiled. “She really is a client?”

Leave it to him to focus on the important part of what he’d learned today. “Yes.”

“But you’re sleeping with her.”

Gabe tried to be open with his kid about sex. He was desperate for Brandon not to make the same mistakes he did and grow up too early. Still, even Gabe squirmed when the talk of his personal sex life hit the table. Happily, it didn’t happen all that often. “Yes, and before you say it, I know that’s not normal for me.”

“Right.” Brandon hummed. “You like her.”

Talk about drilling down to the heart of the issue. “When do you go back to school?”

“She’s pretty.”

“Yeah, I know.” He did have eyes and had a very hard time keeping them off her.

“Like whoa and damn pretty.”

The kid had good taste. “I get it, Brandon.”

“She watches you. You watch her.”

“You make us sound weird.” But Gabe liked the idea of the attraction ru

At first he figured he was convenient for her. She needed to gain control and burn off some energy. He was right there when no one else was and happy to volunteer. But somewhere along the line whatever arced between them morphed into something else. He could feel her watch him when they were back in the cabin. He pla

Maybe that way he could keep whatever sparked between them on a sex-only level. He’d been trying since day one, before he ever touched her to get there and failed. He’d known back then that a certain energy hummed between them. He didn’t want it to mean anything, yet here she was. Sitting in his house. Meeting his kid. Knowing about his past and about things no one else knew.

She had his trust. He had no idea when or how it happened but it all felt pretty committed to him. He hoped to figure out why as the days went on.

“Grown-ups are weird. All old and boring.” Brandon tapped the toes of his sneakers together in a clapping sound.

“Happy we settled that.”

“I’m just saying that if you brought her here she means something to you. She’s not just some woman.” Brandon stopped staring at the black screen of the turned-off television and looked at Gabe. “Right?”

Gabe refused to answer that one because the potential answer was starting to scare the shit out of him. “That psychology class is paying off.”

“And if she means something, that’s okay with me. It’s great, actually.” The kid’s devilish smile came back. “Good to see you getting a little action.”

“Honestly, Brandon.” Gabe rubbed a hand in Brandon’s hair and ignored the slick of gel that now stuck to his fingers. At least he’d moved on from the rancid-smelling aftershave or whatever it was that had followed him senior year in a tiny cloud.

Brandon stood up. “I’ll let you go find her.”

“Where is she?”

“Last I saw she was wandering in the backyard, sticking close to the house like I assume you trained her to do.”

“You just know everything today.” But Gabe appreciated the information. It would cut down on his hunting for her.

Brandon spun around and his sneakers squeaked against the hardwood floor. “One more thing.”

Gabe braced for whatever came next. With Brandon, the leaps of logic and conversation topics could be big. “Yeah?”

“Uncle Rick keeps texting.”

Gabe felt everything inside him fall. Just crash inward until he consisted of a hollowed-out pile of nothing. “Okay.”

“He says he wants to come to Charlottesville and take me to di

Gabe wanted to shout no, but he choked the words back. This should be about what Brandon needed. “Do you want to see him?”

“I do miss him. You and Uncle Andy suck at fishing.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Gabe wondered for about the thousandth time in his life how he got so lucky with this kid. Everything should have gone wrong. They were set up to fail. Now they just had to survive Rick’s admission.

“Then we’ll make it happen.” It hurt to say the words, but Gabe spit them out.

“Thanks, Dad.” Brandon slipped the phone out of his back pocket and started punching in something as he left the room.

Yeah, that’s what dads did, biological or not. They coped. Gabe just wished it wasn’t so damn hard.

He suddenly needed to find Natalie.

•   •   •

“This place is pretty spectacular. I’ve only ever lived in condos.” Natalie made the comment as she closed the French doors and stepped back inside the great room after looking out over the rolling hills and lush green lawn that stretched as far as she could see. She glanced up, took in Gabe’s drawn face and came to a halt. “What’s wrong?”

He plastered a fake smile on his face and came around the sectional to meet her halfway into the room. “Nothing.”

That he thought he could still fool her, or that he needed to, frustrated her a bit. She got self-protection, but they’d shared so many secrets that they had to be past some of the basic stuff.

“Something.” She put a hand on his chest. Let it trail down until it rested on the top of his jeans.

His hands came up to rest on her waist. “Rick has been in contact with Brandon.”

Rick wasn’t even in the room and he changed the mood to something dreary. The guy needed to back off. She wished she was in a position to tell him. Frankly, if he were standing here she would. Forget protocol and ma

Since Gabe didn’t seem to be in the mood for an it’s-not-that-bad speech, since it clearly was, she went with reason. “Doesn’t that violate your informal agreement that he not talk to Brandon directly about what’s going on?”

She could have Bast there in ten minutes to straighten it all out. Maybe not that fast, but he’d hammer through a real deal. The problem was, no matter how she turned this problem over in her head, at some point Gabe was going to have to concede to the DNA test. He could only run from the truth, whatever it was, for so long.

“Rick isn’t exactly one to follow the rules,” Gabe said.

He managed to say it in a nice way, so she followed his example. “Apparently he’s not a boundaries type of guy.”

Gabe exhaled and his head fell forward. He rested it against her cheek and just stood there. “He wants a DNA test, but I guess you figured that out.”

“Seemed logical under the circumstances.” She caressed his cheek because nothing she could say would bring any comfort.

“He wants it now and has given me a deadline to agree. I have a week or two left. He promised not to bring Brandon into this directly right now, but who knows.”

She hesitated for a few beats before talking again. “You should be the one to tell him.”

Gabe lifted his head and looked at her with eyes filled with pain. “That’s not a conversation I ever want to have.”

She felt sick for him. His love for Brandon, biological or not, shone throughout the entire house. She couldn’t walk into a room or down a hallway without seeing a reminder of some piece of family history. Photos from rafting trips and baseball games. Little Brandon and Brandon as he was now. The photos showed so much.

But photos were about memories, and they had a real-life crisis to deal with. She brushed a hand over Gabe’s hair. “What are you going to do?”

“Let it happen. Maybe try to control the conversation a bit. Brandon wants to see him.”