He turned around and met her gaze. She could tell from his stance and his brooding expression that he was still angry, even more so. She needed to explain and the only way she could do that was to tell him everything. “I think we need to sit down and talk.”
The look in his dark, piercing eyes said that as far as he was concerned, there was nothing to talk about, but he nodded anyway. She took a seat on her sofa again, but he said, “I’d rather stand.”
She wished he would sit down. Then she wouldn’t have to stare up at him. Wouldn’t have to notice just how well-built he still was. How sexy he looked in jeans and a leather jacket. And she wouldn’t have to notice how his eyes were trained on her. But she said, “Okay, if you prefer standing.”
The room was quiet but she was convinced she could hear the pounding of her heart. “I might have confused you about a few things, Laramie,” she said. “I would like to explain and hope in the end you’ll understand.”
She paused before saying, “Growing up, I never knew my father. Other kids had daddies and I didn’t understand why I didn’t. It was just me and my mom. One day...I believe I was eight at the time...I asked her about it. I wanted to know where my daddy was. She got angry with me and said I didn’t have a daddy, that I didn’t need one and not to ever bring up the subject of a father again. Her words were final and I knew it.”
Bristol picked up her teacup and took a sip although the tea had cooled. “It was only after my mother died when I was fifteen that I moved from Houston to—”
“You lived in Texas?”
“Yes. I was born in Houston and lived there until I was fifteen.”
He nodded. “I’m a Texan, as well. I was born in Austin.”
She nodded and then continued her story. “When Mom died, I moved here to New York to live with my aunt Dolly. She was my mother’s only sibling.”
Bristol took a breath and then continued, “It was only then that I got up enough courage to ask my aunt about my father. I knew nothing about him. I didn’t even know his name. But Aunt Dolly did. However, my mother had sworn her to secrecy. According to my aunt, my father and mother dated while in high school in Dallas but he broke things off with my mom to pursue his dream of studying art in Paris. My aunt said he asked my mother to go with him, but she refused, saying she didn’t want to live in another country.”
“Your father was an artist, as well?” Laramie asked as he leaned against a bookcase.
“Yes.” Now might have been a good time to tell him her father was the famous artist known as Rand, but she didn’t. Her father’s identity wasn’t important to this story.
“Imagine how excited I was when I found that out. When I learned where my artistic abilities had come from. It also explained why my mother never wanted me to pursue my art. I guess me doing so reminded her of him. Once I found out who he was, I wanted to connect with the man I never knew. The man my mom had kept from me.”
She took another sip of her tea. “According to my aunt, my mother never told my father she had gotten pregnant. He didn’t know he had a daughter. The reason Mom kept it from him was because she resented him for choosing Paris over her.”
She paused again before saying, “I convinced my aunt that I needed to see my father. To let him know I exist. She prepared me by saying that he might not want a child, that he might question if I was really his. Aunt Dolly didn’t want me to get hurt. But I didn’t care. I needed to meet him.”
She recalled that time and how desperate she’d felt. “One of the men at my aunt’s church was a detective with the NYPD. He tracked down my father and discovered he lived in Los Angeles. I made the call to my dad the morning of my sixteenth birthday. Aunt Dolly talked to him first, to break the ice and introduce me. Then she handed the phone to me.”
“What did he say?”
No need to tell Laramie it had practically been the same thing he’d said when she’d told him about their child. “He said that he believed I was his and that he wanted to see me. To prove that point, he flew out immediately. In fact, he knocked on my aunt’s door in less than eight hours.” She smiled. “That was the best birthday present ever.”
She fought back the tears that threatened to fill her eyes again as she said, “On that day, I began what was the happiest two years of my life. He told me that he wrote my mother but she refused to write him back. His letters were returned. She stopped all communication between them. When he returned to Dallas from Paris that first year for the holidays, he’d tried finding my mother but no one knew where she had moved to. Later on, he met someone else. He was still married to that woman when we met. They had two young sons. None of his sons were interested in art and he was glad that I was. We discovered we had quite a lot in common.”
“Was he upset that your mom kept your existence from him?”
“Yes, very much so. He saw that as wasted years. Years when I could have been spending time with him. We tried to do everything we could together during those two years because that was all we had.”
A bemused look appeared on Laramie’s face. “Why was that?”
She swallowed, feeling the lump in her throat. “Because, although I didn’t know it, my father was dying of cancer.”
She drew in a deep breath as she held Laramie’s gaze. “So as you can see, my actions regarding you and my son were based on my own experiences with my dad. That’s why I wrote to you as soon as I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t want to make the same mistake my mother made. You had a right to know about him, even if you rejected him. It would have been your decision. Your loss.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“Me, too. But we got to spend two years together. He made me feel so loved. So very special. He even asked me to change my last name to his, and I did. He also asked if I would come spend my last two years in high school with him in California. That meant leaving Aunt Dolly and I was torn about doing that, but she was fine with it and encouraged me to go. Although she never said, I think he confided in her and told her he didn’t have long to live.”
“And nobody told you?”
“No. Very few people knew about his condition. In his final days, I saw him getting weak and asked him about it, but he said he’d caught some kind of a virus. He only told me the truth during his last days. That’s when he told me what was wrong and if I ever needed anything to contact Colin Kusac, his close and trusted friend.” There was no need to tell him how much her father’s wife had resented her presence and how mean she’d been at the reading of her father’s will.
“So you ended up in Paris to study like he had?”
“Yes. He made that possible before he died. He wanted me to study at the same art academy.” She had worked at that café in Paris not because she had to, but because she had wanted to. Her father had taken care of her tuition as well as provided her with a generous monthly allowance. Then there had been the proceeds from her mother’s insurance policies. She had put all the money in a savings account. While growing up, her mother had taught her the importance of being independent and not wasteful.
“I had a wonderful father. I just wish I’d had more time with him.”
