Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 4) (17 page)

“Where the hell are
you going?” I asked. “You’re just going to walk out?”

“I need some air,”
she said.

I got up and grabbed my
jeans off the floor. “I’ll come with you.”

She was already at the
door. “No – please. It won’t make a difference.”

Her hair was tousled
and her eyes looked huge. “I just have to go.”

She put three slender fingers to her
lips as if she might blow me a kiss, but then she let her hand drop.
Without another word, she left before I could stop her.

As soon as the elevator
door shut, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

What a performance.

Like Brooke mattered.
The way Drex had ravished me that night in the stairwell – I knew
he didn’t care about her. But she was certainly a convenient target
when I needed her.

Thanks,
Brooke. Because of you, I didn’t have to tell Drex the truth.

The truth was, I was
six weeks pregnant.

It was something the
doctors had said would never happen again. There was still time for a
miscarriage, but that was always a risk. The important thing was that
I had a chance. I had a baby growing inside me, and Drex was the
father.

I wanted this child
more than anything in the world

David had used condoms
religiously, and I was glad. I was spared that confusion after
everything else.

So why hadn’t I told
Drex? I’d rehearsed a hundred times what I was going to say, but
the words had stuck in my throat.

The elevator jerked to
a stop two floors down and a couple got on. They stood in front of
me, shoulders touching, talking quietly. Drex and I had never been
like that, two normal people with normal lives. It had been one
crisis after another from the minute he’d saved my life. And
through it all, he’d stood by me.

That was the kind of
man he was, and it was why I wouldn’t tell him. Because I knew he’d
do the honorable thing.

I would never know if
he really wanted me and this child, or if he’d been forced into it
as surely as if he had a gun to his head.

It was what he did,
after all. He did what was right. He saved the day. He put himself on
the line whether he wanted to or not. And he’d do the same thing
with me – yet again – if I let him. All I had to do was say the
word, and he’d be the good guy he was supposed to be.

But I didn’t want the
good guy. I wanted him to want me.

Okay, so we’d just
had an amazing time in bed. Our chemistry had gone from intense to
incendiary. But chemistry didn’t make a future, or a family.

I’d always wanted a
family. I wanted one even more now. But I’d blown my last chance
with Drex because I couldn’t bear to be his ball and chain.

I went through the
revolving doors and into the bright summer sunshine. A dark, frigid
day in January would have matched my mood a hell of a lot better.

“Jane!” I heard
Drex’s voice behind me.

Every cell in my body
begged me to turn around and run into his arms. But I knew how it
would go if I told him the truth. He’d look shocked, then his
instincts would take over. He’d say all the right things, but I’d
know what he was thinking.

He was being roped into
fatherhood by a drama-magnet he still barely knew. But this is what
unprotected sex led to, and he wouldn’t shirk his responsibility.

No way.

I’d rather be alone
and miserable than watch him make the best of being trapped. I was
done being the obligation he’d rescued outside a biker bar.

“Jane, please!”

I didn’t even look
back. I just kept on walking toward the parking garage.

He was closer now, and
my heels were too high to run in. I squared my shoulders and stared
straight ahead.

“Stop,” he said. “I
mean it.”

I felt his hand graze
my arm and catch on the strap of my handbag. I would not let go or
turn around, no matter what –

The strap broke and my
bag fell. I stopped and tried to catch it, but it was too late.

The bag dropped to the
sidewalk and everything scattered. Wallet. Travel pack of tissues.
Phone.

Pink pregnancy test
wand with two blue lines. Drex had no idea what a miracle it really
was.

I stood with my head
bowed, horror washing over me.

I saw Drex’s boots
stop in front of me. He reached out and slowly raised my chin with
his index finger.

For a long minute, we
stared at each other. People walked around us and traffic roared by,
but I hardly noticed.

“His or mine?” Drex
asked.

“Yours,” I
whispered.

“And you were going
to walk away without telling me?”

“I was afraid you’d
just…do what’s right. I would never know what you really wanted.”

He shook his head
slowly. “I thought you knew me, but you don’t know me at all.”

“How can you say
that?” A single tear slipped down my cheek.

“You think I’m here
because I’m obligated? That I’d be a father to our child because
I
have
to be?”

“Drex, please try to
understand.”

“Oh, I understand
perfectly,” he said. “You don’t believe in me. You never have.”

Heart shattering, I
watched him walk back toward his hotel. Regret coursed through me
like a tidal wave. I’d pushed him away so many times, it was no
wonder he was finally finished.

I forced myself to turn
around and walk to the parking garage. I paid my ticket and took the
elevator up in numb silence. Overwhelming as the urge was, I would
not run after him. I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by begging.

My marriage was in
shambles, my life was a wreck, and I’d ruined everything with Drex,
but I still had one thing left. My self-respect.

It was at times like
these that I had to appreciate the paparazzi.

They really could do a
man’s work for him, under the right circumstances. Tonight, phones
were flashing and tongues were wagging, and I didn’t even have a
hot woman sitting across the elegantly-appointed table from me.

I had a tall,
good-looking European guy who just happened to be my brother.

I figured if anybody
could smoke Elijah out of his hiding place, it was Marc. He’d been
more than willing to fly to the United States from France and make an
appearance if it meant getting his felon father to come home again.

It was a last ditch
effort, but it was the best shot I had.

A private investigator
had turned up three false leads and a sighting outside a motel in
Juarez, but nothing more. I couldn’t wait around for Elijah to show
up dead or in handcuffs, and I wasn’t about to scour a thousand
miles of Tex-Mex desert. It seemed like a damned inefficient way to
find him, anyway.

But dangling his
favorite son in front of him in the press – well, that might be the
best method of all.

“Can’t thank you
enough for coming,” I said as the waiter cleared our plates.

“My pleasure,” Marc
said. “I’ve never been to Texas before, so this is like a
vacation for me.”

I’d expected to hate
the guy, totally despise his high-brow accent and first-class
education, but I couldn’t. Marc was too down to earth for that. He
hadn’t had it easy growing up, and he was as self-made as I was.
Risk and aggression were in his blood, just like mine.

“I’m sorry I
couldn’t meet your girlfriend,” I said.

“So am I. She went
away on assignment to Turkey the day after you called.”

I could tell by the
glimmer in his eyes that he was incurably in love with the girl,
Sophie, a travel writer from New York who lived with him in Paris.
Jealousy speared through me, hot and bitter. I wasn’t jealous
because of my father’s fascination with the son he’d abandoned,
but because I’d lost the only woman I’d ever loved.

All to prove some
stupid point.

What was it now? Oh,
yeah.
I’m not the guy you
think I am
.
And to
make that clear, I’ll go back to Houston alone and let you think
about it for a while.

I’d been too hurt and
pissed off to realize it was a very bad idea. And when I’d finally
cooled off and called her the next day, she hadn’t answered. A
hundred emails, texts, and calls later, she was still silent.

She wasn’t interested
in an apology or promises or anything else I’d tried. I’d proven
myself to be an unreliable jerk, and no woman wanted a man like that,
even if he was the father of her child.

“Your girlfriend
sounds great,” I said. “Smart and independent.”

“She’s all that and
a lot more,” Marc said with a shit-eating grin. “The kind of
woman you never let go once you find her. How about you? Anyone
important in your life?”

I shrugged as if I had
no problem spending the next sixty years alone. “There was, for a
while.”

“The missing woman,
right? I read some things about you online after you called.”

“Yup. That was her.”

It hurt like hell to
use the past tense when I talked about Jane, but I had to get used to
it. This was what I deserved for walking away from the love of my
life and assuming she’d be there when I got over it. I’d felt
insulted and misunderstood and lied to. And I’d be reaping the
rewards of those feelings for the rest of my pathetic life.

More flashbulbs, more
gossip, even a reporter stopping by the table – if I gave a
three-minute interview, Marc and I would be all over the news
tomorrow.
Brothers of Fortune –
Houston’s Pool Magnate Discovers Lost Sibling
. If a
headline like that didn’t bring my father home, nothing would.

If only it would have the same
effect on Jane.

If I hadn’t been
stalking Drex online, I’d never have known that his half-brother
was in Houston.

I’d decided to let a
few weeks go by and see how quickly he moved on. All I wanted was to
be sure. I needed to know that he wanted me, that he wasn’t just
rescuing me.

If I heard even a
whisper about him and Brooke in the Houston press, I’d know we were
done. I checked every day at least eight or ten times to see if there
were any new pictures of them together. But he appeared to have moved
on without her, and without me.

The pictures on the
Houston gossip website showed Drex smiling and laughing as if he
didn’t have a care in the world.

Was I that easy to get
over? Obviously I’d made another huge mistake by ignoring his calls
and messages, but he’d walked away from me. It was my turn to show
I was fine on my own.

And I
was
fine, if I didn’t count extreme loneliness, constant regret, and
the morning sickness that lasted until noon every day.

I closed my laptop and
put my hands over my stomach. Inside me was a tiny, fatherless baby
whose mother who didn’t have a clue what to do next. Just when I
started to think I’d made my point, Drex stopped trying to contact
me. He’d heard me loud and clear, but he’d gotten the wrong
message.

He thought I didn’t
care, when all I wanted was for him to care. And now he was finished
with the games, and with me.

I went to bed in my
lonely, silent brownstone and tried to block out the mental images of
Drex’s smiling face. Tomorrow was another day – in court. I’d
be seeing Lily making her first appearance in front of a judge, with
her husband and my soon-to-be ex by her side.

And after it was over, I’d go back
to my office and try to pretend it was just another Thursday.

It took almost a week
because my father was a stubborn old bastard, but even he wouldn’t
miss the chance to meet his long-lost son. At six on a Sunday
evening, he showed up at my apartment the old-fashioned way – by
stopping at the security desk and asking to be let up.

I tried not to let envy
eat a chunk of my soul while I sat and watched them talk. My father
showed a well-mannered, refined side I usually saw only when he was
going before a parole board and trying to skip out of prison early.

I could actually see
the resemblance -- they had the same blue eyes, the same laugh –
and I almost hated how it showed my father in a different light. The
man who’d caused so much trouble for me for so long, well, I had to
admit he was still a charmer after all these years.

“You didn’t come
all this way just to see Houston, did you?” he asked Marc. “My
son brought you here.”

“Not exactly,” Marc
said, with a glance at me. After less than a week, there was a bond
between us that I felt from across the room. We were brothers, and he
was on my side. “As soon as I knew I had a brother, I wanted to
come,” he said. “I wanted to see who my father was.”

“And what do you
think?”

“I think Drex and I
want to see you stay around. He’s going to set you up in a place of
your own nearby, and I think it’s a good idea.”

“Makes sense,” Marc
told him. “Two sons can’t be wrong.”

“Maggie can come and
visit, but you stick close to home,” I said. “No more taking off
for a month by yourself. That’s done.”

“Yeah, about that…”
Swirling the ice cube in his glass, Elijah cocked his head at me.
“Mind giving us a minute to talk alone?”

A minute to talk alone.
As in, go get lost for a while in my own apartment.

But who was I to stand
in the way of the father/son reunion I’d arranged? Was it a reunion
if they’d never been in the same room before?

“I’ll just go pour
myself another drink,” I said, walking toward the kitchen. “Or
three.”

I splashed some cold
vodka into a highball glass and stood at the floor-to-ceiling window
assessing my life. I had a lot to be thankful for. My next round of
investment was in the final stages, and this time I wouldn’t owe
any favors. Scott had butted out of my life after I put him in his
place, and Brooke’s attitude was all-business now that her job
depended on her performance, not her father. I’d met my brother and
lured my father home.