Come to Me

It wasn’t his imagination that her expression softened a little. “You remembered.”

“How could I forget? While we were working together, your dad brought me here every year on your birthday so he could buy your favorite strawberry cupcakes.”

She took the sweet from him and began to gently pull away the paper cup to expose the cake. “Fine. The cupcake has bought you a brief reprieve. You can explain now.” She glanced up at him, eyes narrowed. “It had better be good.”

Lizzie picked at the cupcake while Sam talked. It had been foolish of her to make Sam Travers any more than he was, in her apparently irrational mind. He was no knight in shining armor, no noble and perfect man whose honor would never allow him to tell a lie. He was just a man like any other, skating through life the easiest way he knew how, lying when it was convenient, doing whatever was necessary to get his way.

He told a good enough story, she supposed. Whatever he’d done, he’d done for her father, who really had been a good man. Noble and all that. Charlie hadn’t wanted his little girl to know that he’d screwed up so royally; he hadn’t wanted her to know she had a sister she could never meet. Her father had been trying to spare her the pain he experienced in having a child he couldn’t claim; Sam had been trying to spare her the pain of realizing how completely her father had lied to her. So, who was going to spare her the pain of dealing with overly protective men? No one, apparently.

Charlie had been certain, it seemed, that Jenna would be better off without them. She had a decent stepfather; all that money; a nice, stable, privileged life. Sam had kept that secret until now because Charlie had asked him to keep the secret.

Sam even suggested that Charlie had been afraid that if he pushed the matter there would be a paternity test, and what if it turned out he wasn’t Jenna’s father after all? He’d come to love the child from a distance, and to be dragged into court and have the belief that the girl was his daughter ripped away would’ve been more than he could bear. Too, he was thinking of Jenna. They wouldn’t have been able to keep the suit a secret, and she’d know what kind of woman her mother was.

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