“You’re kidding.”
“Just because my dad left me the ranch doesn’t mean he wasn’t a bastard.”
“Anyway, I didn’t even know if it was a boy or girl until Adam showed up at fifteen with his birth certificate. Hell, I didn’t even know she’d kept the baby. Let’s just say, I was less than thrilled with the way she raised him. He’s my son, and I’ll always feel asense of obligation to look out for him. But the entitlement?” I shake my head. “I haven’t been able to rewire it out of his thick skull. His mom decided after my dad passed and was no longer here to enforce their legally binding agreement that she’d get Adam to milk me for money.”
“No wonder you were sore about the money thing when I showed up.”
“I didn’t know what he’d done,” I say, pulling Kayleigh into my arms. “And I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”
Kayleigh’s phone pings from the counter, no doubt a text from her sister. Her family’s excited to see her for Christmas, and I know she’s eager to see them. If my asshat of a son hadn’t robbed her of the tuition money her sister and brother-in-law gifted her for her final semester, she would’ve gotten on a plane days ago.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” she asks.
“I don’t think your family’s ready for me,” I tease, but it’s true. I’m old enough to be Kayleigh’s father—a young father, but father nonetheless. I have a feeling they’ll have a hard time seeing around that. I’m willing to wait, to put in the time and energy to prove that I’m in this for the long haul, before I brave meeting her protective family.
But more than that, I want her to have some space so she can be sure about us. All this happened so…fast.
“You don’t even have a Christmas tree here,” she says, frowning.
“Then you can put one up when you get back.”
“I’m not coming back until after Christmas.”
“So?” I pull her into my arms, cup her cheek, and draw her in for a kiss that threatens to make her late for her flight. “The only thing that matters to me is that you come back, Kayleigh Kingston.”
CHAPTER 13
KAYLEIGH
“You seem distracted,”Alida says from across the booth of a cozy new restaurant that just recently opened in Evergreen Pass. One she insisted I justhadto try the second she picked me up from the airport.
Iwasexcited.
Until I logged in to pay my student loans and discovered they were already paid in full.
I don’t know how to feel about that. Is this what Elliot meant aboutowningme? Maybe he’s no better than his son. Maybe he uses money to control his world, which, by extension, would now include me.
He ensured my plane ticket home was upgraded to first class, after all.
“I’m just jet lagged,” I lie.
“It was one two-hour flight,” Alida points out. “Has that internship been running you a little ragged?”
I could keep lying to my sister, but in truth, it’s getting exhausting. Besides, Alida has always been there for me. She’s sacrificed so much to make sure I had all the opportunities that led me on my desired path. She was once willing to sell herself off to the highest bidder so I could keep going to college on herdime because she refused to let me get student loans. If not for her, I wouldn’t be this close to becoming a veterinarian.
I owe her more than another lie.
“There was never an internship. At least, not one right now.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
I’m relieved it’s just the two of us right now, because if I had to make this confession with the entire Hansen clan hovering around me, I don’t think I could push through the fear. I suck in a deep breath to summon the courage to just spit it out.
“You remember Adam?”
“Yeah. Not exactly his biggest fan.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” I take a sip of my cappuccino and then I tell her everything. I confess how Adam pulled the wool over my eyes until he’d managed to slowly—without my noticing—drain my savings until the entire sum I had set aside for my tuition was just suddenly gone. Because of the number of ATM withdrawals that went unreported for so long, my bank refused to do anything about it.
