“You’ve been in Seattle this entire time and didn’t even bother to call me?” he asked, hurt in every word.
She snapped her head up, hope rising even more. “I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me again.”
“I didn’t.” The tick in his jaw increased and he picked up another screw.
Alice pressed her lips together, inhaling a steadying breath, willing the ache in her heart to lessen. “You have every right to hate me, Niko. I wasn’t the most upfront and honest person. I’m not making any excuses or trying to defend myself in any way. What I did was wrong. I knew it at the time and yet I still did it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Well, perhaps with a few tweaks.”
“I thought we had something, Alice.” He stood, shoulders rigid.
She scrambled off the floor, and winced at the throb in her bicep, minuscule compared to the pain she’d caused Niko. “We did. We do. I love you but things were complicated; too complicated to explain at the time. And even if I had, who’s to say the outcome wouldn’t be the same? I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I deceived you.”
Alice studied his face, the urge to reach out and run her thumb along his jaw overpowering. In the weeks since they’d been apart, he’d filled her dreams. With Niko, she’d felt whole until Chloe’s revelation had rocked the foundation of her life. “My mother went through addiction treatment when while pregnant with Brooke. The state let me back into her care. She tried her best but even sober, she wasn’t the most dependable person. I practically raised Brooke until I went off to college. Being away from home sans responsibility, I went a bit wild. I was nineteen when I met Lance. He was a grad student and he had a motorcycle.”
“You seem to fall for the academic types. Wasn’t boring Richard a professor?” He asked, a trace of his old humor back. Was being honest working? Alice prayed it was the case. She’d never wanted anything more than to win him back.
“A culinary professor but ironically, yes. Unlike Richard, Lance was a real asshole. Still is. I didn’t get it at the time. I thought his moodiness was hot. We’d been having problems with his cheating and I thought if I got pregnant…” She paused, the mortifying words tripping over her tongue. “I, um, well, that he’d settle down. We’d get married and live happily ever after.”
His eyes widened at her admission.
She could imagine what he was thinking because the same things reverberated in her mind. “Yes, stupid beyond belief. When I told him, he freaked, and demanded I terminate the pregnancy. Since she wasn’t a mistake, I had to live up to my obligation. I decided to have the child and give her up for adoption.”
It had been the defining moment in her life. At twenty, she’d been old enough to care for a child, but she was still a child herself. She had ambitions and ideas, but mostly, she didn’t want to be burdened with the responsibility. Selfish but realistic. “I tried to do the fair thing and look how it turned out. She has the best family with people who love her.” Like I love you.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Niko rocked back on his heels, finding it difficult to reconcile the level-headed, cautious woman with the naïve, manipulative teenager. She’d owned up to her actions then and the results had been a gift to his family he couldn’t imagine living without, like he couldn’t imagine living without Alice. Yet she’d manipulated her way into their lives and kept secrets from him.
Had she really changed that much?
Jenny walked into the room and put her hand to her throat. “Niko, I didn’t hear you come in. I’m glad you’re here. Alice has been such a blessing to us. We have a delivery truck that arrived with some diapers. Can you help?”
“Of course.” Niko turned on his heels and headed to the warehouse loading dock. His mind was spinning with what Alice had revealed. Her childhood was unfortunate but that didn’t excuse what she’d done.
What had she done except try to save Chloe’s life and ease her worry over the fate of a child she’d given birth to?
He climbed up the three stairs to the loading dock door and pushed it open. Cold air rushed in and he hopped onto the back of the truck that was pulled up to the ledge of the platform. Niko heaved the lever to release the double doors. Stacked inside were boxes of diapers, baby formula, and car seats.
“If you want to set them on the dock, I can start stacking them,” Alice said.
She stood next to the platform. Ice-blue eyes met his, intense and entreating. She wore no makeup and her bare skin was dewy, cheeks a soft pink. Damn, she was beautiful. His pulse pounded with the need to touch her.
“Should you be lifting things?” he asked. He wanted to lean over the safety rail of the loading dock and kiss those soft lips but he couldn’t forgive her, not yet.
“I’ll be fine. The boxes are light,” she said.
Niko began to unload the truck, dropping the boxes onto the cement floor. Questions crowded his brain and he wasn’t sure which ones he wanted to ask first. He’d been living in turmoil for ages and Christmas night was the icing on the cake. Before then, it was all about Chloe. Now it was about him.
“Lance called me a few weeks ago, furious that the state contacted him for his medical records. I’m sorry to say, he’s still adamantly against disclosing his identity to Chloe, but I did manage to shame him into signing up for the donor program, just in case I…” she trailed off, pressing her lips together, eyes sheened with tears.
“In case you weren’t a match.” Smart and caring, he’d fallen in love with this amazing woman. He thought he’d lost her, except there she stood, staring up at him, close enough to touch. Damn, he ached to touch her.
She twisted, dropped a box onto the ground, stacked another on top of it, and turned back for more. Resting her hand on her hip, she flashed him a grim smile. “At first he said no—absolutely not— but once he told me he was running for public office, I knew I had the upper hand. He wanted to make this go away, so I gave him an option, donate for a worthy cause and get good publicity from it, or I would call his opponent and explain everything. His choice.”
“You shamed him?” Niko asked, the ice in his heart breaking the tiniest bit. All this time, she’d been working behind the scenes, trying to give Chloe every opportunity to survive. And lying to him, something he found hard to stomach, no matter her good intentions.
“You can’t shame someone who doesn’t feel shame.” Lifting her arm, she hooked her fingers into the handhold of a box and took it down, adding it to her growing stack.
“Sounds like a real asshole.” He couldn’t imagine what kind of person would refuse to help someone who was dying unless it benefited them. The height of selfishness. Chloe and Alice were better off without a man like that.
