“Okay. First things first. That night, after Mom told me the truth about my father, when I was waiting for her at the house, I thumbed through her Bible and found a picture of her with a man. An old picture. I don’t know. I wondered if he was the one. So when I finally left Michigan, I drove through the Midwest. I was a couple of days into my trip when I stopped in Kansas at a hole-in-the-wall place for breakfast. That’s when I spotted a man sitting in a booth on the other side of the small café. He was watching me. And I realized, he was an older version of that same man in the picture with Mom. He didn’t look so different—you know how some people do when they age—that I couldn’t recognize him. He was in good physical condition but had some gray. And his brows and eyes were like mine. I don’t know what it is about eyes, but I’m drawn to them—I guess like most people are—and I remember them. I start there, as an artist, if I can. And I just knew.”
She looked at Cole with her own big browns, and he knew he’d been a complete fool to even ask her how she’d known. “That he was your father.”
“Yes.” Tears welled in her eyes.
He’d never seen this version of Jo, and right now, he wasn’t sure he’d even known her at all. “Tell me, Jo, what’d you do next?”
“I approached the booth.” She sucked in a breath. “I can just remember that conversation, see it in my mind as if it happened yesterday. I asked if I could sit down. He replied that he thought I’d never ask. So I sat and we stared at each other. It was just so surreal. I said, ‘Are you who I think you are?’ I mean, how bold was that?”
“And what’d he say?” Cole asked.
“He responded that he thought he might be.” Jo angled her head and frowned. “That confused me.”
“You figure if he was your father, he would know.”
“Right. So I said, ‘What do you mean youthink?’ And he said, ‘You have my mother’s eyes.’ I said, ‘I haveyoureyes.’” Jo smirked and shrugged. “He has adistinctlook.”
Cole smiled. “Like you, Jo.” She really stood out with those almond-shaped, golden-brown eyes. “Youhave a distinct look. As for your father, I always saw the resemblance.” But still, he needed to ask about this guy who appeared out of the blue into her life not long ago.
“Anyway, I was still confused and asked him why he never showed up in my life. Why I didn’t know him. Why now? Was he following me or what? You know what he said to me?”
“No idea.”
“He said that he didn’t know about me until a few days before!” Incredulity twisted up her features. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye.
Cole thought for sure she was holding many more of them back. Rather than say anything—because there were no adequate words, really—he kept quiet. Listened.
“I tell you, I don’t understand any of this. But I asked how he found me. He said he wasn’t even looking. He said that he’d loosely followed Mom’s career over the years and was sorry to hear about the accident. He came to the funeral and then figured it would be weird and awkward and so decided to leave before he joined those at the gravesite, and that’s when he saw me. And heknewthat I was his daughter. So, yeah, he followed me until he could figure out how to approach me. Said he suspected it would all work out, and it did. I approachedhim.”
Tears leaked out both eyes then. “I had so many questions.I was so mad at my mother. Again. I had so much to ask him. But instead of any of that, I blurted out that I needed to hide.”
Interesting. For all Jo knew at the time, her newly found biological father was the person she needed to hide from. How could she know? Unless she hadn’t shared everything yet, and her mother had told her more. “What did he say then?”
“He told me that he knew a place. Didn’t even ask me questions. He brought me to Hidden Bay, where he’d lived and worked for thirty years.”
Well, that explained a few things. Cole wanted to continue this conversation, but it was after 4:00 p.m., and he didn’t want to lose the chance to get at the security feed. Columbia Center was just around the corner, and he finally found and parked in a spot right in front.
“How’d you get this spot? I had to park in the garage two blocks away and walk uphill in the rain.”
“You didn’t happen to notice I drove around the block a few times?”
Cole pictured her making that hike and could just see her, slipping or maybe tripping a couple of times. She had to be the clumsiest person he’d ever met, and weirdly, it was one of the things he absolutely adored about her. Adored? Yeah ... at some point, he needed to talk to her about...
Us.
We need to talk about us. If there is anus or can be an us.Now who was the clumsy one? When it came to talking to Jo aboutthem, he was the worst with words.
Jo cleared her throat. “Listen, I think ... um ... yeah, you’re here about my mother, officially, and now you’re sort of helping me with my father, unofficially. But I want to get one thing straight so that this isn’t awkward—at least for me, because it doesn’t seem like it’s awkward for youat all. But whatever we did before—dated, whatever—we can work together now without any of that affecting our relationship. So we can keep this completely professional. Deal?”
Aw. Jo...
She thrust her hand out for him to shake, which felt completely off to him, like she was trying too hard. And she was pushing for the exact opposite. Cole forced a smile, more heartbroken than he had a right to be, and then he shook her hand.
“So what next? Should I wait here? I was already inside, and I don’t want the security guard to be suspicious when I show up again with you.”
“It’ll be fine.” He wouldn’t think of leaving her here since they were tracking a man who was involved in something hazardous, and she’d just witnessed a murder. “I know what I’m doing.”
They got out of the vehicle, and the rain had stopped. He might have taken that as a good sign, if Jo hadn’t laid out rules he didn’t much feel like abiding by.
