She used to like the idea of being a mother, that was the sad thing. Back when she thought it would be a package deal arrangement, with a husband and a nice house. But even after that, when she had looked into the girl’s dark eyes for that first time, and thought,I made this, she had felt a surge of pride. All the nurses had said, “Oh, she’sbeautiful,” and she had beenfilled with an unexpectedly fierce burst of joy.Of course she is, she had thought.She’s mine.
But now, every time she looked at the girl, she could only see her father—Anthony: a musician from Trinidad and Tobago with distant Chinese ancestry. Anthony, who had serenaded her with a reggaeton version of Black Magic Woman on a beach in San Diego that still made her misty-eyed when she thought of it now. She’d been working on the boardwalk to save for college but he had been far more interesting than scooping ice cream for snot-nosed brats.
She had spent an entire golden summer with him and his three roommates. In that beachside bungalow they were all renting for less than nothing because one of them knew the owner, they worked odd jobs and lived hand to mouth. One of them had been red-haired and sunburned, an ex-surfer from Australia who’d broken his shin and now worked on boats in the marina. The other guy ran a kiosk for tourists with his common-law wife, but most of his income seemed to come from weed, of which they had all smoked plenty.
Danielle had listened to Anthony busk at the boardwalks as he sat beside a boombox that was almost as big as his guitar, and she had basked in the glow of his attention as she danced and swayed to his music. They had gotten more free drinks than they had known what to do with whenever he performed at bars, and everyone had wanted to know their names.
I could live like this forever, she thought naively.Right here on this beach.
And then, one day, Anthony disappeared.
When she thought to look him up years later, she had discovered that he’d had a heart-attack. Only thirty-two. What a fucking waste. You really couldn’t depend on anyone otherthan yourself. They’d always leave you, one way or another. Her mouth twisted bitterly.
Even your own children could turn traitor.
She looked a lot like him in certain lights—the ringlets in her curly hair, the sharp jut of her slightly crooked nose, and the way her forehead wrinkled when she frowned. That was all him. But it was in the face, too. Anthony’s face had been incredibly expressive and she had loved that about him, but seeing it on her daughter pierced like a fucking knife.
Men had started looking at Justine before she’d even started high school. Hell, some of her regulars even hollered at her, while Jay ducked her head, pathetically clinging to her skirt.She’s going to get eaten alive on the streets, she remembered thinking, looking at her daughter’s beautiful face and feeling a distant sense of alarm.And they aren’t even going to wait for her to grow up first.
But bringing Justine had gotten her sympathy from her clients and better tips, so she had tolerated and, yes, sometimes even encouraged the drunken teasing. Better she find out now what men were like than to grow up sheltered and naïve.
Marriage was supposed to fix all her problems. Rather than having to entertain the appetites of multiple men all at once, only to come home to a sagging apartment and a sullen child, she could focus her efforts onone man, in a beautiful house big enough that she could choose to avoid her daughter—and her stepson—completely, if she so desired. And shediddesire.
She was very, very tired of being both virgin mother and whore.
When Damon Beaucroft had whisked her away to Las Vegas’s hotel and casino scene and fucked her so hard that she couldn’t walk straight the next day, she had convinced herselfthat she was in love. So he was older, so what? He had a full head of hair and a big dick, and the ice on her finger was big enough to blot out some of his less favorable qualities, like his wandering eye and his tendency to threaten or intimidate waitstaff.
She had almost convinced herself that she had finally found the happiness that she had been chasing since her late teens, wanting to be that girl dancing in the sun with a boy who chose her.
Until she’d noticed how her new husband looked at her kid.
People thought she was stupid.Damonthought he was stupid, even after the lid was blown off her ruse. Maybe she didn’t read crusty old books for pleasure while wistfully languishing away in a tower, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see what was right in front of her own damn face.
Since Damon wasn’t around anymore, she got all the blame for it. She heard the whispers, calling her a whore and a bad mother.But she’d kept Justine busy and out of the way while playing the role of glamorous society wife for her ungrateful pervert of a husband. Had he thought she really wanted to go to all of those awful Historical Society meetings? Only mimosas and petty gossip had made them even remotely tolerable. It was about networking.
Damon was too smart to shit where she ate—or so she thought—so she just dressed a little younger even as her husband continued buying Justine gifts and calling her “my dear,” like he didn’t break his neck looking at her ass whenever she left the room. But when she noticed the same look in her stepson’s eyes, she had wanted to scream until the windows shattered and every single member of her screwed-up family had blood coming out of their ears.
She wasn’t sure when Nicholas and Justine had actuallystarted sleeping together. Her daughter was such a little miss that she hadn’t even believedDamonwhen he had first brought up his suspicions. “As if she would,” Danielle had scoffed. “A nun could make that girl blush.”
But Damon had been insistent and wildly angry—irrationally angry. Less concerned father, more jealous lover. “She has you fooled, too, then. Not that it’s hard. Your daughter’s a back-stabbing little whore like you. She’s let my son fuck her all over his house, and she won’t be getting penny from me now, even if she comes crawling back to me on her knees.”
“You sound jealous,” Danielle had spat, though the mental picture he’d painted disturbed her. “Why is that, Damon? Did you ever touch my kid?”
Damon had laughed nastily (but not refused, she couldn’t help remembering; wouldn’t an innocent man have refused?). “If I had, I would have done it when she came onto me at the resort.”
“What?”
“Oh, it was shameless. She was hanging around the bar in a flimsy little sundress, like a lost lamb in a den of wolves. When I attempted to take her back to her room, she asked me for things I don’t even think she was sure she really wanted. God only knows how she got to my son. She’s had him wrapped around her finger since before he could even drive.”
Danielle’s stomach twisted. “Jay didn’t even date until she was eighteen.”
“And perhaps this is why. Nicholas is still an impressionable young man. He doesn’t have my fortitude or experience. If a pretty girl told him what he wanted to hear, and promised to satisfy his passing whims, I think he’d give her anything.”
That feeling in her gut intensified. “You’re lying. Jaywouldn’t do that. She’s such a goody two-shoes.”
“Perhaps she used to be.” He gave her a coldly amused look, clocking her disgust. “But you didn’t exactly help with that, did you, my dear? Where do you think she learned how to misbehave? While you were out there fucking every pool boy in sight, she’s been warping my son’s mind with her little games. She calls him Daddy, as if that makes him any less of a boy, when what she really needs is a man to take her firmly in hand and—”
Danielle had slapped him and he, enraged, had reached for one of his scotch bottles and thrown it at her. It smashed against the wall over her head and that was when she began to really be afraid. When his eyes studied her, dark and dissatisfied.
