Truth or Beard (Winston Brothers #1)(54)
Author: Penny Reid

~Jessica~

I wasn’t mad.

I was hurt and sad and confused by…well, everything. But I wasn’t mad.

My aunt’s funeral took place on Friday.

Except she wasn’t my aunt. She was my birth mother. This devastating tidbit had been revealed as soon as I arrived to her house from the airport. My daddy traveled with me and both my parents—the only parents I’d known—and Aunt Louisa’s lawyer pulled me into the office on the ground floor and told me the truth.

A big part of this truth was that she’d purposefully waited to tell me until she’d gone, and no one knew the identity of my biological father. Aunt Louisa hadn’t seen fit to share my paternal parentage with anyone.

In light of the fact that Louisa had waited until dying to tell me she was my birth mother, I was feeling understandably emotional. And reflective. And reckless. And angry I’d been cheated out of knowing the truth while I had time to do something other than accept a huge inheritance from a woman who hadn’t liked me much.

So I told Duane the truth, and he’d responded by saying nothing. Nothing.

I’d told him I was in love with him and he hadn’t reciprocated. I’d been foolish. I’d allowed myself to fall too hard and too fast, and he probably thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. Maybe Aunt Louisa was crazy, or maybe my biological father was a whack job who fell in love too hard and too fast, who valued freedom and wanderlust over lasting relationships and responsibilities.

Maybe I was the person I was because my biological parents were circles surrounded by good, generous, reliable square pegs. It certainly would explain a lot.

When the will was read on Saturday, I was again named as her daughter, and therefore the official sole beneficiary. I’d had two days to adjust to the truth of my biological beginnings, but it was still a shock when the executor said, “To my daughter, Jessica James, I leave my entire estate. All patents, holdings, accounts…”

After the word accounts I’d zoned out, feeling sick to my stomach.

My daddy left on Sunday, needing to return to work. Before leaving he told me that I was his daughter. He told me he held me the day I was born and made me his, and nothing would ever change that fact. I cried. He cried. We hugged. He cleared his throat and told me to take care of my momma, and let her take care of me.

Momma stayed and tried to help me get things sorted. I’d decided it didn’t matter whose uterus I’d inhabited, my parents were my parents. They’d raised me. They’d bandaged my cuts and kissed my hurts and attended my school plays. Aunt Louisa might have left me her empty, cold estate, but she’d never tucked me in at night. She wasn’t my mother because she hadn’t been my mother.

I tried calling Duane again on Sunday. He didn’t pick up and he didn’t return the call. My heart splintered a little more.

By Tuesday evening Momma was anxious to get back for Thanksgiving, so we took one of my new-to-me cars—a new model Jaguar F-Type—and split up the fourteen-hour drive. I’d never driven a luxury sports car before. It was fun. Or rather, it would have been fun, if I hadn’t been so sad.

I told Aunt Louisa’s lawyer I would return after Christmas to make arrangements. I’d decided to wait the month because I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do.

Momma and I left early Wednesday morning and pulled into our driveway just before 10:30 p.m. We talked very little on the drive. I asked her all the obvious questions—Do you know who my biological father is? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Louisa tell me before she died? Why did you adopt me?—and she had very few answers.

She did reassure me that she chose to adopt me. That she loved me as her own and always had. But every question made her cry like the world was ending, so I stopped asking questions.

Exhausted when we arrived home, I excused myself after receiving a round of hugs from my daddy and brother, numbly took a shower, and readied myself for bed. I pulled on my favorite sleep shirt—a black silk nightshirt that fell just above my knees—woolen socks, and climbed under my covers.

Except, now I was settled and should have been feeling comfortable, but I couldn’t stop thinking. The money, what to do with it, what to do about the house and all the land, wasn’t what kept me awake. I wasn’t ready to wonder about my Aunt Louisa, or why in tarnation she’d kept me at arm’s length while she was alive and took the secret of my father’s identity to her grave. Maybe I was simmering in these questions, but I wasn’t ready to confront them. Regardless, she wasn’t at the forefront of my thoughts either.

The truth was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Duane.

During the drive home I’d decided, on I-20 someplace between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, I was going to search him out. He missed me, he’d said so. He’d offered to fly out to Houston. We’d made plans before I left, plans that included a whole night and a whole day and a rustic den of seduction in the woods. We’d made thirteen months of plans.

Now at home, I tossed and turned, wondering if I’d misunderstood or misinterpreted things between us. I replayed every conversation—every touch and every look—over and over in my head, all the words he’d said that felt like promises.

I think we’re suited.

I’ve always wanted you.

When we make love…

The house fell quiet and still I fretted. Unable to stand the sound of silence any longer, I grabbed my coat, my car keys, and the keys to Duane’s cabin.

On the way out I also nabbed a small flashlight from the kitchen drawer and pulled on my tennis shoes, not bothering to tie the laces.

Finding the turn off from Moth Run proved to be relatively easy. But I began to doubt myself and the sanity of taking a sixty-thousand-dollar sports car on a Tennessee unpaved mountain road until I spotted the rough path that led to his place. Less than three minutes later I spotted the cabin, and my breath caught in my throat.

I was momentarily paralyzed by the sight because light flickered through the windows, and what I guessed was smoke from the chimney rose into the air, made visible by how it blotted out the stars in the sky above.

Inexplicably, I was suddenly quite furious.

Riding the wave of intense anger, I put the stick shift in first gear, forcefully engaged the emergency brake, and turned off the headlights, opting to traverse the remaining distance by foot. No car was in sight—not Billy’s truck and not Duane’s Road Runner. I didn’t dwell on this trivia because with each step I grew more agitated. By the time I’d silently picked my way up the rough stone steps, I was good and pissed off.

I didn’t knock before I tried the handle, found it locked, then laughed to myself maniacally as I search for the cabin’s keys.

“No keeping this crazy lady out…” I muttered nonsensically to myself. “Hide all you want. I have a key, a key you gave me, you stupid hillbilly. You shouldn’t give a girl keys to your man cave if you don’t want her to open the door…”

No sooner had I found the keys and exclaimed Ah ha! with wild satisfaction did the door swing open. My head whipped up, a ready frown on my face, and I was assaulted with the image of a sleepy, peeved Duane Winston in nothing but unzipped blue jeans and black boxer shorts.

Of course, my frown gave way to wonder as my eyes moved over his body. Warmth permeated my bones. Goodness…I loved his body. It called to me. It wanted me to touch it. It promised to hold me and provide the comfort and reassurance I desperately needed.

“Jessica?” The truly perplexed way he said my name cut through my wishful thinking and I lifted my gaze to his, found him looking at me, stunned. Like I might be a figment of his imagination.

“I’m not drunk!” I yelled at him.

I don’t know why I volunteered this bit of information. Maybe because showing up in the middle of the night to his cabin in the woods, dressed in my pajamas and coat and untied tennis shoes, seemed like something only a drunk person would do.

His eyebrows drew together.

“Duane Winston, I…I…” I swallowed, my throat working without success. My chin wobbled, my eyes stung and—not knowing what else to do—I punched him as hard as I could in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Ow?”

“What’d you do that for?” He was rubbing his shoulder, now looking at me like I was crazy.

I wasn’t crazy. I was simply a woman scorned, in the Shakespearean sense.

“I’m mad at you!”

“You’re mad at me?”

“Yes! I needed you and you don’t love…” I trailed off, unable to complete the sentence and moving to punch him again even as tears blurred my vision.

Obviously anticipating my intent, he easily intercepted my wrist and used my momentum to pull me forward, into the cabin. He kicked the door shut and caught me around the waist before I could face-plant on the floor in front of the fire.

“Stop—”

“I’m so mad at you.” I thrashed against his hold, the tears now streaming freely down my face. “I thought we were in this together, I thought you wanted me, I thought you’d be there for me when I needed you! But I tell you how I feel and you want to talk about it later? Was this all a set up? A big lie? Did you ever want me at all?”