Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires, #2)(58)

He’d never been gullible or stupid, but now probably wasn’t the time to try to convince him of that.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what had happened, or why we’d gotten the wrong result. But I did know the truth, something that he definitely didn’t want to hear right now.

“All I can say is that it’s a mistake,” I said softly. “I don’t know what happened, but you know I wasn’t with anybody before you, and I sure as hell wasn’t with anybody soon after. We need to call the lab.”

His expression was tormented. “Do you know how many guys probably do that, just fucking hoping the test was wrong?”

I got that he was angry, but I refused to let him keep using me as a verbal punching bag. He’d hate himself for it later, because that was just how Aiden was made.

I put my hands on my hips. “It is wrong. There’s no question about that. The only answer I need is how it got screwed up.”

“I can’t do this anymore, Skye,” he said as he dropped the papers on the counter.

He didn’t say another word as he walked to the garage and left.

A few moments later, I heard the sound of the garage door opening and closing, and then the engine noise of his truck fading away.

I took a deep breath, and then let it out. Tears leaked from my eyes. The pain of all he’d said was gut wrenching. Yeah, I understood that he might be justified in his anger, but it killed me that he hadn’t even listened, or considered the fact that it could have been a mistake.

Damn emotions. I was better off when I couldn’t let them come to the surface.

Now that I had, I was pretty much screwed.

The pain of watching Aiden walk away was almost more than I could bear.

I picked up the papers and looked for contact information.

They close at five p.m.

There was no way I was going to get any answers tonight.

And what would happen if they told me that there was no mistake?

I knew better, but Aiden didn’t.

And I had no idea if I could eventually talk him into doing the test again with a different lab.

“Mom, did Dad just leave? I saw his truck from the window of the music room,” my daughter asked anxiously as she came into the kitchen.

I swiped at my tears before I turned to her. “He did. But I’m sure he’ll be back.”

Eventually.

At the moment, there was no reasoning with him.

“Why did he go? It’s time for dinner.”

I smiled at her. “Dinner is coming up. I was going to make hamburgers. Do you want to go hang out at Aunt Jade’s place to make them? I have a key.”

My best friend had told me to feel free to use her place anytime while she was gone. And I was going to take her up on her offer. I really didn’t want to be around to fight with Aiden when he came back. I was pretty certain he wasn’t going to just blow off steam that easily.

His heart was understandably broken because he thought his daughter really wasn’t his blood. And nothing I could do right now would convince him that she was.

“Why would we want to go there? Dad’s house is nicer.”

Good Lord! Nobody had ever told me how to explain fights to an eight-year-old. And the situation was so much different from when she’d only had a stepfamily that constantly ignored her.

But I never lied to Maya. Okay, maybe just a little about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but she was getting old enough that she knew the truth about those things anyway.

“Something . . . happened. And your dad is a little upset with me. But he’ll get over it. He got some bad information. That’s all. I don’t blame him for being angry, but I can’t get the right information until tomorrow.” That should work, right? I wasn’t blaming Aiden or saying anything bad about him.

“Mom, you can just say that you and Dad had a fight. My friends’ parents fight all the time. I think it’s kind of normal.”

I frowned at her. “Do you think so?”

She shrugged. “When you love somebody, they can still make you mad, right? My friends say their parents get upset about money sometimes, or other stupid stuff.”

I watched as she climbed up on a stool at the breakfast bar. Her eyes were nearly level with mine, and she didn’t look all that concerned.

“It was kind of ridiculous, but I think he needs some time to come to his senses,” I explained, marveling over the fact that sometimes kids could simplify things that seemed pretty complicated to adults.

She nodded. “Then we can go to Aunt Jade’s. It would be fun. But can we come back here tomorrow? I think we’ll both miss Dad.”

I was teary-eyed. My daughter was right. We were both going to be missing Aiden. I could only hope that he didn’t push Maya out of his life before he had confirmation that she really was his daughter.

“I don’t know. We’ll see what your dad says, okay?”

There was no way in hell I was going to let my daughter know that her father had questioned whether or not he was her biological father. It would crush her if she thought he was rejecting her in any way.

“He won’t stay mad,” she said reasonably. “He never does.”

“That’s because you’ve never given him a reason to be all that angry at you. You’re a good girl, Sugar Bug.”

She might be curious and inquisitive, but my daughter was far from being a brat. I rarely had to set my foot down with her, and Aiden was so patient that I doubted she’d ever seen her father this ticked off. Which was another reason it was better if I stayed at Jade’s for now.