DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(94)

And then I groaned. Pain tore through me so quickly that I couldn’t hold it all in. Tears fell, staining the papers Jack and I had argued over all morning. I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t brush them away fast enough to get ahead.

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded again.

I looked up, looked at Harrison through a sheen of tears.

“Because I finally did the one thing that we both should have done from the beginning. I asked JT what he wanted.”

“And this is it?”

“He wants to know you. He wants to know the life he might have had if his birth mother hadn’t given him up.”

Harrison looked away for a brief moment, that tendon jumping in his jaw again. I wanted to go to him, wanted to touch him. I wanted to make the tension go away, wanted to make him forget about all the anger and the hurt and the pain we’d dished out on one another since this began. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place.

I stood and pushed the papers toward him.

“That’s for you and your lawyer. I’ve already signed it.”

I started to move past him, eager to go home and hide under my covers for a day or two or ten. I half hoped that Harrison would stop me from leaving the room. But he just watched me, his expression unreadable. I walked out of the room and found Jack waiting at the elevators. The corridor was quiet again, only the two women who were there with Harrison, his lawyer, and another, older woman all sitting together on a low bench. They looked up expectantly when I walked out, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t know what to say to them.

I joined Jack at the elevator. I thought my knees might give out on me, but I managed to stay on my feet until we got to the parking lot.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

I shook my head. But there was really nothing to say, was there? It was over.

I turned to get into my car when a man suddenly appeared beside me.

“Are you a friend of Harrison Philips?”

“Excuse me?”

The man held a digital recorder near my mouth. “Could you tell me why Harrison Philips was appearing in family court today?”

“That’s none of your business,” Jack said, trying to move between me and the obnoxious stranger.

“Is it true he has an illegitimate child?”

“Leave!” Jack demanded, shoving the guy’s shoulder.

“I will find out,” the man insisted. “And that will be big news. Your face will be all over the tabloids by morning.”

I sighed.

That would be just my luck.

And then my cellphone rang.

“Penny? It’s Nick.”

“What’s up?” I asked, hoping that nothing had gone wrong at the bakery. That was all I needed on top of everything else.

“It’s JT. We’re at the hospital.” He hesitated a beat. “It’s bad, Penny.”

I didn’t even stop to hear the rest. I jumped into the car and sped off, my only thought a prayer.

Please, God, please.





Chapter 18


Harrison

“What’s going on?”

Anger was burning in my chest, but it was anger directed at my mother, not Penelope. I didn’t want her to think I was angry with her. In fact, I just wanted this day to be over.

I was still reeling from the revelations my mother had made. Hell, I was still reeling from the fact that Libby had her here without talking to me. Like this day wasn’t stressful enough. Today the judge would speak to my son and decide if he should live with me or his sister, Penelope. And, as desperately as I wanted a relationship with the child that was taken from me without my knowledge, I didn’t want to hurt Penelope.

And now she was standing in front of me, her face puffy and blotchy from all the tears she’d been shedding.

Why did this have to be so hard on everyone? Why wouldn’t she take me up on my attempts to work this out outside of court?

She sank down into one of the chairs stationed around the small conference table where she sat, exhaustion visible in every line of her beautiful face.

“Jack drew up a paper that says we acknowledge that the adoption was never legal,” she said in a soft, emotionally drained voice. “By signing the paper, you agree to allow me visitation with JT a couple of times a year.”

I tilted my head slightly, trying to wrap my mind around what she’d just said. Did she really just do a three-sixty?

“Why?”

“Because you were right. We shouldn’t be putting JT through all of this.”

“So you’re just going to let me walk away with him?”

She groaned, nearly doubling over with the hurt that flashed through her eyes. It killed me to see it, killed me to know I was the cause of all that pain. It ripped through my own anger, my own fears and hurt. It tore everything away and left me feeling raw inside.

She was really sacrificing her own desires to do the right thing. I have never known anyone else who was so willing to do that.

No one.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded again, needing to know she was doing this for the right reasons.

She looked up, tears making her beautiful eyes look like sparkling jewels.

“Because I finally did the one thing that we both should have done from the beginning: I asked JT what he wanted.”