Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(104)

“A lot more,” agreed Connor quietly. Another measured pause passed before Connor finally dropped the first bomb. “Dani doesn’t know this but Eric is actually one of the senior partners in the firm Victoria and I started up last year.”

That Luke hadn’t been expecting. Not by a longshot. It occurred to him then that aside from Connor’s good friend Victoria, he didn’t have a clue who else was in the Pierson Sullivan firm. Knowing the man that had hurt Dani was still linked to their circle of friends made his protective instincts go on full alert.

He barely managed to keep the calm in his voice as he asked the most obvious question, “What in God’s name were you thinking hiring a man like that?”

Connor sighed. “He’s an exceptional lawyer, and despite all evidence to the contrary, a good guy as well.”

Shit. Even though every enraged, rabidly possessive cell in his body didn’t want to hear any context in which a man like Eric could be a good guy, Luke couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to know. “Is this another one of those things that isn’t your story to tell?” he grunted, fully prepared to drag the story out of Connor somehow.

Connor paused for a long moment before relenting, “No. This one I can tell you. Because I think you need to hear it.”

The silent suggestion for Luke to sit down hung there at the end of the sentence like an ominous warning, so Luke sat. And listened.

A half hour later, he wished to hell and back that he hadn’t asked.



*



HE WAS out of his mind.

Luke pulled up to the apartment complex address Derek had texted him and took another minute to think about what Connor had told him, and what he was getting ready to do with that information.

This wasn’t a gamble.

This was a risk, plain and simple. But a necessary one.

Dani deserved to know the whole story about the man she’d once loved in the very way she was afraid to love now.

Even if it meant Luke might end up losing her to him.

He rang the doorbell and waited. Prayed he was doing the right thing. Prayed that even if it wasn’t the right thing for him, it would mend the scars on her heart that she had never allowed to heal.

“Luke.” A red-eyed Dani dragged the door open in surprise, her voice gut-wrenchingly tattered around the edges. “What are you doing here?”

He’d rehearsed this in his head—the band aid-ripping approach he’d had all planned out. But one look at her and all he could do was drag her into his arms and hold her until she finally stopped fighting. Until she dissolved against him and allowed herself to be held, comforted. Loved.

God, I can’t lose her. Don’t let me lose her.

Luke helped Dani sit down and said softly, “Honey, I know nothing can take the pain away right now. And no amount of talking will make the loss of your father any more fathomable or manageable.” He knew from experience. “But I’m hoping this will help you with some of the anger, confusion, and hurt that’s tied into it all.”

She pulled back and looked questioningly at the print-out of the information he’d found online shortly after talking to Connor. It took a mere second for her to see the relevant names that would effectively rewrite history for her in one fell swoop.

“Luke, why are you showing me Eric’s mother’s obituary notice?”

This was the first time he’d heard her say that name without disdain and resentment.

Which simply served to multiply his worries ten-fold.

“Sweetheart, look at the date Eric’s mother died.”

“February 15th. Three years ago,” she whispered as her eyes shot back up to find answers to questions Luke knew she’d never known to ask.

Luke sat on the coffee table in front of her to tell her the side of the story Connor had been unsuccessful in getting her to listen to. Not that anyone blamed her for not wanting to even hear the man’s name mentioned. “Honey, Eric’s mother had been diagnosed the year before with an aggressive blood cancer, which he’d apparently cleaned out his savings and sold anything of value he had to pay for the bone marrow treatments she needed to stay alive.”

Dani blinked and murmured, “He used to live in this tiny studio apartment in Phoenix.” A slow dawning look of understanding crept across her face. “And I remember one of his friends asking him once why he was driving a piece-of-shit car instead of a car worthy of a junior partner at the second biggest law firm in the city.” She shook her head. “I just thought he was down-to-earth, unlike his other lawyer friends. And I’d appreciated him all the more for it.”

Luke gripped the edge of the coffee table and pushed himself to keep going. “But even after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that year on her treatment, his mother’s condition still worsened. She didn’t have much time left, and the only option remaining was gene therapy, which again, his mother’s insurance wouldn’t cover.”

Dani’s eyelids fluttered shut in pain. Three deep breaths sawed in and out of her before she asked hoarsely, “So you’re telling me that Eric did what he did to try and save his mother’s life?”

“Yes.”

With a quiet headshake filled with hurt and a completely new variety of confusion, she asked, “Why didn’t he tell me? He never even talked about his mother. All I knew was that his mother lived out East.”