Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(77)

A man just knows his woman. Even if she isn’t his anymore.

Simone had looked like every other skinny rich bitch trophy wife I’d seen drinking wine at post-game parties or at the charitable events we typically ran in the off season. Simone was in her early forties, at least five years younger than my father, but she hadn’t seemed to age well. She was younger than my mom and looked a good fifteen years older.

I asked him about it later, after Kona had politely—almost gallantly—escorted Simone into a nearby coffee shop and I spent some time with her son, keeping him occupied while we both played pinball on the vintage machine tucked in the back corner. They talked for a good half hour, and I lost what must have been a whole row of quarters, but it worked. Dad found out what he wanted, and I kept her son from getting caught up in it all.

“One look at her, those wrinkles around her eyes and I knew.” Kona shook his head, relaxing an arm on the steering wheel as we drove back to Mandeville.

“Knew what?” I asked, not getting why he wasn’t bouncing off the walls happy. Then Dad looked at me, frowning.

“She’s sick.” He didn’t elaborate, but I made out the lines that moved across his forehead while he stared ahead at the long bridge in front of us. “She wouldn’t say what it was, but I got the point.”

“When did you figure that out?”

He didn’t move his head to look at me, but still shifted his gaze in my direction. “When you took her kid to the pinball machine. She watched that boy like she thought someone might run in and snatch him.” Dad adjusted his body, holding the wheel steady with his knee as he unbuttoned his jacket. “I remember being like that when Koa and Mack were little things. Not so much now. Simone’s kid is fourteen. She should be worried about him sneaking smokes or trying to talk naive girls into letting him feel them up. Not him playing pinball.”

“You asked her about it?”

“Yeah. Like I said,” he loosened his tie, finally slipping it over his head, “she didn’t say what she had, but I could tell it was serious. Simone was never the type to let herself go and trust me, she has in the past thirteen years. She’d started in on Botox at twenty-five. No way the woman I was with would skip that unless something serious kept her from it.”

“Maybe she’s just broke now. You said she never got married after you broke up.” Dad had filled me in on his ex that morning while he dressed. He made the suit look good, to say the least. That was something else I was grateful Dad had passed down to me—the ability to work a damn suit like he had that morning. Poor woman hadn’t stood a chance when Kona strolled her way, using that Hale Demon Magic, as Mom called it, to put Simone at ease once the shock of seeing him had ebbed.

“She’s not broke, keiki kane. Her priorities have shifted.”

It was the boy, I realized. The one that had met his mother before she’d made it down the steps. Across the sidewalk I had watched him, holding onto his mother’s elbow, helping her down the steps in a way that you didn’t often see with kids his age. It was more than respect, more than affection and seeing it that afternoon had me a little taken aback when I understood the kid had me smiling despite what his mom was trying to claim about him. The boy was loyal to his mother. His single mother. Just like I’d been at that age.

“She didn’t scream or bitch like I thought she would.” Dad only acknowledged me with a lift of his chin. There was an odd, faraway expression on his face as though whatever Simone had told him either severely pissed him off or made him incredibly sad. Maybe it was a little of both. “How much did Cass pay her?”

“Nothing,” Dad said and when he did, that sad melancholy left his features, transformed by the twitch working along his cheek as though his anger hummed beneath his skin. “That mother f*cker just put the idea in her head. Tracked her down, made it seem like your mom and I were heading toward a divorce.” Kona glanced at me, teeth pressed together in a grind. “That * told her it would be a prime time for her to get some cash out of me since I’d be eager to keep anything that threatened my bank account from Keira. He actually convinced Simone that I cared more about my money than my family.” His focus back on the road, Dad squeezed the wheel, moving his large hands as though he needed something to hold onto. “She should have known better than that, but, hell, I guess I know now why she was desperate. She’s got a kid that’ll need support if she doesn’t get better.”

“A kid she tried to say was yours.” Dad nodded, moving one hand from the wheel to rub at the bridge of his nose. “Koa, me, even Mack, there’s no denying us.” Dad jerked his head to the right, glaring at me as though he thought I was saying he might actually try it. His reaction was swift and so abrupt that I laughed, watching his features relax immediately. “I’m saying, not that you’d want to deny it, but a blind fool could see we belong to you. It’s the blood, Makua kane. Your genes are strong.” A quick flush warmed my face when my father smiled at me. He liked it when I called him Makua kane.

“That kid…” I started, trying to distract myself from my father’s broad smile, how he seemed unable to keep if off his mouth. “It was obvious at the arcade. That boy was different from us. Nowhere similar to looking like he belonged to you.” The kid had been shy, so quiet around me and hadn’t looked Dad in the eyes once, though Kona had tried repeatedly to engage him. But…Anthony…that was his name, had eagerly shied away, leaving the conversation to his mother. I’d gotten the feeling that he knew damn well who his father was. “He’s tall, and lanky, sure, but he has no bulk.”