Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(118)
“Okay,” she says, reaching for his offered business card. When their fingers brush and she feels the smooth zip of electricity that had first pulled them together all those years ago, her eyes move on their own, straight into his. She knows he feels it too. That, at least, had not been buried with time. The attraction, the chemistry that she once excused away as first love. “I… I—” she can’t find words sensible enough, worthy enough of this situation. How do you excuse away something like this? What reason was rational enough for keeping someone’s child from them? Nothing she says would erase the scowl from his face, would make their bodies relax.
Kona attempts a step away from her, a shuffle of his feet that he doesn’t quite manage before he turns around, before he is inches from her face. “Of everyone… everyone, I never thought you could be this cruel.”
“It’s complicated, Kona.”
“It’s cruel. Complicated or not, Keira, it’s f*cking cruel.”
His home felt too intimate for this. He didn’t want Keira there and Kona would not meet her at his mother’s home. Those two women had always hated each other. It would be a weird, awkward meeting and he didn’t need his mother interfering. She’s was good at that, always has been. If Keira the woman was anything like the girl Kona once loved, then there would be words, anger, shouts and Kona didn’t want his mother in the middle of it.
When Keira called a few hours before, he could hear the worry, the fear in her voice. She should be worried. She should be nervous. Keira had hurt him worse than anything he’d ever done to her.
He wasn’t sure them meeting in a hotel room was exactly smart, but he knew his anger had quieted the earlier feelings of desire he felt the moment he saw her. One call and his credit card number had emptied the floor. They would have this conversation in the quiet and empty space of a hotel room. He didn’t think about the bedroom behind him. He wouldn’t need to. It would take everything in him to stop screaming.
He had a son; a nearly grown son. He shook his head again trying to recall the boy’s face. He’d known him instantly, felt drawn to him just as he had been to his mother all those years ago when she’d put on a front and threatened him not to slack on their joint project. Same as with Keira, something shouted in his subconscious that this boy was his. He doesn’t need a test to tell him the truth.
Kona walks to the bar, uses his fingers to fist out a few cubes of ice and fills his glass with Scotch. The liquor burns his throat and he craves the sensation. He hopes it will quell his anger. He hopes it will stop his hands from shaking. They’ve not stopped shaking since this morning when he watched Keira walk away with Leann yammering in her ear.
He hadn’t told anyone what he’d discovered. He didn’t know how to tell anyone. Another swig from his glass and Kona sits in the plush hotel recliner, thumb and index finger on his temples as he tries to rub away the tension there. He thinks of the life the boy had to endure. Kona had missed everything, absolutely everything. His birth, first steps, first words; how could Keira do this to him? That’s all he wanted to know. Not where she’d been or how, as an eighteen year old kid, she’d managed to raise their son on her own. There were a million questions running through his head; a million more worries.
He didn’t care about the crowd watching them this morning. He didn’t care about the gossip or the attention or what the existence of this boy would mean for his career. He only cared that she had kept him away, ignorant that he’d created something he’d longed for. He wanted children, a wife, something that anchored him; something that tethered him to a home, to comfort, to love.
He’d tried. With Simone… with Caroline Williams when he was fresh out of college, but they’d always complained Kona wasn’t giving them everything. They wanted more from him. They wanted real and he’d always seemed unable to give them that. Every face he touched, wasn’t soft enough, didn’t affect him. Every mouth he kissed, he found flaw in. Every woman that promised him tomorrow, he did not feel that same raw connection that he had as a college sophomore with the hot-tempered, blue-eyed girl. The mother of his child.
He feels sick again, dizzy with rage. But he knows he cannot stay angry. He knows that he will have to tamp down this shock, this anger if he wants answers.
Kona downs what’s left of the Scotch and sets the glass on the table in front of him, leaving a wet circle on the wood. He tries not to think about the expression on Keira’s face when she saw him watching their son. It was part shock, part fear, and he knows, because he had memorized her every expression, all those obvious tweaks and quivers that laid her emotions on her face, that she was sorry.
Good, he thought. Feeling like shit is the least she could do.
Two sharp knocks on the door and Kona’s gaze snaps to it. He waits, it would be good for her to wait, let her stew in her guilt. His steps are slow, calm and Kona pulls his anger down, tries to breathe through his nose as he hovers his hand over the doorknob. “Shit,” he says when his fingers will not stop trembling and squeezes a fist tight so his knuckles grow white. He tries like hell not to get excited that Keira is on the other side of that door.
Three fast inhalations to get his heart back to a normal pace then Keira is standing before him and the door shakes under Kona’s grip. This would be easier if she looked like shit, if the years had not been kind to her. If she’d let herself go, gotten sloppy, uncaring about her health. But none of those things happened. She is still flawless to him; skin pale, eyes wide and Kona can’t help himself. His eyes move on their own, over her face, down to the firm swell of her breasts held together between the straps of a modest flowered sundress. His gaze dips lower and Kona blinks at those strong legs, the muscular calves, even to the painted pink polish on her toenails. He steps back, waves her in and tries not to watch the sway of her hips or the mesmerizing curve of her ass.