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As usual, it was better than the one I’d tried out yesterday, and I hadn’t thought she’d be able to top the apple barbecue pulled pork.
I dipped it in the sauce, and then discovered in the next bite that it was even better with marinara. I should have taken her advice the first time.
The plate was empty within a few minutes, and I put it in the dishwasher, congratulating myself again for getting the job of official taste tester for the menu Skye was working on.
It was kind of ridiculous that she actually thought that eating her creations was some kind of help to her, or any sort of sacrifice on my part.
It was an occupation I thoroughly enjoyed.
Another winner, sweetheart.
That sandwich definitely needed to stay on the menu. Right alongside the five other ones I’d sampled in the last five days.
I was going through the mail that Hastings had dropped off at the house when my daughter and her mom came through the door.
“So, what did you think?” she asked immediately.
Maya ran toward me like a runaway train, and I scooped her up and told Skye, “The best one yet.”
She rolled her eyes. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s true. You outdo yourself every single day. Your deli is going to be a huge hit.”
She beamed at me. “I hope so. You should hope so, too, since we’re partners.”
I didn’t want to burst her bubble by reminding her that I could well afford the loss if the place didn’t fly. The success of her new restaurant was something I desperately wanted to see because it was important to her.
Honestly, I knew it would be a success, because Skye didn’t know the meaning of failure. She’d bust her ass until the place was running exactly the way she wanted it.
At some point, I knew I’d end up calling her on working too much. But for now, she was sticking to our bargain of knocking off at a reasonable time so we could spend our evenings with Maya.
My daughter hugged me, kissed my cheek, and then politely asked me to put her down because she wanted to go practice her piano.
I watched her scamper away, and I put my arms around Skye. “Everything is going to be fine. Don’t drive yourself crazy. You have a great design for the new place, and I guarantee the menu will be very well received. It’s unique and different.”
She put her arms around my neck and kissed me before she answered, “I hope so. I guess I could have just redecorated and reopened, but I really think the café needed a change. It was outdated in more than just the décor. The menu was stale and old. This is a beach town. People are looking for something unique, something that stands out.”
“You needed to make it into something that was really you. I know it’s been in the family for a while, but there’s no reason why it can’t change to be something you want.”
She nodded. “It’s stayed the same for way too long. How are things going for you?”
“Great,” I said. “Construction will start on time. And I already have some boats purchased. They’ll be delivered next week. I’ll have to work on getting some sources for the stuff I can’t get here. But I have time. I’m not expecting this to get built up overnight. When Eli gets back, I’ll pick his brain for some advice.”
“They’ll be back on Saturday,” she reminded me. “It seems like Jade has been gone forever.”
I nodded. “I agree. I’ll be happy to see Eli, too. Maybe he can help me out a little with the business side of this new venture. I know the operational part of it, but not the details of the actual business side.”
“It’s got to feel crazy sometimes, right?” she asked. “I mean, you used to fish for other people, and now you’re doing a start-up yourself.”
Honestly, it was unreal. Had somebody told me a few years ago that I’d end up a billionaire who was trying to build my own giant seafood company, I would have told them that they were out of their mind.
But it was happening. “Sometimes, I still don’t believe it,” I shared with her. “How does a poor guy like me end up with a life like this?”
“But you’ve worked hard your entire life, Aiden. If anybody deserves this life, it’s you.”
“Plenty of people work hard, and they don’t become this rich,” I grumbled. “In fact, there’s very few people in the entire world as rich as we are. And the vast majority of them were born into some money.”
“They didn’t work like you did. You sacrificed everything to keep your family together.”
“So did the rest of my family.”
She smiled at me. “I rest my case. They’re all loaded now, too.”
I grinned back at her. “Smartass.”
I reluctantly let her go as she went to pick up Maya’s backpack and school stuff to put away.
I went back to sifting through mail while she left the room to put things away in Maya’s bedroom.
I tossed most of the stuff I’d gotten into the trash. Since I’d purchased an expensive house, I got offers for everything from mortgages to credit cards.
Why did it seem like the entire world knew I was now incredibly rich?
One interesting thing about being wealthy was that I sure as hell got a lot of mail.
A year or two ago, I was worrying about having enough money to buy groceries.
And now I got preapproved offers for an endless amount of high-limit credit cards, mortgages, and lines of credit—like I needed that.
Pretty crazy for a guy who only knew how to fish for a living.
I kept trashing things until I got to the bottom of the pile.
The last piece of mail caught my attention because it was about something I’d pretty much forgotten about.
Maya and I had taken a paternity test soon after Skye had informed me that Maya was mine.
Now, it seemed like we’d done that ages ago.
It had become so unimportant that I hadn’t even thought about the test until I saw the reminder just now.
I went to toss it into the trash, unopened.
Maya was my daughter.
I had no doubt about that, and neither did any of my family. She looked just like Brooke and Jade when they were little.
And she looked like . . . me.
My offspring had me tied around her little finger, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know that she did, because she was such a good kid. I’d been blessed with the best child ever. Hell, she even had manners, but that was something I could thank Skye for. She hadn’t learned those from me.
I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but I’d gotten so accustomed to being her father that I couldn’t imagine a life without Maya and Skye anymore. So many little things had made us all close.
The family dinners with just the three of us.
Getting Harry Potter read to me and Skye every night.
Maya’s warm hugs that made me feel like the luckiest dad in the world.
Our weekends, and planning fun things to fill every Saturday and Sunday.
It was almost unbelievable that the two of them hadn’t always been here, because I felt like we’d been together forever.
They were my whole damn world now.
I didn’t need proof from some damn laboratory to tell me that Maya was my daughter. She had been from the first moment I’d seen her.
But for some reason, I hesitated instead of trashing the results.
