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A million questions assailed his brain, and he didn’t want to speak to the one person who had all the answers. How long had she planned to keep him in the dark? Until Kendall was eighteen?
Kendall. Kendall Brody. He liked it. Unless it was Kendall Sandoval—he liked that, too.
He stepped into the shower and let the hot spray pummel his back. He still had Christina on his hands and lips. He turned to face the showerhead, grabbing the little bar of soap from the shower caddy. He lathered up his hands and washed away her scent, opened his mouth and filled it with water.
Who was he kidding? He’d never wash her away. And if he wanted to be a part of his daughter’s life, he’d have to find some way to work with Christina. He did want to be a part of Kendall’s life.
Even though he’d never wanted kids. He’d made that clear to Christina before they’d gotten engaged. She was fine with it—then.
Is that why she hadn’t told him about her pregnancy?
He cursed and aimed the spray of water at his face. Why was he making excuses for her? She’d gotten pregnant and had a baby, his baby, and never told him about it. How did you excuse that?
He finished his shower and got dressed. Standing in the middle of the floor, he stared at the door leading to Christina’s room. What now? They still had a case to solve.
His gaze shifted to his laptop on the table by the window. And he had a report to finish for Rich and the SFPD. Hell, maybe the SFPD could take over from here. They’d know the local witch scene better than he and Christina did.
Although she seemed to know more about her father’s coven than she’d let on—just another deception on her part. She was probably holding out on him so she could swoop in and solve the case by herself.
He twirled the chair around and straddled it, resting his chin on the back and skimming the words of his report.
He reached around the chair, brought up a search engine and typed in Kendall Brody. Did a two-year-old have an internet footprint yet? A Realtor and a weathercaster popped up. He tried Kendall Sandoval next and found a collegiate volleyball player. What did he expect to find? All of the answers lay on the other side of that wall.
The knock came and he closed out of the search engine.
“Yeah?”
“Can we talk now, Eric? If you don’t want to, I understand.”
He slid off the back of the chair and threw the door open. She’d replaced her high heels with flip-flops and her shorter stature made her look vulnerable and small. Probably calculated.
“Come on in.” He turned his back on her and retreated to the window. He tugged on the rod for the filmy white curtains and gazed into the bustling street below.
She remained standing, too, twisting her fingers in front of her. “I want to tell you why I kept Kendall from you—at first—because I always planned to tell you about her.”
“When you needed help with college expenses?”
She pressed her lips together. “Before that. I’m not gonna make excuses for myself, but we had decided we weren’t going to have kids, right?”
He nodded.
“You had some crazy idea that you wouldn’t be a good father because of your kidnapping experience, or maybe you were just afraid. I could never fathom the big strong Eric Brody being afraid of anything, but I saw what happened when you lost that kid.”
“Noah Beckett.” His shoulders ached with a heaviness he thought he’d shrugged off a year ago.
“I remember his name.” Her words were a whisper. “Noah’s death only convinced me further to keep my pregnancy from you. I know you blamed yourself for that debacle, but it was the Bureau, the Bureau’s policies, not you that caused Noah’s death.”
“When did you know you were pregnant?” His jaw felt stiff as he formed the words.
“I suspected just about the time the Beckett case ended.”
“That’s a pretty way of putting it.”
She flicked her fingers in the air. “Then I knew for sure after you discovered my notes, accused me of using you to write about your family and then dumping me. I found out for sure then.”
“And you didn’t get on the phone and let me know, why?”
She laughed, a hard and brittle sound. “Hello, Eric? You had just dumped me because you didn’t trust me, and now I was pregnant when I’d already agreed to your no-kids policy. Yeah, that would’ve gone over really well.”
“So? At that point, it was no longer about you.”
A shaky breath escaped her lips and she dipped her head, her long hair falling across her face. “I realize that. There was also the small matter of contacting you. You’d taken a leave of absence, dropped off the radar. Nobody knew where you were. Your brothers didn’t know, or you’d given them orders not to tell me.”
