AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And Susan. She’d lied, too. In that call right before Christmas, she’d told Valerie that Kirk had threatened her. That he had a violent temper. That she was afraid for her life.
Valerie had told Susan to have her attorney file an order of protection. Looking through the pages Leah had handed back, she saw that it had been done. And that he hadn’t requested a hearing to fight the allegation within the allotted ten-day timeframe.
An order of protection against Kirk Chandler? She couldn’t imagine it.
Kirk was certain he was Colton’s father.
Susan was certain he was not.
And she’d suffered so much already.
Kirk was suffering, too. Although, now that she thought about it, Valerie wasn’t so sure anymore. The man must be a consummate liar. A master of evasion. No wonder he could afford that house of his. He was a barracuda. An immoral, conniving man who’d fathered a little girl he’d never known.
He was just like Thomas.
He was the man she’d fallen in love with.
“I had to identify Thomas’s car after the accident.” She had no idea where the words came from. Or why. But one look at the compassion on her assistant’s face and Valerie couldn’t stop the flow.
“I saw the stains on the front of the car—where he’d hit the little girl.” She stopped, her sight turned inward to images she usually tried to suppress.
“
And the first time I met Susan… After I saw the obituary in the paper, the picture of that child’s innocent, smiling face, I went around to Susan’s house to offer my condolences, to see if there was anything I could do.”
Valerie closed her eyes. “I stood there in Susan’s house, seeing this ashen woman surrounded by boxes, the remnants of a life that had ended. The woman was only half-alive herself.”
Leah didn’t say much, just sat and listened as Valerie relived some of the worst moments of that time in her life.
LATER, in the Mercedes heading home long before she felt ready, Valerie tuned in to her favorite classical station. She hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot before her mind was once again stumbling over memories too painful for words.
Where had Kirk Chandler been while his ex-wife was dying inside? Out hunting down deals? People he could force out of business? Susan had said he’d owned an acquisitions firm. That he’d built his reputation on successful hostile takeovers.
That thought led to more memories, things Susan had told her about her ex-husband, how his work had consumed his life, how it had been all about winning. She remembered how she’d thought that Susan’s ex-husband and her own had been cast from the same mold.
On the freeway, as she headed from Mesa to Ahwatukee, Kirk’s more recent actions took on new meaning. Like his refusal to back down with Abraham. Or Brian, for that matter. Yes, with Brian his approach had worked. But with Abraham? She’d assumed he’d stopped seeing the boy, but had he? Suddenly she didn’t think so.
And although the decision to remove Abraham from his home had been extremely difficult, Valerie trusted her judgment on that one. Did guys like Kirk Chandler trust theirs? Or did they just push hard enough to get what they wanted? The man had no scruples. She didn’t know a lot about Kirk Chandler the businessman. It had only taken one episode related by Susan to give her a measure of the man. He’d put his own father out of business in a hostile takeover.
Chilled, Valerie remembered the night Kirk had told her about his father’s selling of the family business. She understood now the odd note in his voice when he’d told her he’d approved of the sale.
Exiting the freeway, Valerie passed the new mall without a glance. Unscrupulous in business, Kirk Chandler had also never been a father to Alicia or a husband to Susan. And that about said it all.
He was Thomas all over again. The last thing her boys needed.
Thinking of the twins reminded her of the night Kirk had told her about his son. The fierce need to be a father to the boy hadn’t been faked. It couldn’t have been.
So could Kirk be that baby’s father?
And didn’t he have a right to know if he was?
As she sped through town, getting ever closer to home, thoughts of the man she’d known these past months crowded her mind. Whatever he’d been in the past, right now he was nothing more than a crossing guard at an elementary school. Well, that plus playground monitor and lunchroom supervisor. And, of course, a basketball coach.
And he’d been all the father any boy could have hoped for when Blake was so sick on Christmas Day. More of a father than their own had ever been.
It had to be a mistake. She’d make a call first thing in the morning and find out that this was all some horrible coincidence—that there were two men with the same name at the same address involved in a paternity suit. Because that was all her Kirk and Susan’s Kirk had in common. A name. An address. And a paternity suit.
By the time she crawled into bed that night with a colossal headache, sick with confusion, Valerie had made one decision. She was going to call Susan Douglas in the morning and recommend that she take Colton in for a paternity test. It was the only way the woman would ever find any peace.
