Dirty Little Secret E-Book

Michelle Love

• Herausgeber: Michelle Love
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

She was my teenage wildfire—burned me up, then disappeared with our secret.
Now I’m a doctor, a father to the son she lost, and she’s back—untamed, pouring shots, clueless about us.
I’m steady steel; she’s a storm I can’t resist. Our boy’s got her fight, my brains, and he’s mine to guard.
One look reignites the hunger—she’s trouble I’ll conquer.
She thinks she can run again, but I’m not that kid anymore.
I’ve built a life, a legacy, and I’ll claim her to finish it.
Stakes are high, time’s short—will she fight me or finally stay for the family I demand?

Keywords: Guaranteed HEA, no cliffhangers, happily ever after. secret baby, second chance romance, billionaire, bad boy, office romance, steamy romance, contemporary romance, love books, love stories, new adult, alpha male, romance, action, adventure, steamy romance, small-town secrets, hot, alpha hero. free book, free novels, romantic novels, and sexually romantic books.
 

Leseprobe

Dirty Little Secret

A Secret Baby-Second Chance Romance (The Sons of Sin 1)

Michelle Love

Hot and Steamy Romance

Contents

Blurb

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chpater 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Sneak Peek - Chapter 1

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©Copyright 2021 by Michelle Love - All rights Reserved

In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights are reserved.

Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

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Blurb

Once upon a time, I was nothing more than a bad boy seeking all the tail I could get …

Something happened to change all that.

Suddenly, chasing women turned into chasing the dream of becoming a doctor.

Hard work and determination had me meeting my dream a hell of a lot sooner than most.

And with the title of doctor came ready and willing women, set on landing themselves a wealthy physician.

Little did they know that I would readily give them some hot, steamy memories to keep, but my heart belonged to someone else. Someone I didn’t want to share with anyone.

But then she came along, claiming what had always been only mine.

And maybe she would claim my heart as well …

Chapter 1

Zandra

Cold wind whipped around me as I climbed the stairs up to my apartment, which I shared with four roommates. Unfortunately, they were four of the messiest and most immature individuals I’d ever had the misfortune of meeting.

I’m met all of them while working as a cocktail waitress at Underground, a nightclub in Chicago, and we’d gotten along well enough to decide to live together. Little did I know that all four of them were very different people at home than they were while working with the public.

Being a few years older than any of them, at twenty-six I supposed I was just growing up a bit. That had to be the reason behind my budding impatience with the people I’d lived with for the last year.

It seemed like just yesterday that I was right there with them all, dumping clean laundry onto the floor instead of putting it in my closet, making a mess while trying to search for just the right thing to wear. Or even leaving dirty dishes in the sink with the hope that someone else would get disgusted enough with the mess to feel the urge to clean up. Yes, I was once just as filthy as they were, but things had changed in the last few months.

I had changed. Now all I wanted was a clean apartment to live in.

Is that too much to ask for?

Walking back into the quiet house after having a morning coffee at the small café down the street, I headed toward the one bathroom the five of us shared.

I would’ve loved to have been able to go to the bathroom without having to clean the damn toilet first. Two of my roommates were guys who had a habit of leaving trails of pee in places that didn’t make sense. Along the edge of the tub, around the floor near the toilet, and once even by the door, for some odd reason. And they never seemed to notice their mishaps either, leaving them for someone else to deal with.

I’d begun carrying around a little container with convenient small towelettes covered in peach-scented bleach that I would use to wipe things down. It seemed I was becoming more like my mother in this regard, a realization I disliked very much, but had no clue how to push away so I could go back to not giving a hoot about cleanliness.

In retaliation to my impending maturity, I’d gone to the salon to get my dark hair done in a more fun, youthful fashion. The new dark blue streaks might just be a visual representation of my attempt to cling to my youth, but so what? I liked them.

But even as I looked into the bathroom mirror after wiping the entire room down, I could see a new maturity in my blue eyes that hadn’t been there even a few months ago.

Yes, the streaks in my hair were the same color as my eyes. A girl likes to match, you know.

Staring disconnectedly into the eyes of the person looking back at me, that empty feeling I had at times started to creep in. Most of the time I could ignore the emptiness, but now and then it would find me and linger for a while before letting up and allowing me some relief once more.

Whenever it hit me, my life would temporary turn into a hellish existence. My dreams would turn into nightmares, and all I could do was drink coffee to keep me awake, trying to keep the bad dreams away. Wishing the feeling wouldn’t last more than a few days this time, instead of the week-long agony that had nearly drowned me the last time it hit me, I closed my eyes.

When I opened them up again, I saw myself staring back at me once more. A young woman, no longer the girl I had been. I needed to face things instead of trying to ignore or forget about them.

I had a bad past. So what?

Lots of people had bad things happen to them in their lives. Who did I think I was?

Was I invincible? Was I too good for anything bad to ever happen to me? No, I wasn’t. And I had to stop the internal berating that came along with every bout of depression.

Leaving the now-clean bathroom, I went to the bedroom I shared with the other two girls in the apartment. They were sprawled out on their little twin beds; one of them had her head at the wrong end of the bed.

I fought the urge to move her into the right position, a motherly urge that only proved to make the depressed feelings inside of me edge closer to the surface.

Tears began to sting the backs of my eyes, and I left the room to go to the kitchen and clean some more. Cleaning was fast becoming the outlet I turned to whenever the emptiness tried to claim me.

And with this crew of slobs, there was plenty of cleaning to do. The dishes needed washing, so I did the sink full of them. The floor needed to be swept and mopped, so I did that too. The fridge needed to be cleaned out, the leftovers tossed, and the entire thing wiped down with one of my handy bleach wipes as well.

By the time the first roommate woke up and dragged his ass out of bed, the kitchen sparkled, and everything smelled peachy. Standing there in his not-so-white, tighty whiteys, Dillon rubbed his brown eyes with the back of one hand as he yawned loudly. “What the hell are you doing, making all this noise on a Sunday, Zandy? We didn’t get in last night until four in the morning. Are you insane?”

Am I?

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I felt it best to ignore his question. “I’m cleaning, Dillon. A thing the rest of you must not have learned how to do yet. I’ll try to be quieter, so you guys can sleep. Sorry about that.” Apologizing for doing chores shouldn’t be something anyone should have to worry about.

I found resentment building up inside of me. These ungrateful kids should have to live in filth!

As Dillon walked wearily back to the bedroom he shared with the other guy who lived with us, I looked at the clean floor and wondered what the hell I was doing there.

My parents lived just outside of town. But I would never go back to live with them. I only talked to my mother when she called incessantly, and then only for a very short amount of time. I would let her know that I was alive and fine, but nothing more than that.

She didn’t deserve to know any more than that. Not after what she and my father had done to me.

Their evil deed had left a hole in my heart. A hole that I knew could never be repaired.

Going out the front door, I took a seat on the top stair outside our apartment. The wind still blew a thousand miles an hour, making my hair fly all around me. The cold air chilled me to my bones, as I’d come out once again without so much as a sweater on to keep me warm. Only an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans covered my body. It wasn’t enough to keep the cold out.

Fiddling with a hole in the knee of my jeans, I made it even bigger. The image of a baby made a brief appearance in my brain before I successfully pushed it aside.

No, I didn’t ever let things like that take up any space in my head. But when I fell asleep, those thoughts and images would sneak in, taking my dreams and turning them into nightmares.

Two days had already passed with little sleep. Waking up with tears on my pillow, I would get up and do anything I could to make myself stop thinking. Thinking only made it hurt worse.

Ten years have passed. Why does it still bother me so much?

Looking down at my left arm, I still couldn’t believe that I’d gotten so drunk three nights earlier that I’d gone and gotten a tattoo on the inside of my wrist.

Why did I do this to myself?

Why would I purposely do anything that would be a constant reminder of the one thing I tried desperately to forget about? Why would I put that on my body?

For the rest of my life, I’d look down and see “05/03/2008” written in baby blue ink multiple times a day. Why would I do such a hurtful thing to myself?

Only God knew why I would do such a thing, no matter what amount of alcohol I’d consumed. Or the devil. I wasn’t sure which had the strongest hold on me.

At times, it sure felt like the devil was the one who’d laid out the path my life would take.

Is there a way to change my path, or is it too late? Can there be a way out of this emptiness?

If there was, I knew now that I wouldn’t find the answer in Chicago. Of that much, I was sure.

I’d been dragged there against my will when I was just sixteen years old. When I left my parents’ home on the day I turned eighteen, I could’ve gone anywhere. I had ten thousand dollars that I’d inherited from my grandmother. She’d died when I was twelve, and the money had been left in a bank account in Charleston, South Carolina, where we’d lived most of my life.

When I turned eighteen, I gained access to that money and hauled ass out of the house I’d essentially been held captive in for two long-as-hell years. Without any other plan, into the big city of Chicago I went.

The bank card from the Charleston bank had come in the mail a few days before my birthday. It had my name on it. The accompanying letter said that it would be activated on the date of my birth and would be ready to use that very day.

I used it to buy myself a birthday present—a cab ride into town and then a week in a cheap motel. I found a job that very night at Underground.

My first roommate was a girl named Sasha who’d been working at the club for a few years. At twenty-five years old, the older woman took me under her wing, teaching me everything I needed to know in order to bring in big tips by being flirtatious and sexy.

A couple of years later she met some guy and moved out to live with him. She also quit working at the nightclub. That’s when I met a new friend. Taylor had come to work at the club when she was just eighteen, too. I was a little older by then and took her under my wing, letting her stay in Sasha’s old room.

Taylor didn’t need much coaching. She seemed to be a natural at flirting. And it didn’t hurt that she had absolutely no problem sleeping with any guy who wanted her.

I had issues with sex. My past made me it very hard for me to have any kind of eagerness for the act. It was sex that had gotten me into trouble in the first place.

As sexy as I dressed and as flirty as I was, it was all a performance. An important one, that helped me keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and a car under my ass to keep me going to and fro on my own.

Following the same routine for nearly a decade can grow tiresome. And boy, did I feel tired. Tired of looking at the same old buildings. Tired of driving down the same old streets. Tired of living with a bunch of overgrown adolescents.

The back pocket of my jeans vibrated, so I pulled out my cell phone. A smile broke the no-doubt forlorn expression my face must have settled into. As if by magic, Taylor’s name appeared on the screen.

She’d left a year ago, sparking my need to get a new roommate. I didn’t recall exactly why I kept letting people move in, but I had. I hadn’t heard from her in a good while.

“Hey, you,” I answered the call.

“Hey yourself, girlie. What’re you up to these days?” she asked me.

Shoving my hand through my hair, then holding onto it so the wind couldn’t blow it around, I sighed heavily. I didn’t know what to say. I had been up to the same old dreary thing. But to say that out loud seemed just too pathetic. “Not much. You?”

“Just working at this badass club in Charleston called Mynt,” came her enthusiastic reply.

“Mynt?” My mind wandered back to Charleston. The home I’d had to leave when I was just sixteen. Barely sixteen, really, as my mother was constantly reminding me.

Mom would remind me far too often that I was barely above fifteen when I’d gotten myself into what she liked to refer to as “the situation.” A situation, she also reminded me, that had forced her and my father to uproot our little family and move far away. Life had never been the same after that move.

“Yeah, Mynt,” Taylor said, pulling me out of my reverie. “And you want to know what I think, Zandy?”

“What do you think?” I chewed on my long fake black-painted fingernail as I waited to hear what she had to say.

“I think that you should come on down here to the South and work with me.” She paused to let that sink in as I thought about it. “I’ve got a very nice two-bedroom apartment that my roommate has just moved out of. I could use a new roomie, and who better than you to fill that role?”

Yeah, who better than me to fill that role?

Charleston sounded nice. Going back to what I had always considered my home sounded like a fantastic idea. Why not go back there?

Even if I saw anyone from my old life, it wasn’t like anyone knew why we’d left all of a sudden anyway. What harm would it do to go back to my hometown?

“And the pay at Mynt?” I asked. “Is it pretty decent?”

“Let’s just say that I make enough money to pay my bills, eat what I want, when I want, drive a nice car, and even splurge on shopping now and then with what I’m bringing home.” She laughed, the pitch high and shrill but still pleasant, as only Taylor could make it. “Please tell me that you’ll come. I’ve already talked to the boss about you. He thinks you’ll fit right in with our little family at Mynt. It’s lots of fun, Zandy. You’ll love the atmosphere. I promise you that we’ll have a great time.”

She made it sound like a great idea, and it wasn’t like I had anything holding me in Chicago. A change might be just what I needed to get the emptiness to go away. At least for a little while.

Another gust of frigid wind hit me, and I got up. My hand balled into a fist at my side; I was ready to make the big change. “It’s a miracle that you called me right at this moment, Taylor. I’ve been in a funk lately. Change is exactly what I need in my life right now.”

She sounded hopeful. “Does that mean you’ll come?”

“Yeah, I’ll come.” I went back inside to get out of the cold. “When do you want me?”

“Yesterday,” she said with light laughter threading her high voice. Taylor was the closest thing to a fairy a human woman could get, and it was utterly charming. People often called her Tinkerbell.

“Then I’ll pack up my things and give my notice at work. Then I’ll get into my car and come your way. Text me the address, and I’ll be there as soon as my wheels can get me there.”

Change was important. It’s what I’d been missing in my life lately, and without change life could be one long, dreary existence. I wanted to leave dreary behind me. Hopefully, Charleston would see to that.

Chapter 2

Kane

The crack of the bat connecting with the baseball made my heart swell with pride. “You did it, Fox! Now run, son!”

On my feet as soon as the ball started soaring, I clapped as my ten-year-old son threw the bat down then ran to first base before anyone could get a hold of the ball. “Go to second,” I called out to him, seeing that he looked a little confused about what he should do.

The coach shouted, “Go on, Fox. This could be a home run!”

My son’s first home run!

Standing, watching, not daring to breathe, I crossed my fingers, hoping that he would make it. Moments later, he slid into home base. All the parents on the bench let out a cheer, as my son run had earned his team, the Bears, the one point they needed to take the lead against their biggest rivals, the Tigers. “Way to go, boy!”

Fox waved at me with the biggest grin on his face I’d ever seen. “I did it, Dad!”

“You did!” I knew I had to be beaming.

With a nod, he headed back into the dugout where his teammates gave him high-fives and pats on the back. He’d earned them too.

Taking my seat again, I looked over at the man sitting next to me, my Uncle James. He and my Aunt Nancy, who sat on the other side of him, always joined me to watch Fox’s games.

My mother and Aunt Nancy were sisters. I owed everything to Aunt Nancy and Uncle James. They’d done the biggest favor anyone could do for another person, and they’d done it for me. They’d found the girl I’d accidentally knocked up in high school and had adopted the baby.

If it hadn’t been for a friend of mine, Bess Peterson, who’d lived next door to the Larkin family, I wouldn’t have ever known that I’d gotten Zandra Larkin pregnant. Bess had overheard the awful shouting that had taken place when Zandra’s parents had found out that she was having a baby.

Zandra and Bess weren’t friends. Zandra was mostly a loner, probably because of her parents’ strict religious beliefs. Those beliefs were probably what had put them into panic mode, whisking their only child away a few weeks after Zandra and I had hooked up at a party one night.

I’d always thought Zandra, who was a year younger than me, was pretty. Her long, dark hair, deep blue eyes, and pretty pink lips had caught my attention more often than they hadn’t. But she was shy, reclusive, and kept to herself.

That one night at that party, which I’d found out one of her few friends had dragged her to, had given me the chance to get to know her. And boy, did I get to know her!

She didn’t give me her phone number before she left me that night in my friend’s bed. I fell asleep, and she took off without waking me up. It was the end of summer, so there wasn’t any school the next week. And knowing how strict her parents were, I wasn’t about to just show up at her house unannounced.

Everyone knew how strict her mother and father were. I was afraid I might get her into trouble if I just showed up. I planned on catching up with her when school was back in session. But I never got that chance.

It was Bess who came to me when school started again. She’d seen Zandra and me together at that party, and she was pretty sure that I’d been the one to do the deed that had put Zandra’s family in such turmoil.

It seemed that Zandra’s mother kept track of her periods, and when Zandra failed to start on time, she took her to the doctor. Bess told me that she overheard Zandra’s parents screaming that she wasn’t going to get to keep the baby and blaming her for ruining all of their lives. They repeatedly asked Zandra for the name of the boy she’d been with, but Zandra refused to tell them a thing.

Some other boys in that position might’ve counted themselves lucky that they didn’t have to deal with any of it. Instead, I went home and told my parents what I’d done. I told them that I knew Zandra had been a virgin before me. She’d told me so, and the fact that she’d bled told me she hadn’t lied about it.

I’d gotten her pregnant the very first time she’d ever had sex. Along with that, I shared the responsibility of her being taken away from her hometown. It wasn’t fair, and I knew that. I also knew it wasn’t fair to give our baby to strangers.

Mom had called her sister right away, knowing she had the connections that would make tracking the baby a possibility. Aunt Nancy and Uncle James did the investigative work, and our son was given to them in a closed adoption. Neither Zandra nor her family even knew the names of the people who adopted the boy. And they would never know it was my family who took him.

“Handing custody over to you was the best thing we could’ve ever done for Fox,” Uncle James said as he bumped his shoulder to mine. “We’re damn proud of you, Kane. We’re very proud of you for finishing your doctorate last year and earning that position at the clinic. Twenty-seven is pretty young to be so well established and settled down.”

“Well, Fox was all the incentive I needed to grow up quick.” I had to sigh as I watched my son cutting up with his teammates. “From the moment you guys brought him to see me when he was just a week old, I knew I would live my life for him. I just wanted to make sure I could be the father he deserves.”

I clapped my uncle on the back. “Thanks for always letting me be there with him, you guys. I can’t thank you enough for giving a seventeen-year-old kid the chance to prove that he could be a stand-up father. Letting me take custody of him and actually make him mine last year was a dream come true for me.”

“And for Fox,” Aunt Nancy added. “That kid has always loved you, Kane. It was only fair that he be with his biological father.”

Nodding, I thought about the fact that my aunt and uncle had decided from the start to have Fox call them aunt and uncle. They’d told him I was his father right from the start. It made things easier when I finally had a home to bring him to, making the transition a smooth one.

Fox knew the whole story, now that he was old enough. We never planned on hiding the truth from him, so it was just a matter of waiting until he could understand. His mother was only sixteen when she got pregnant. Her parents made her give him up, and we jumped in to make sure we never lost him.

“He’s looking more and more like his mom every day,” I commented as I looked at my son. “His dark hair is the exact same shade as hers was. And those freckles across his nose come from her too.”

Uncle James asked, “Do you think you’ll ever try to find her, Kane?”

Shaking my head, I answered him truthfully. “No. I have no idea if she wanted to give him away or not. The fact is she went along with the adoption—and a closed one, at that. She may have wanted it that way too. I won’t find her and tell her about something she may not want to hear about.”

Aunt Nancy had always leaned more toward contacting Zandra one day. “He just turned ten last week. Fox is a bright boy with tons of curiosity. I know he doesn’t talk to you about his mother nearly as much as he talks to me about her, but he does ask about her a lot. I think you should start thinking some more about finding her, Kane. It might be what’s best for Fox.”

Pushing my hand through my hair, I felt that nagging feeling coming over again. The feeling always lingered when I thought about the reality that Zandra might not want anything to do with our son, or me, for that matter.

“But what if she didn’t want him? It might have started out as her parents’ idea, but what if Zandra wanted to get rid of him too, in the end? How would she react then if I tried to pull her into his life when all she wanted was to be rid of him?”

Uncle James smiled at me with that expression of pure wisdom on his face. “What if she didn’t want to give him up and was only doing what her parents made her do? What if she’s still as shy as she was when she was sixteen and doesn’t have a clue how to find her son? What if she’s hurt by what she was made to do and thinks about him every day?”

God, the man knew how to pull at a person’s heartstrings!

Even still, I wasn’t sure about anything, other than that she had given him up in a closed adoption. No authority, other than her parents, had made her do that. “She could’ve told the adoption agency that her parents were making her give the baby up and that she didn’t want to.”

Aunt Nancy shook her head. “I was there when she gave him up, Kane. She had no idea I wasn’t a nurse, Kane, and that girl was heartbroken when I took that baby away from her that day. She told him that she loved him more than anything. She told him that she was sorry for what she was doing, but that he would have a much better life without her or her parents in it.”

Aunt Nancy had told me this a million times. And as many times as I’d heard the story, I had never understood why Zandra would’ve gone through with giving him up if she truly loved him. And I’d never understood why she’d never tried to contact me about the pregnancy.

It wasn’t as if I was some lothario who had slept with countless girls. I’d never intended to just sleep with her and then drop her. I’d thought about her a lot after the party. I’d thought about how I would approach the shy girl when school was back in session, about how I would bring her out of her shell again, just as I was able to that night.

The fact that she never seemed to even try to get in touch with anyone, not even the few friends she’d had at school, had me thinking that she wanted to forget all about that part of her life.

I stayed in Charleston. With my parents’ help, plus my aunt and uncle’s, I raised Fox. Everyone we knew was aware that I was that boy’s father and that Zandra Larkin was his mother. Everyone. Even Zandra’s friends knew about it.

So why hadn’t Zandra ever tried to contact any of her friends?

Each one of the girls I talked to back then told me that Zandra had their phone numbers, though Zandra’s number was no longer in service after the move. And even at Fox’s tenth birthday party, one of his mother’s old friends stopped by to wish him a happy birthday and give him a present. She told him that if his mother were around, she’d be very proud of him. And she also told him that his mother was a very private and shy person, but she was sure that she still loved him, as she was also a very nice and loving person.

I recalled the smile that spread across my son’s face that day as he and his mother’s friend talked. He nodded. “I’m sure she does love me. I love her, and I don’t ’member meeting her ever in my life. But Aunt Nancy said that she held me for a little while before she had to say goodbye. And that she told me that she loved me too. I know that someday I’ll see her again. And then I’ll be old enough to ’member her.”

Most people seemed sure that one day Zandra would try to find Fox. I was one of the few who didn’t think that day would come at all. And I prayed that our son wouldn’t be hurt if the day he was so hopeful about never occurred.

And I wondered how I would react to her if she did come looking for him. Would I be angry with her?

As understanding as I’d tried to be about her situation, I had also been mad back then. Mad that she hadn’t told me what was happening. Mad that she’d planned to give our child to strangers. Mad that her parents thought they could take my son’s future into their own hands.

Zandra may have been intimidated and controlled by her parents, but I never would’ve let them control me too. I would’ve taken care of Zandra, had she told me about the situation.

Looking at the ground, I knew my thoughts weren’t healthy. I’d been a seventeen-year-old kid at that time. Zandra had been a minor; her parents had still been in control of her life.

In reality, I couldn’t have taken care of her. My parents could have and would have. But only if Zandra’s parents allowed that to happen. And we all knew that they would never have allowed that.

The sound of cheers pulled me out of my internal reverie, and I looked up. My son’s team had won the game. The boys were jumping up and down with triumphant joy.

“Looks like we’re going to get to go to a pizza party, Kane,” Uncle James said. We all got up to join the kids on the field to congratulate each one of them and to tell the kids on the other team that they’d played a great game too.

“We did it, Dad!” Fox shouted as he ran to me.

“You sure did, son!” Putting my arm around his narrow shoulders, I pulled him close to my side. “Your home run was the game-winner, too.”

“Hey, Fox, catch,” the coach called out.

He tossed the ball to Fox, who caught it easily. The smile he’d been wearing grew even bigger. “I get to keep the game ball?”

“It’s yours, kid,” his coach told him. “At the pizza party, you can get everyone to sign it for you.”

“I’ll get you a little case to keep it in, Fox,” Uncle James told him as he pulled him away from me to give him a hug.

“Man, this is like the best day ever!” Fox shouted as he held the ball up. “We won! Woohoo!”

Man, I bet his mother would love to see him like this.

Chapter 3

Zandra

“Cute outfit,” the manager of Mynt said as he looked me up and down. “Nice legs. It’s good to see you don’t mind putting them on display.” Wearing a short black leather skirt with a white button-down top, I had tied my shirt in a knot in front to show off my belly button piercing. I was the epitome of hot nightclub waitresses everywhere.

“Yeah. I’ve been doing this waitress thing since I turned eighteen. I’ve pretty much got it down pat now.” I pulled the long braid I’d put my hair in over my shoulder, stroking it as I looked into Rob’s gray eyes. His pupils got big, telling me he liked what he saw.

By now, I was used to having my body raked over by men’s eyes, and it didn’t bother me to be the center of attention. As long as the scrutiny came with a paycheck, I could suck it up.

Rob trailed his long fingers along one of my shoulders. His dark hair was parted low on the left side. Some type of product made it shiny, helping him keep it slicked back. He wasn’t my type at all. He was the kind of guy most people would call a guido—maybe not to his face, though.

“And how many years have you been doing this now?” he asked.

“Eight years.” Placing my hand on my hip, I defied him to say something about my age. Though I was still young and as fit as any one of the younger waitresses, I knew a lot of managers liked to stick to the under-twenty-five crowd when it came to their waitresses.

“Twenty-six,” he mused as his eyes met mine. His lips pulled up to one side. “Your body might not give it away, but you can see it in your eyes, Zandy.”

“Well, it’s a good thing no one will be looking at my eyes, then, isn’t it?” Sashaying my ass, I walked away from him, earning a wolf-whistle. The sound made me smile. That whistle meant money, and money was all I cared about.

“Does that mean she’s got the job, Rob?” Taylor chimed in.

I turned around to look at him as he answered. “If she can start tonight, she does.”

“I can.” Hurrying back to them, I found myself grabbed up by Taylor, and the two of us jumped up and down in our sky-high heels. “Yes!”

Now I had a nice apartment with a bedroom all to myself and a job that Taylor promised would make me lots of money. More money than what I’d been making in Chicago.

On the drive back to the apartment, the two of us chatted away excitedly about being able to work together again. Taylor stopped at a light then screamed, “Yes! Together again! We’re gonna rock Charleston, Zandy!”

“We rocked Chicago,” I agreed. “I know we can rock this place too.”

Looking to my left, I thought I recognized a guy from high school. That had been so long ago, it seemed. He looked right at me, gave me a wink, and then Taylor took off so fast that I didn’t get the chance to even wink back or see if he recognized me.

I was pretty sure he hadn’t. I no longer looked like the bookish, shy girl I’d been back then. Nearly eleven years had passed since I’d been in town, since I’d been that person. I didn’t expect anyone to recognize me.

And I prayed that one man, in particular, wouldn’t. If he was even still in the around—which I highly doubted.

The blue streaks in my hair would offer me a bit of protection, should I happen to encounter someone from my old life here. This hair choice was something I never would’ve done when I was a teenager. And I wore a lot of makeup now, too. It was what waitresses did. I didn’t make the rules; I just followed them.

Revealing clothes, too much makeup, hair that stood out—I was dressing for the job I wanted. And I was pretty certain not one of the people I’d known back then would come to the club I’d be working at. Even if they did, no one would ever think the sexy woman who waited on them was the same mousy junior from high school who’d left town without saying a word to anyone.

“Did it piss you off when Rob said he could see your age in your eyes, Zandy?” Taylor asked me as she drove too fast down the street.

“No.” I pulled a pair of dark sunglasses out of my purse and put them on. “I can see it too. There aren’t many ladies in my age group who still do this sort of thing. Being twenty-six, many women my age have already hung up their heels. And have replaced their Mustangs with minivans, yuck!” We laughed uproariously at my little joke, which wasn’t too much of a joke at all.

Taylor zoomed around a corner, making us both lean to one side, laughing like hell all the way. “So why haven’t you settled down, Zandy? I mean, you haven’t even dated any guy seriously. What’s up with you?”

Where to start?

Pain. Anguish. Guilt. Along with a healthy side of resentment and regret.

I’d never told anyone about my unexpected pregnancy, or any of the life-altering events that followed. Maybe it was time I did. Maybe talking about it would help me begin to heal from it. If anyone could truly heal from a thing like that.

Even though I wasn’t sure how Taylor would take it, I decided to spill my guts to her. “Dating would mean giving someone a chance to get close to me and taking a chance of falling in love. And when two people fall in love, they eventually decide to procreate. And I’ve done that already. It ended badly. And I don’t want to do it again.”

“You had a miscarriage?” she asked as she took another hard left.

The Nissan Altima felt like it had tilted onto only two wheels, making me scream with a mix of terror and excitement. “No! Shit, girl. You’re a crazy driver!”

“So I’ve been told.” She laughed menacingly, making me smile. I loved living dangerously. Why not live that way? What did I have to live for anyway? “So, no miscarriage. Did you lose the baby after it was born?” I could hear the sympathy in her voice, mixed with caution. Taylor knew me well enough to know that revealing so much about myself wasn’t easy for me.

“Kind of.” I grabbed the dash as she made an abrupt stop at a stop sign that seemed to have crept up on her.

“Kind of?” She narrowed her pale blue eyes at me. Her tiny nose was pointy and turned up at the end. Taylor really did remind me of Tinkerbell. Only, her short blonde locks were pulled into spikes, and each one was dyed a different color on the ends. “How is that an appropriate answer, Zandy?”

“I had a baby. And my parents made me give him up for adoption,” I clarified my answer.

“Made you?” she asked, then hit the gas hard enough to make a jackrabbit take off.

Clutching the bar above my head, the one I called an “oh-shit bar,” I went on, “At barely sixteen I lost my V-card to the boy I’d had a crush on since I was about twelve. He had dirty blond hair, all-American good looks, and eventually, a killer body. The first hint of attention he gave me made me putty in his hands.”

Zipping up to the parking space in front of the apartment we shared, she stopped right next to my red Mustang. Her head swiveled to look at me. “So, you gave it up to this guy who you weren’t dating but you’d been crushing on for years, and you ended up preggo? On the first go?”

“Precisely.” Getting out of the car, we made our way to the front door.

The whole complex was made up of ground-floor apartments, another thing that made me like this place better than the place I’d been living for the last eight years. No stairs to climb and no one living overhead, making noise all the time. The apartment was perfect.

Taking a seat on the expensive leather sofa and loveseat, Taylor asked, “Your crush didn’t want to do the right thing by you, Zandy?”

Shaking my head, I said, “I never told him about it. I never told anyone about it. My mother was totally up in my personal business. She kept track of her periods on this calendar that she called the “menstruation keeper.” When I got my period when I was around thirteen, she began adding mine to it. She said she did it so I would know right when I was about to start so I’d never be unprepared.”

“So you’d put some tamps in your purse then, stock up on Midol,” she said with a knowing grin.

“Most of the time, yeah.” Chewing on my lip, I thought back to that time when my period hadn’t come. “Well, anyways, suddenly, one month, my period didn’t start.”

“And when it didn’t show up, what did you do?” Taylor asked with wide eyes. “I mean, I’ve never had a pregnancy scare at all. My mother trotted my ass down to the clinic right after my first period when I was fifteen. She made me start getting the shot as soon as I could, and I’ve been on it ever since.”

“I tried to hide the fact that it hadn’t started.” I remembered how hysterical I felt when I was late. “I lied to my mother about having it, telling her it was right on schedule. Only I didn’t think about one important thing.”

Nodding, she said, “You forgot to plant evidence, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” My chest rose and fell with a heavy sigh.

She shook her head sadly. “Rookie mistake, Zandy.”

Shrugging my shoulders, I said, “I was a rookie. And I wasn’t ready to handle anything, never mind what would happen when my parents found out. I figured I’d have at least a few months to figure something out and eventually talk to the guy about it. I had no idea if he wanted anything to do with me after we’d slept together. We didn’t do a hell of a lot of talking before we got naked together.”

“He must’ve been so hot,” she mused. “’Cause you’re a really gorgeous girl, Zandy. You could have your pick of anyone.”

“I was plain back then, and my parents were really strict. I wasn’t allowed to wear any makeup at all. Everyone else was, but not me. And my mom cut my hair.” I cringed, remembering the horror that was my hair. “I had these straight, very short bags. The rest of my hair was one length that went down to the middle of my back. My clothes were all purchased by my mother, too. Needless to say, they would have looked very appropriate on a teenager in, say, 1950.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any pictures,” she said with a wry smile.

I threw a little pillow at her, smacking her in the face. “No, you jackass.”

“Thought as much.” She tossed the pillow back at me, and I caught it. “So, what happened next?”

“Mom took me to see our doctor. He told her I was pregnant. I was only a couple weeks along and already my parents were making decisions about the little baby I carried.” The tears sprang up on cue as his tiny face made a brief appearance in my head. No matter how many years passed, I knew without a doubt that I’d never forget the sight of his perfect little face.

Taylor got up and came to sit next to me. Her arm around my shoulders was meant to comfort, but it didn’t help at all. There was just no way to comfort someone who’d had their child taken away. “They made you give it up?”

Nodding my head, I let the tears flow freely. “We left that night to go stay with relatives in Chicago. Mom and Dad took me out of school. I had to finish high school online. Dad had a cell phone, but other than that we had no other phone because they didn’t want me to be able to talk to any of my friends—the few that I even had. When I was on the computer doing schoolwork, my parents would watch me, making sure I didn’t get a chance to contact anyone. They never wanted anyone to know the shame of what I’d done.”

“And the father of the baby never knew?” she asked as she patted my shoulder, trying to reassure me that everything would be okay. It wouldn’t ever be okay. I’d already accepted that fact.

“He doesn’t know a thing.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, seeing black smudges from my makeup. “He never will. The adoption agency arranged a closed adoption. My parents and I were never given the names of the people who adopted him. And the guy’s name wasn’t on anything—I never even told my parents his name. That was the one thing I refused to do. I didn’t want them saying anything to him or his family about it. It was all my fault, anyway. I was the stupid girl who, when he asked, told him he didn’t have to use a condom.”

“Wow.” Taylor sat back, looking stunned. “That was dumb.”

Nodding, I had to agree. “Yeah, it was.”

“All that happened a long time ago, Zandy. Why let it keep you from getting close to anyone now? Or let it stop you from having more kids when you want them?”

I rubbed my fingers over the black smudges on the back of my hand, trying to make them go away. “It wouldn’t be fair to that little boy if I had more kids. I gave him away. How could I ever expect him to understand that I had to give him up and then go on and keep any other kids? Like I just replaced him like he was nothing.”

“I doubt he’ll ever know you, Zandy.” She took me by the chin to make me look at her. “He will never know if you get married someday and have kids. Stop thinking that way.”

“I just … I can’t do.” I shook my head. “And there’s no way I could ever let a man into my heart anyway, Taylor. There’s an enormous hole there, where my little boy is supposed to be. My heart can’t hold a damn thing in it. I can’t keep anyone in my heart for long before they just leak out.”

“Therapy,” came her answer. “You need some help, honey. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Her calling me honey just made me mad. I got up and went to the kitchen, rubbing at my eyes one last time, making sure all the tears were gone. “I’m making celebratory margaritas. I’ve got a new job, a slamming apartment, and I get to work with you again. Life has never been sweeter.”

Taylor got up to follow me. I could feel her eyes staring a hole through me. “Zandra, seriously, you need to deal with this. It’s a big deal. I’m not even smart, and I know it’s a big deal.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And it always will be. Whether I talk to a shrink or not, I will never get to see my son. I will never know if he’s okay or not. I will never, ever feel him in my arms. Mostly, I will never forgive my parents for what they made me do. Now, let’s get wasted, take a nap, and then get up and get ready to go to work tonight.”

It sounded like a solid plan at the time.