Page 69 of Sinful Temptations

“He said they hadn’t planned the orgy. It’d just happened. Dad had said that like it was meant to be a good thing.” I shook my head. “So, he pretended to be my father for fourteen years.”

Roman scratched his chin stubble. “Have you ever tried to find your real dad?”

“No. I have no idea where to even start.”

We fell into silence, Roman blinking over and over like he was trying to process my bombshell.

Maybe I shouldn’t tell him what happened next.

Roman drained the last of the champagne into our glasses, and as he drank his drink, a frown rippled his forehead. “Did your mom ever come out?”

“After Dad finished telling me, he pulled a note from his pocket, shoved it under mother’s bedroom door, and walked out with nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wallet.”

Roman’s jaw dropped. “Walked out? As in, left?”

“Yeah. I never saw him again. Oh, and he took the car.” I huffed. “Mother was more pissed about the car than him leaving.”

“What?” His brows bounced up. “Really?”

“It was the only asset they had. Even though it was a shit-box. Dad had won it in a poker game though, so I guess technically it was his.”

Roman’s expression grew dark. It was a lot to take in. I’d had fifteen years to process it and I still had issues. “What’re you thinking?”

“What did your mom say when you told her what he’d said?”

I chewed on the inside of my lip.

He blinked at me. “You didn’t tell her?”

I didn’t do or say anything, yet Roman could read me like a fifty-foot billboard. It was freaky. It was also scary.

“Dais . . .” He tilted his head. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. She’d just deny it and say he was lying.”

“Do you think he was lying?”

“No. It didn’t take rocket science to know we weren’t related.”

“Basing it on looks alone is not exactly a scientific conclusion.”

“Rob, that was his name. Rob. He had black hair, blackeyes. Dark skin.” I twirled a loop of hair around my finger. “Red.”

“Isn’t red hair a throwback from previous generations?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about your grandparents? What did they look like?”

“I have no idea. I never met them.”

His eyes grew darker. “Aunties, uncles?”

“Roman, I never met any family.”

“Did you ever think about trying to find your father?”

“Are you kidding? Mother barely remembered the name of the guy she slept with the night before, let alone the three other men she’d fucked fourteen years prior.”