Page 133 of An Engagement for Erica

“Everything matters, Tucker. It’s just how much it matters. Don’t forget that.”

He didn’t want to hear what he knew was the truth.

“We are getting off course. What are your thoughts on this whole thing with Kristi?”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” his mother said. “It’d be no relationship to me. I don’t live there anymore. I’ve long since given up caring what your father did in his life.”

“You’re the one that brought up me fighting to get custody of some child that would be a half sibling to me. So that means you have to have an opinion. No reason to keep it in now.”

His mother laughed. “I think you always wished you had a sibling,” his mother said. “Someone to be close to. But having one that could be your child age-wise isn’t what you want either.”

“No,” he said.

“And doing something for someone else if it’s not what you want isn’t the way anything should be done. It hurts more people in the end.”

He read the double meaning of his fake engagement.

But no one got hurt on that.

His grandfather said he understood but there was no reason to keep it up.

He was just trying to figure out how to tell Erica now.

“I don’t think I could do it,” he said honestly. “Even if Grandpa wanted it. But it’d be my blood and could I turn my back on that? I don’t think so either.”

“My only advice to you is to keep trying to find her. You’ve got to have her on video so search her that way if you can. Find out where she stands and what is going on. If that means it opens it back up to paying her off to shut up, that is a risk you are taking. You’re more concerned about a possible child than anything, right? Not the money?”

“The money means nothing. I’ve got enough of it and still wouldn’t use it to shut her up. I’d use it for what is right and being blackmailed isn’t right.”

He didn’t think taking a child from someone was either.

Which just said his mind was all over the charts and not in a good way.

“It’s not,” his mother said. “Talk to your grandfather and Michael and try to figure it out. But keep me posted. I’ve got all that tacky art and furnishings of your fathers in storage that I’ve got to tackle on liquidating. There are lots of things your father left that could be used to make nasty situations go away. Just remember that.”

He wasn’t sure he liked the sounds of that either but didn’t ask her what she meant by those words.

42

HAPPY VIBES

“You know,” Erica said three weeks later. “I could have tried to cook Thanksgiving and we could have had it at my house. My father would have come and it’d be with my siblings rather than us driving to Greenwich.”

The last thing she wanted to do was spend the holiday with her mother, but if they did this now, they might be able to get away with not going for Christmas.

“I’m just going along for the ride,” Tucker said.

“You’re the one driving,” Harmony said from the back seat. “More like we are going along for the ride. But you can say your car is having problems and we broke down and can’t make it.”

She laughed. “If your sister wants me to do that, I can,” Tucker said.

“No,” Erica said. “Let’s get this over with. You can get an earful on our mother on the way down.”

“As I’ve said before, it can’t be anything like my father.”

The fact that they’d found Kristi Brown and she admitted that she wasn’t pregnant and never had been and was just trying to get a score out of TC told her exactly what Tucker had gone through in his life.

She’d wished he’d talked to her more about his thoughts on the whole thing.

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