Page 25 of The Devil's Scars

It was clear enough that the guy wasn’t too involved. If he were, then there’d be no way that he’d let Zoe and Keira just up and move states without one hell of a fight. Christ, if Zoe was his woman, Scars wouldn’t even let her leave his goddamn bed without a struggle. The fact that her ex was letting Zoe start up a whole new life in Denver without protest told Scars that the guy was clearly a dickhead.

Well, too bad for the ex… but good for Scars. Zoe was in his orbit now, and he wasn’t about to let her float on out of it without a knock-down, drag-out fight.

He took a deep breath, took the plunge. “And Keira’s father? Where’s he?”

Zoe shrugged, took a sip of her drink. “No clue.”

Scars’ heart leapt and he did a mental fist-pump. On the one hand, he was fucking thrilled to hear that, because it meant that the relationship coast was clear for him to move in. On the other hand, he was seriously pissedoff that a guy would father a child and then just fuck off on the baby and the mother. It also meant that Zoe was quite probably not all that enthralled with men in general, and so Scars could expect some initial resistance and suspicion.

“He’s out of the picture?” Scars kept his voice casual. “Not in your lives?”

Zoe shook her head, drank again. “Totally out, totally not involved.”

Take it easy, man. Ease on in with the questions. Stay cool and slow your roll and for fuck’s sake, don’t push too hard.

But Scars had never been especially good at tap-dancing around things. Not when he really wanted something, and God knows, he wanted Zoe Parish. So, in his usual bull-in-a-china-shop style, he just launched on in, head-first and throwing all caution and discretion to the wind:

“You never see him?”

Zoe cocked her head at Scars, gave him a strange look. “No. Of course not.”

“So no chance of you getting back together with him?” Scars was determined to get the actual words out of her sexy little mouth. “No way, no how?”

She gave him an even stranger look. “What?”

“No chance of taking him back?” Scars repeated.

“Taking him back?” Zoe echoed, looking completely lost. “We were never together.”

Scars blinked. “So… Keira was – what? From a one-night-stand?”

Too startled to even be offended, Zoe stared at him. “Didn’t Wolf tell you about how I got Keira?”

“Uh.” Scars was finally starting to clue in that there was way more to this story than just some asshole abandoning a woman and his kid. “No.”

“So what did he say?”

“Just that you have a daughter.” Scars thought about it some more. “But he said you didn’t even tell him about Keira until she was about two months old. He was – erm – surprised that you hadn’t said anything sooner.”

Zoe gave a wry grin, sucked down some more booze. ‘Surprised’ wasn’t the right word for what Wolf had been when she’d finally called and given him the news about Keira. Infuriated, enraged, worried, hurt… those were better words to describe his reaction.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Well, the whole situation was hard, and it all happened right around the time that Wheels died and Wolf took over as your President. He was up to his eyeballs in trouble and problems, mostly with getting you guys away from Jensen, and he didn’t need me to dump my crap on him. I waited until things settled down a bit over here, then I called him.”

“OK.” Scars was now pretty interested in hearing about the crap. “You gonna tell me how Keira came to you?”

She dropped those incredible green eyes, played with her almost-empty glass. Scars observed her reluctance with a bit of alarm. There was a story here, and it wasn’t a nice one. He knew that much, and he felt a wave of protectiveness and concern start to swell in his chest.

“Zoe?”

She glanced up. “Hmmm?”

“Can you tell me? I mean… is it OK to talk to me about it?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.” She exhaled. “She’s my sister’s kid.”

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