Page 2 of Tell Me Again
His phone rang and he grabbed it off the counter, recognizing the Denver area code but not the phone number.
He hit the Accept button without hesitating. “Grace, baby, is that you?”
There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line. After a moment a voice whispered, “How could you do this to me, Trevor?” He hadn’t heard that voice, warm and honeyed in its tone, in years. Yet it remained as familiar as his own heartbeat.
He rocked back on his feet, stumbled against the arm of the sofa like he’d been hit with a bolt of electricity. His mouth went dry, his gut tight, but he forced himself to swallow. “Is she with you, Sam? Is she ok?”
“She’s tired and emotionally wrung out.” Hearing an angry sigh, he could see Sam’s full lips part in his mind, feel the weight of her breath. “And pissed as hell. Grace and I have that in common.”
No. His daughter and Sam Carlton had nothing in common. He’d spent the past thirteen years ensuring the poison that had touched the Carlton women couldn’t hurt his daughter. Couldn’t infiltrate its way back into his life. He held on to the belief that he’d done the right thing. The only thing.
“You have no claim on her.” He made his voice remote, despite the emotions pummeling him from every side. “She isn’t yours—”
“Don’t you dare,” she said on a hiss of breath, “say that to me. She’s my twin sister’s daughter. She looks just like Bryce. Like me.”
“No!” He shouted the denial, his control breaking for an instant before he reined it back again. “She’s nothing like Bryce. Grace is a Kincaid and I won’t apologize for the choices I made to protect her.” Before he could stop it, a deeper truth than he wanted to admit slipped out on a ragged breath. “She’s all I have.”
“I’ll text you my address.” Another pause. “She’s safe here.”
“Thank you.”
“This isn’t over, Trevor,” she said softly. “Not by a long shot.” Then the line went dead.
He squeezed the cell phone with white knuckles as the screen lit up a few seconds later. He recognized the general vicinity of the address—a street in the heart of the popular Washington Park neighborhood near central Denver. It was a forty-five-minute drive from his home off I-70 deep in the foothills. He didn’t even want to think about how Grace had gotten there.
He didn’t want to think about anything but bringing her home.
That was difficult in the quiet of the April night, as he followed the red taillights of the few cars out on the highway. A spring storm had hit the Front Range earlier in the week, dumping over ten inches of wet, icy snow in the city and more in the foothills. While the roads were clear, deep banks still lined the shoulder as he merged onto the interstate.
Despite his best efforts, Trevor had never been able to erase Sam Carlton from his mind. When she’d first left their hometown east of Tulsa, it had been because she’d skyrocketed to the top of the modeling world, gracing magazine covers, fashion spreads, and perfume ads on the shelves in every grocery store he entered. But it wasn’t those images that stayed with him as time passed.
His memories of Sam as a teenage girl—the first girl he’d loved—had become a lodestone around his neck, drawing him back to a time when he’d believed her to be the answer to all his adolescent prayers. But she’d left and never looked back. A part of him understood why, but that hadn’t stopped his heart from breaking. A heart he’d walled off and only opened enough to let in the innocent light that was his daughter.
Grace knew her mother had died when she was a baby, and he’d tried to make sure she never had a reason to feel that maternal loss. His grandmother had been a huge part of both their lives until she’d died two years ago. His parents were gone, and he hadn’t expected Grace to find Sam because he’d done his best to erase all traces of the Carlton girls from his life. If only it were that simple to erase her from his heart.
He pulled up to the three-story Victorian brick house an hour later, took a deep breath, and told himself that Sam no longer had a hold on him. Too much time had passed. His pain had coalesced into a righteous anger that he’d shaped and molded until it was a part of him.
Sam opened the back door just as he lifted his hand to knock, and his body had trouble holding on to that anger. Something came to life inside him as he recognized her scent and the beauty that was still a shock in person. The shapeless sweatshirt and baggy jeans streaked with mud couldn’t hide the spectacular Amazon queen underneath. With her impossibly long legs and luscious curves it was difficult to believe she was real and not an artist’s creation of the perfect woman.
Her mane of honey-colored hair was pulled back in a messy bun, but he knew how it would look draped over her shoulders, thick and silken. She wore no makeup, her navy blue eyes clear, and the porch light softening her high cheekbones. The longer he stared at her the less she looked like the former supermodel of a million male fantasies and more like the girl he’d known. The girl he’d wanted to care for and protect like she belonged to him.
Despite his anger, the pain and vulnerability that flashed in her gaze before she hid it was like a kick to his gut. A part of him, the part that had an emotional death wish, wanted to envelop her in his arms and hold her safe, just like he wanted to do for Grace.
But Trevor wasn’t her safe place. He wasn’t... anything.
She folded her arms over her chest and pinned him with that angry blue gaze.
“Where is she?” he asked, moving into the kitchen when she stepped away from the door.
“Asleep in the front room, which is why I had you come to the back. We need to straighten some things out before she wakes up.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing that supports the pack of lies she’s been fed by you.”
“I never lied to her.” He spoke with confidence but found his gaze sliding away from her. “Not outright.”
“You let her believe she had no family on her mother’s side.”
