Page 70 of Never Date A Player
No. No, no, no.
Thoughts tumble, dropping like an avalanche down a treacherous slope. A searing pain pounds a pulse behind my temple, clouding my vision, sucking the oxygen from the air?—
“No.” The word comes out light, barely audible. My vision wavers…
Lewis smiles over me. Wow, I really love waking to him. A girl could get used to this. “Hey.” I smile. “I had the weirdest dream?—”
Another face moves into view beside Lewis, and then I hear it. The noise. Voices, so many voices—bells, buzzers. The casino, not my bedroom. A security guard squeezes Lewis’s shoulder, talking into a walkie-talkie.
I rise abruptly and my head spins. Leaning over, I hold it in my hands.
I remember now. The man. The one who—who?—
“Are you okay?” Lewis shakes off the security guard, his expression annoyed.
I look around. The entire lounge is staring. I tuck my legs under me and Lewis helps me stand. “What happened?” I ask.
He looks at my customer accusingly. “I was on my way to pick you up after your shift and saw you fall.”
I wince. “I think I blacked out.”
The strain of Cali in the hospital, then taking care of her—I haven’t slept much. And now…
Lewis glances uncertainly at my customer beside him, who I notice sports a bright red mark along his jaw. “I thought he…” He looks sheepishly at the man. “Sorry.”
“Not at all,” my customer says, still staring at me with concern. He pulls out a chair. “Would you like to sit?” The security guard seems to take this as evidence that all is under control, particularly once Maryanne walks up and waves him briskly away.
“I can’t sit. I’m working,” I say absently.
“Snow,” Maryanne barks, “go home before you fall over. Again.” She shakes her head and lays on the charm to customers staring at us a table away.
“I’m sorry if I pushed you earlier. For your name,” the man says. He places a hand lightly on the shoulder of the petite blonde. “I’m Jeb Kendrick and this is my wife Simone. I’m an old friend of your mother’s. I didn’t have recent pictures of you and wanted to make sure I had the right person. I hoped to talk to you about something of a personal nature. You are Genevieve Tierney?”
I take in his features, the small, dark mole on the side of his cheekbone—mine is lower, the center of my jaw, and Mom always called it my beauty mark. Light brown eyes, oval face, black hair next to very fair skin. The physical features are somewhat wrong, but the coloring is exactly the same. He knows my mom. Her real name. The one she changed twenty years ago.
I shake my head and grab Lewis’s arm. “No.” It’s the only word I have for this man. I drag Lewis out of the lounge toward the employee entrance.
“Gen,” Lewis says once we’re on the casino floor. “What’s going on?” He looks over his shoulder at the guy staring after us, the man’s expression troubled.
I lose it halfway to the basement door. Tears stream down my face. It’s been a stressful week, but this? I always wondered if I’d meet him someday.
I can’t deal. Not now. Not ever. Panic tightens my chest, my breathing short and wheezy. If this is him, he abandoned me. He’s out of my life. Door closed.
Lewis holds my shoulders and stops me. He touches a tear with the pad of his thumb and pulls me to the side of a slot machine, wrapping his arms around me. I grip his shirt and plaster my face in it.
Lewis witnessed everything I went through with Drake. He even accepted the truth about my mother and father—but that was when my father was an unknown quantity. If this person is who my instincts say he is, this is huge.
Who knows for sure what my mom was to my father? The only thing I know is that she had me and he left us. My worst fear, and the only logical explanation, is that I’m the result of some fling, a one-night stand.
God, what does this guy want? I don’t want to know the sordid details. I’m not supposed to know.
“Did that guy do something to you?” Lewis asks. “I hit him. I thought he tried—but his wife said he did nothing, and you didn’t seem upset when you woke. Now I wonder—” His voice is deep, a little scary. “Did he touch you?” Lewis’s voice cracks on the last word.
He said he’d hurt any man that looked at me wrong, but I thought it was talk. I don’t understand this kind of devotion. Guys don’t protect you from pain; they’re often the cause of it. And they don’t stick around.
Lewis isn’t simply acting macho, he seems pained, as if the idea of someone hurting me hurts him.
“No, nothing like that.” I glance back. The Kendrick man and his wife have gone. “I think… I think he’s my father.”
