Page 39 of Noah
“I’ve been hired by your father, Ms. Rush. Or the man who believes he’s your father. He asked me to look into the case for him, gave me the dates and locations, and it led me to you.”
I dropped into the chair right next to the door like my legs had been cut out from under me. A man who thought he was my father had hired a PI to find me. And that PI had tracked me down this quickly. This was unreal. Who the hell was looking for me, and why had he suddenly decided to do it now? Was it because I’d been hired for a job? Had that somehow triggered some national database and alerted people to my existence? I’d been orphaned twenty-five years ago.
This guy, if he was real, had twenty-five years to try to find me, and he was just now getting around to it? Twenty-five years of being cold and hungry and terrified in that orphanage, and after that, years of not knowing who I was, really. Not having anyone to call home, aside from the family I’d built for myself.
And I had built a family for myself, I thought. I’d chosen family that wouldn’t leave me behind. Brothers who would take care of me no matter what.
Rather than parents who hadn’t even tried to get to know me before they deserted me.
“I’m not interested,” I said bluntly. “Whoever that guy was, he left me on a doorstep the day I was born. I don’t want to know that guy.”
“He didn’t know,” Dan said quickly. “He didn’t know you even existed until five months ago. He got a letter from your biological mother telling I’m about you. Her mother—your grandmother—took you and dropped you off when you were born. Your father wants to know you. He wants to know his little girl.”
“If I am his little girl,” I retorted. “If he’d wanted to meet me so bad, buddy, he should have found me when I was still at thatorphanage and needed a dad. I’ve already got a new family. I’m not interested.”
I hung up before he could answer, and headed for the door, trying to put him out of my mind. Because what I’d just told him wasn’t strictly true. I was interested. Every part of me was keyed up, just thinking about the idea of having a real family. It was every orphan’s dream. The parents who suddenly show up and take you home. The house with the white picket fence and plenty of blankets, where they made pancakes on Sunday mornings.
But I was keenly aware that this could be fake. Some sort of scam or something. Some other man who would get my hopes up and then let me down. I’d spent my life dealing with people like that, and I didn’t need any more of it in my life.
I’d already screwed up my job by letting Noah in too deep.
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with this possibly fake, possibly scammy father figure. I was just starting to get my life under control.
I didn’t need the white picket fence anymore. I had myself, and that was all that mattered.
Part of me knew I was lying.
The other part wasn’t going to admit it.
24
NOAH
We got all the way to Billings before I saw her again for any length of time. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how she’d done it. We’d been through Seattle, Bellingham, and Idaho Falls, plus the bus ride to Bozeman, and then another bus ride to Billings, and two weeks had passed since I saved her from the press.
And yet she’d been absent. A ghost who melted away the moment I was in the same room with her. Nothing but the flash of a camera lens moving through the audience at the shows. I knew she was still on the tour because I saw glimpses of her every so often, and Anna and Sadie constantly talked about her. I heard she was rooming with Sadie, for the most part, and photographing everyone constantly, trying to stay on her magazine’s good side.
Everyone but me, evidently.
And that pissed me the fuck off. That girl was my best friend in the world. I was the one who’d saved her from those kids at the orphanage. I was the one that pulled her out of St. Louis and brought her to Nashville! I’d insisted that she come on our firsttour with us so everyone else could see what a great job she’d do, for fuck’s sake. And now she was just ignoring me?
Why?
That last question was the one that really bothered me, honestly, because I was afraid I knew why. The last time we spoke, the press had been on her about being out in the hallway in her pajamas, and I’d been terrified that they knew where she’d been before that.
In my arms, naked and hot and wet for me.
Underneath me, staring into my eyes as I moved over her, taking her again and again until she cried out.
Huddled up against me on a rooftop, her voice soft and dreamy in the sunset.
And that was where my fear started. Because the last time we were together, I’d been fucking her like my life depended on it–because I’d felt like it did–and she’d been meeting me thrust for thrust. I’d been staring at a whole new version of the world, and for the first time I’d felt like I might know what I was here for. It had all started with her.
And then ended with her when she left me in that closet and disappeared.
I was afraid she’d decided she made a mistake sleeping with me, and had disappeared because she didn’t want to make the mistake again.
Not that I was telling anyone so. For all they knew, everything was right as rain with me–or at least as right as it ever was. I’d spent my days practicing and my nights performing, and then I’d gone to my room and gone to bed just so I didn’t have to think about Molly avoiding me. As far as the guys knew, of course, I was taking a new girl to bed every night, just like I always had, and I didn’t disabuse them of the notion.
