Page 57 of A Fortunes of Texas Christmas (Fortunes of Texas)

She looked at him, her blue eyes unwavering. “You need closure. You need to sort this out.”

Annoyance and resentment settled in his blood. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s position to tell me what I need.”

“I think you’re wrong,” she said quietly, unmoving. “I think sometimes, when someone is hurting, it’s up to the people who care about that person the most to make sure they do right by them. And that’s what I’m doing.”

“What you’re doing,” he seethed, not daring to look at Olivia, his rage all directed toward Robin, “is interfering in my life. And assuming that you have the right. Which you do not.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” he said harshly. “I wouldn’t accept this kind of interference from even my closest friends, let alone someone I hardly know.”

As soon as he said the words, he saw her recoil. But he was pissed off and couldn’t control his words at that point.

He looked toward Olivia. “My apologies, Mrs. Fortune Mendoza, for your wasted trip. I’m sure Robin will see you out.”

He strode off and headed for the bedroom, slamming the door to make the point that the conversation was over. When he was ready to face any of his half siblings, it would be his decision. And he’d make sure Robin understood she wasn’t to interfere in his life. He heard the suite door open and close and took a couple of puffs of his inhaler before he stalked back out into the main room. He was stunned to see that Robin was no longer there. But Olivia Fortune Robinson—now Mendoza—was sitting exactly where she had been when he left the room, knees crossed, hands in her lap.

She looked up and raised both brows. “Have you finished sulking?”

He stilled instantly. “Where is—”

“She left,” Olivia supplied, head at a tilt. “Not that I blame her. You really are as stubborn and pigheaded as we’ve all come to believe.”

It was a pretty mild insult, and he’d had far worse over the years, but it still irritated the hell out of him. “We?”

She waved an impatient hand. “Oh, come on. We both know that Keaton and Ben have tried to contact you and that you have ignored every request. And you’ve been back and forth to Austin twice in the last few weeks and still didn’t make contact with any of us. Shame on you.”

Shame on him? He almost laughed out loud. “I hardly think that it is my—”

“Are you so self-absorbed that you think you are the only one suffering here?” she demanded, sitting upright on the sofa. “Do you have any idea how it feels to discover that there’s a dossier on the results of your father’s indiscretions? And to discover that the father you’ve believed in all your life is someone else entirely? Someone who has children with other women, someone who is now painted as some kind of ogre?”

He rocked back a little on his feet. She had a valid point. He’d never spared much consideration to the feelings of Gerald Robinson’s children. His jaw suddenly felt like it was carved from granite. “I guess I don’t.”

“Some of us don’t want to play the victim card, Amersen,” she said pointedly. “Some of us are willing to try to work through this. He made mistakes—big ones—but who hasn’t made mistakes in their life?”

Amersen ignored the tightness in his chest. He’d never considered himself to be a victim. And he didn’t like the label one bit. “He ignored my existence for twenty-five years. He ignores me still. That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice.”

Her mouth thinned. “God, you’re so much like him—so arrogant and self-important.”

He didn’t ever want to be compared to the other man, and was about to tell her so, when Olivia spoke again.

“He didn’t know about you,” she said and sighed heavily. “Look, I wasn’t going to bring this up because it’s obviously something you need to sort out with your mother...but all I know is that she told my father that she’d ended her pregnancy, and as far as he knew, that was the truth.”

“He paid her off,” Amersen said quietly, refusing anyone to lay any blame at Suzette’s feet. His mother had told him the truth—Gerald never wanted the child she carried. Never wanted him. Suzette made the choice to have Amersen on her own, and he was grateful for that decision. He was also thankful that Luc Beaudin had entered her life. “And he was relieved when he believed she had taken care of things.”

Olivia shrugged. “I guess it was a difficult time for them both. All I’m saying is that he didn’t ignore you...he didn’t know about you. It was my mother who knew,” she explained, and he could see how much the truth hurt her. “She knew about the dossier and kept the information to herself. She knew about you and Keaton and Chloe and the others that are in it. It’s not a pretty story, okay? My mother has played her own part in this situation and she, along with the rest of us, have to live with that. And yes, our father has known about you for a while now and hasn’t made contact, but can you blame him? He knows he’s not going to get a good reception from you—is he? It’s not like you have this great reputation for being all warm and fuzzy.”

“I don’t think my reputation should matter,” he said tightly.

“Of course it does,” she said and waved an impatient hand. “We all know who you are. What you are. That you have this opinionated and cynical skew on life. I’ve read your blog and your bio, Amersen. You’re not perfect. And he’s not perfect, either. But he’s trying to make amends in his own way with Keaton and Chloe. If you give him a chance, he’d probably try to do the same with you.”

“Probably?”

She sighed. “Like I said, he’s not perfect.”

Amersen’s head reeled. Everything Olivia had just told him about Gerald and Charlotte made the whole sordid mess somehow less sordid. And then, wit

hout warning, part of the weight that had been pressing down on his shoulders since he’d first discovered he was Gerald Robinson’s son slowly lifted.

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