Page 100 of Stolen Kiss

I leaned back in the chair. I let him shift on his feet a bit before I spoke. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“That you forgive me for the shit I put us through. I fucked up. I know that. But it’s been three years, Jensen.”

“I have forgiven you,” I said. I really had. I’d forgiven him long before my mom was discharged from the hospital after suffering from the heart attack he put her through.

And now, looking at my cousin, I realized I wasn’t mad at him anymore.

“But we can’t go back to the way things were,” he said dejectedly.

I let out a sigh. “I need time, okay?”

He looked past me to the window. “Do you regret it?” I tilted my head to the side. “What you had to do to get Elodie. I know you love her, but being a dad—”

I held up my hand, and he closed his mouth. “No,” I said. “I don’t regret it.”

And now, with Emilia, it felt like I could have everything I ever wanted within my reach, yet she never felt so far away from me.

“Would you have been a dad if you had a choice?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. I looked away from his eyes, staring past his shoulder and at the opened door.

“I don’t know,” I answered seriously.

Before the will reading, I had been indifferent toward the idea of being a dad, mostly because I was still enjoying life as a twentysomething bachelor. Perhaps I would have liked to be a father as I got older, but after the will reading the idea of it turned my stomach, for no other reason than it was what the old bastard had wanted.

I steepled my hands under my chin and looked at Alan. “I don’t know, but fuck if I didn’t want that to be my decision to make.”

He nodded like he understood. But he had been a father long before the will reading. He had satisfied the requirement to keep his share of the company, so I doubted he understood what I was feeling.

“Get back to work,” I said, a little more gently than I expected. “We’ll get back to normal,” I promised, because that was the only way. Alan was family, and I stood by my opinion of him. He wasn’t a bad man.

He nodded before turning away and walking out the door. I watched the space he had disappeared to for a long while after. By the time I looked back at my computer, the screen had gone dark once more.

I checked the time. It was nearing noon, and I couldn’t think of one productive thing I had done all morning. The case files Alan had set down held no appeal.

It was one thing to do my job; it was another to take on his load as well.

I rubbed my eyes, feeling exhausted.

All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep. Preferably with my girls by my sides, protected by me.

I shut off the computer and grabbed my jacket, heading out the door. Kyle, my assistant, stood when he saw me.

“Put all my calls on hold,” I told him. He nodded and sat back down just as I moved to the elevator, looking at my reflection in the stainless steel glass of the doors when it closed.

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