Lance winced. “Hard to find the one, eh?”
“Oh, he finds them all right. In all the wrong places. He’s not known for his faithfulness. My guess is that he’s to blame for all his failed marriages. Definitely he was with his and my mother’s.”
“There’s always two sides to every story.”
“My mother and I walked in on him in his office with his secretary.”
“As in...”
Feeling sick at her stomach, McKenzie nodded. She’d never said those words out loud. Not ever. Cecilia knew, but not because McKenzie had told her the details, just that she’d figured it out from overheard arguments between McKenzie’s parents.
“How old were you?”
“Four.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LANCE TRIED TO imagine how a four-year-old would react to walking in on her father in a compromising situation with a woman who wasn’t her mother. He couldn’t imagine it. His own family took commitment seriously. When they gave their word, their heart to another they meant it.
His own heart squeezed. Hadn’t he given his word to Shelby? Hadn’t he promised to love her forever? To not ever forget the young girl who’d taught him what it meant to care for another, who’d brought him from boyhood to manhood?
He had. He did. He would. Forever.
He owed her so much.
“That must have been traumatic,” he mused, not knowing exactly what to say but wanting to comfort McKenzie all the same. Wanting not to think of Shelby right now. Lately he’d not wanted to think of her a lot, and had resented how much he thought of her, of how guilty he felt that he didn’t want to think of her anymore.
How could he not want to think of her when it was his fault she was no longer living the life she had been meant to live? When if it wasn’t for him she’d be a doctor? Be making a difference in so many people’s lives?
“It wasn’t the first time he’d cheated.”
Lance stared at McKenzie’s pale face. “How do you know?”
“My mother launched herself at them, screaming and yelling and clawing and...well, you get the idea. She said some pretty choice things that my father didn’t deny.”
“You were only four,” he reminded her, trying to envision the scene from a four-year-old’s perspective and shuttering on the inside at the horror. “Maybe you misunderstood.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve you or anyone else defending him. He doesn’t even bother defending himself anymore. Just says it’s genetic and he can’t help himself.”
“Bull.”
That had McKenzie’s head shooting up. “What?”
“Bull. If he really loved someone else more than he loved himself then being faithful wouldn’t be an issue. It would be easy, what came naturally from that love.”
McKenzie took a deep breath. “Then maybe that’s the problem. No one has ever been able to compete with his own self-love. Not my mother, not his other wives or girlfriends and certainly not me.”
There was a depth of pain in her voice that made Lance’s heart ache for her. “Did he have more children?”
McKenzie shook her head. “He had a vasectomy so that mistake would never happen again.”
“Implying that you were a mistake?”
McKenzie shrugged.
“He’s a fool, McKenzie. A stupid, selfish fool.”
“Agreed.” She brushed her hands over her thighs then stood. “I’m going to get a drink of water. You need anything?”