“I was just an arrogant prick,” he said on a bitter laugh. “Arrogance runs in the family. I thought I could have it all and nothing bad would ever touch me. It was just a one-night stand, but it had been a long time coming. Flirtations for years at functions. A curiosity that ignited one night over too many martinis.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, sitting straighter because I could sense the anvil about to land on my head. “Why are you helping me?”
“I’m helping you because Lane was my best friend, my family, and I’d do anything for him. Even after death.” He heaved a massive inhale then expelled it harshly through his nose. A dark lock of hair fell into his face, over his green eyes, and for a moment, I thought he looked like someone I knew. “I’m helping you because I hope you’ll help me too.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not sure I have much to offer.”
“I think you do,” he countered, leaning forward with surprising verve, bracing his forearms on his thighs to look me dead in the eye over the desk. “You have the heart of Tiernan Morelli.”
Alarm clanged inside me like warning bells.
“Hardly,” I said, voice cool and easy. “He hates me, but he loves my little brother. I think that’s why he puts up with me.”
“No,” Beckett countered. “I don’t think so. You see, Bryant has been abusing Tiernan his entire life and until recently, Tiernan remained as loyal to him as a beaten dog. Only now, after you were threatened, did Tiernan break things off with Bryant in a rather spectacular fashion.”
“That’s a bit of a leap in logic,” I admonished, channeling my inner Constantine.
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “But the moment I found out, I’ve made a point to watch Tiernan, to be there however I could, and it’s obvious that he cares about.”
“The moment you found out what? What do you want with Tiernan’s heart?”
“Hopefully,” he said, his handsome face broken open with honesty and devastation. “A place in it alongside you one day. I know what it is to be a bad father, Bianca, because Tiernan is my biological son.”
16
BIANCA
I left Colombe Energy in a kind of waking dream. New Yorkers hurried home with the last of their Christmas shopping, bright lights popping brightly in my periphery, seasonal music spilling through open shop doors. None of it registered.
Because Beckett Fairchild had dropped a massive secret on my shoulders and he expected me to carry it without guilt or remorse.
“I’ve wanted to tell him,” he said back in the office when his announcement was met with my shocked silence. “I’ve told myself a thousand times I would but, well, you know Tiernan, he isn’t exactly Mr. Approachable.”
I’d blinked at him, unmoved.
Tiernan was intimidating as hell, but that wasn’t excuse not to tell him the truth. And knowing him as I did, I understand that if he found out I had discovered this secret without confiding in him, whatever tentative romance we were developing would be snuff out irreparably.
“I didn’t know,” he said, looking out the window as if he couldn’t bear me witnessing his pain. He was a tall, regal man, but his shoulders had caved in, his head hung low. “I didn’t know for years. It was only one night with Sarah after years of dancing around each other. We used protection. I wanted her to leave Bryant, but…” His face spasmed and anger crossed over it. “We fought about it. She told me it was all just a play to make Bryant jealous, to hurt him the way he hurt her for loving Caroline all those years.”
“Unless you found out yesterday, you still waited too long to tell him.”
His lips thinned, but he nodded. “Why do you think I’m asking for your help? I never married. I never had a desire to after Sarah, but I always wanted kids. I’d like to know Tiernan.”
“I have to go,” I said, jerking away from Lane’s desk. “I don’t know why you thought I could help you and even if I could, I won’t. Do you understand what it’s like to feel you’ve been abandoned by your own parent?” An edge of hysteria crept into my voice, turning it hard, the metallic sound ringing out through the empty offices. “Do you know how that sits in a person? Gnawing away at every good thing that ever comes to them because they can’t believe they deserve goodness when even their own parent neglected them? It’s a fucking disease and you––” My finger shook as I fixed it at him. “––You infected him with that. There is nothing I can do to change that. If you want his acceptance or forgiveness, it’s on you make it right with him.”
“But can I?” Beckett countered, dragging hands through his hair the way I’d seen Tiernan do when he was agitated. It was disturbing to realize there were so many like tells that spoke of their resemblance: the green eyes, different shades but so vivid, the strong jawline that was squared off at the corners, and the hands with the same wide palms, thick fingers. “How can I make this right when it’s been wrong for thirty years?”