Bad Boys of Red Hook [2] You're the One (11 page)

Nicki gave her a final squeeze and ran out of the kitchen.

Pete grabbed Nicki’s sweatshirt, threw it over his shoulder, and took the plate. “Nicki thinks a lot of you, Skye. Thanks for being so good to her. She’s really missing Bree. It’s good she has women like you and Rocki to talk to.”

“No thanks necessary. If it’s okay with you, I was thinking of inviting Nicki and D.O.G. over to play this weekend. I thought we could take the dogs to the park for a while, and then come back and make a batch of dog cookies.”

Pete’s smile probably sent hearts pitter-pattering in his younger days. “Only if you promise to make a batch of human cookies too.”

“I think I can manage that. What kind do you want?”

“Whatever kind you want to make. Just make sure they’re not heart healthy. This diet is going to kill me. Oh, and you have to keep them our little secret, okay? Logan’s turning into a regular food Nazi.”

Skye watched Pete leave and found Harrison doing the same thing. “What?”

Harrison took an order off the computer and shrugged. “Pete’s a hell of a guy. I heard he caught Storm stealing a boat before he fostered him, and Logan was into building pipe bombs when Pete took him in. Just look at them now:
Storm’s designing multimillion-dollar yachts, and Logan’s making wine instead of bombs. Pete has a real way with kids.”

“What’s Slater’s story?”

“He’s one of those computer geniuses who made hacking into secure systems look like tiddlywinks. If there was security involved, it was like waving a Red Bull in front of a caffeine addict. He’s almost done getting his master’s in computer science at one of the top computer-programming schools in the country. I think he’s finishing up an internship with Microsoft now.”

“Amazing.”

Harrison handed her an order. “Pretty much.”

*   *   *

Logan gave Payton her drink and took a long draw of his beer. He set it on the desk, not ready to meet Payton’s questioning eyes. “I hope you don’t mind having dinner with the family.”

“No. I mean, I don’t mind.” Payton shook her head, confusion wrinkling her brow. “Logan, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

He sat on the edge of the desk. “What’s to understand, Payton? This is where I grew up. Well, actually I grew up upstairs in a three-bedroom apartment you could probably fit in our living room. I have two foster brothers, Storm and Slater. Pop took us all in within a few months of each other. I was about twelve, I think.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.” He took her hand in his and watched the diamond she’d picked out for her engagement ring catch the light. “Not everyone grew up like you did. You had everything you could ever want. I was the kid on the other end of the spectrum.”

He straightened and looked out the window trying to remember. He didn’t know why he bothered; it had never worked before. He’d spent a lifetime trying to remember. “I was the kid who got dumped off at a police station or a hospital when I was about three, the nearest they could tell. I wasn’t talking. Either I couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them a thing. I was put into the foster system and bounced from one foster home to another until I landed here.” He blew out a breath and turned to look at her.

A tear ran down the side of her face and she brushed it away with a shaking, perfectly manicured hand. Her false eyelashes looked as if they should be running for the ark.

He handed her his handkerchief. God, he’d dreaded doing this for years, and it sucked as badly as he thought it would. “The only thing I have from my life before Pete Calahan is a memory book filled with faded photographs of foster parents and kids I hardly recognize. All I have of my life before I moved here is a fucking book. I left it here when I left Red Hook. I buried that kid.”

“Your parents gave you up willingly?”

“I never saw my picture on the back of a milk carton, if that’s what you’re asking.” And he had looked. At least Storm and Slater knew who the hell they were. But then that knowledge came with its own problems. “Let me spell it out for you. My parents dumped me. I was a foundling. I was a three-year-old kid no one wanted.”

“Didn’t you look for them? I mean, it’s not as if Blaise is a common name.”

“No one knew my name. My name and birth date were given to me by my case manager. I don’t even know how she came up with them.”

Pity clouded Payton’s eyes. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because I knew if I had, you’d look at me the way you are now. I’m fine. Where I came from doesn’t make me the man I am. I made myself who I am. Lord knows, Pop helped, but when it comes right down to it, I decided who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, and I made it happen. I went to Stanford on a full scholarship. I took a bus to California and never looked back.”

“You lied to me and everyone we know.” Her voice rose like an air-raid siren.

“I never lied to you. I don’t lie.”

“You might not have out-and-out lied, but you weren’t honest with me. What else don’t I know about you?”

“Nothing important.”

“Nothing important? My God, Logan, I don’t even know who you are. How is that not important? I’m marrying a stranger. How could I have lived with you for two years and not have known?”

“There wasn’t anything to know. You assumed I grew up on Park Avenue. I didn’t. I grew up in Brooklyn, living over a bar. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Not a big deal? You know everything about me. You know my parents—”

“And you met Pop. He’s the closest thing to a father I have. You know about Storm and Slater.”

“I never knew about Nicki.”

“That makes two of us. I didn’t know Nicki existed until Storm came to take care of Pop after his heart attack.”

Logan looked at his watch. He didn’t think this was a good time to get into the whole Nicki thing.

“Our whole relationship has been nothing but an illusion.”

“If it’s an illusion, it’s the way you wanted it. You only saw what you wanted to see.”

“No, I only saw what you showed me. What you allowed me to see. You had me fooled until I walked in the door. You’re all smoke and mirrors.”

“You seemed happy enough with it until now.”

She stood and walked to him, staring at his face as if she’d never seen him before. “What were you like when you were a boy?”

“I was always in trouble.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t proud of what he’d been. “I liked to blow things up and by all accounts, I was pretty good at it. I was the youngest member of the Latin Kings, a gang around here. I got caught with a few pipe bombs and was handed over to Pop the next day.”

“You what?” All the color drained from her face and she sat back down.

He shrugged. “I liked to see things blow up. It was something to do. Then Pop took me in. He brought me home, introduced me to Storm, and told me exactly what I had to do to stay.”

Logan couldn’t look at her. Hell, maybe he was ashamed after all, but not of Pop, not of where he came from, but of who he was. “Pop was a real hard-ass ex-cop back then. Less than a week after I came here, I hooked up with my gang and took off. I wasn’t counting on Pop coming after me. I didn’t think anyone cared until Pop found me. The next day he took me to a prison. He dragged me by the collar through a cellblock and showed me what I had to look forward to. Then he took me to the high school and showed me the chem lab. He said the choice was mine. I chose school and the rest is history. Pop saved my life.”

“You have a record?”

“Had. It’s been sealed and from what I hear, after Slater hacked into the NYPD’s computer system, maybe deleted. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter?” She looked shell-shocked.

“Payton, I’ve left all of that stuff behind. It only matters now if you want it to.”

Logan slid Payton’s room key into the reader of her suite at the Plaza Hotel. She hadn’t said a word the entire trip from Red Hook. He followed her in, tossed the key card on the table in the entryway, and wondered how to broach the subject of Nicki’s paternity. He hadn’t a fucking clue how one did something like that, but he had to. It was time—past time. It couldn’t be avoided any longer. If there was a way to salvage this relationship, she had to know the whole truth.

A couple of months ago he wouldn’t have noticed the furnishings in the suite, but tonight when he switched on the lights, he noticed everything. This place made the apartment they’d just left look like a dump.

If he’d looked at his childhood home through Payton’s eyes, he’d have seen a shabby little space with scarred furniture, canned art, and people who had never even dreamed of stepping foot in the palatial suite Payton took for granted. Hell, he’d been living large for so long, he’d done the same thing until he’d come home.

Payton kicked off her shoes and tossed the cape she’d bought on their trip to Paris over the back of a chair. She
made a beeline to the bar and handed him a bottle of chilled champagne to open—the same champagne he’d given to Skye. Payton wasn’t finished drinking, but then he couldn’t really blame her—she’d had a lot to take in today, and the day wasn’t over.

She slipped out of her blouse and did a striptease on the way to the bedroom. “Are you staying?” Her voice was low and deep and false. The way she’d asked made it impossible to know if she even wanted him to stay. It didn’t sound as if she gave a shit.

“No, I have to get back. I can’t leave Pop and Nicki overnight. Pop’s still on the mend. God forbid anything happens, I need to be there. He’s probably up on the roof smokin’ a stogie right now. I’ll stay for a while, though.”

She let out a long, pained sigh. As long and pain-filled as a root canal with a dull drill and no painkiller. This told him a multitude of things. First of which was that she was severely put out that he hadn’t dropped everything—including his responsibilities—to spend the night with her. She’d always had a way of testing him and this time he’d failed. It also told him she was still mad as hell. Maybe she had a right to be. He honestly didn’t know.

He’d thought their relationship was the way she wanted it. No fuss, no muss. There was no depth of feeling, but that worked for him. They got along, they were assets to each other, and they didn’t make each other miserable—until today.

He poured her a champagne and Chambord, wondering how she could drink as much as she did of the stuff and not end up with the hangover from hell. He pulled a beer out of the fridge for himself and took a long draw.

Payton returned wearing one of her sexy-as-hell nightgowns and it didn’t escape his notice that she looked
amazing in it. He’d never seen this one before and there was no way he’d ever have forgotten it if he had. If Payton had gone on another of her infamous shopping sprees, whatever town she chose to shop in was definitely happy.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off her in the sheer, black lace gown, artistically covering certain body parts and not others. She was beautiful—her long blond hair played peekaboo with her breasts; a side slit showed off her long length of tan, toned leg, and the fact that she wore absolutely nothing under the gown. He remembered a day he’d had to wipe his mouth after getting a load of Payton on her Killer Attraction setting. Unfortunately, today, he was completely immune.

She lowered herself onto the couch and went right into her practiced pose. It was like déjà vu. She’d done the same thing the night they’d decided to get married. Then, like tonight, she’d had just enough come-hither to make a man drool, but not enough to look too obvious. Together with the lingerie, any man would be toast. She was good, but for some reason, now it didn’t work on him.

He felt nothing. He handed her the drink and sat in the chair opposite.

She pouted. He wasn’t sure if she was pouting about him not sitting beside her or about the situation.

“Your family, such as it is, doesn’t like me.”

“My family, such as it is?” She was trying and failing to manipulate him and she didn’t have a clue. She also had no idea how insulting she was; either that or she didn’t care. “Let’s cut to the chase. What exactly are you getting at here, Payton?”

“Even you must admit they leave a little to be desired.” She ran the tip of her pointer finger from her full
bottom lip southward to her perfectly displayed cleavage, and she tilted her head. “Would you feel comfortable bringing them to the country club for dinner?”

“No, but then I didn’t feel comfortable bringing you, such as you are, to the Crow’s Nest. That doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. It just means that you don’t fit in there.”

“And neither do you.”

He took a long draw from his beer, thinking about what she said. “The funny thing is, I do. I fit there fine.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “I slid back into my old life as easily as my favorite pair of worn jeans. It’s relaxed and comfortable, and something I hadn’t realized I’d missed until I came home.” He had half a mind to put his feet up on the coffee table just to see her reaction.

“That place is not your home. Your home is with me. I’m not putting your family down, Logan. I’m sure they’re the salt of the earth and all that, but a man in your position can’t afford to be seen in that kind of an establishment or with those kinds of people. Not everyone will be as understanding as I am and overlook your humble beginnings.”

Was she serious? He expected the embarrassment he’d carried his whole life to crash over him like shards of broken glass—cutting him to ribbons—but it didn’t come. All he felt was anger. Hot, hard, settling in his chest just this side of rage. He set his beer on the coffee table, and squeezed the arms of the leather chair, leaning forward. “You’re willing to overlook my humble beginnings?”

She shot that practiced look of superior magnanimity right at him. “Yes, I see no reason to hold that against
you. After all, it’s not as if you had much of a choice about your childhood, but you certainly have a choice of what to do now.”

“You better hold off on that until you get all the information.”

“There’s more?”

There was no easy way to give her the news about Nicki, so he figured it would be like pulling off a Band-Aid. In his experience, faster was less painful. “Yes. There’s a hell of a lot more. Payton, it’s about Nicki. She might be my daughter. I’m waiting for the results of the paternity test.”