Christina (Daughters #1) (31 page)

My life hasn’t been going well of late. Recently contacted by a girl who claims to be my sister, I’m now haunted by a family I never knew about, and swore to never associate with. After all, I was given away at birth; why should I care about anyone who would abandon me?

I’ve worked for five years as a patrol cop, beating the streets of my hometown, San Francisco. But after learning my husband of four years is cheating on me, the need to escape to a family who doesn’t really know me becomes the only viable solution; and one I never dreamed I’d pursue. But I must get out of this city, and now. I can’t stand to breathe the same air as Sam Ford.

Sam Ford
. The sole ruler of my heart for decades. The day we got married, I thought I was starting the life of our dreams forever, even if we struggled to start a family, I believed we loved each other enough to survive anything… but apparently, not that. Sam managed to shatter my heart into a million pieces, and I’m not sure it can ever be glued back together again, no matter who attempts to. 

Natalie (Daughters, #2)

Prologue

~Natalie~

No!

That is all that comes to my brain. That is all that I can think to start shouting. Or whispering. Or crying. But I don’t. I don’t even utter the word out loud. I just stare vacantly. I just stand there, frozen. I stand there, destroyed. I stand there, bleeding.

No!

Blood seeps through my fingers where I clutch my stomach.
Blood.
So much of it goes drip-drop, drip-drop down onto the ground below me. I glance down and my hand is gone. It looks as if it’s covered in a crimson cloth. There is so much blood.

Still, I stand here.

Is this me? Is that my blood? It’s warm. The faint thought trickles from a weird spot in my brain. It’s so warm, and that surprises me.

I feel nothing. I don’t feel pain. I see it. I see it all. But I don’t feel it. Is this what dying feels like? Am I watching myself die? Is my spirit floating out of my body, off and away? To heaven? To hell? Surely, not to hell. I was, or at least, I earnestly tried to be to be a good person. But now? Where will I go?

I see who shot me. She’s standing right in front me. Not a bus length away from me. She stares at me, seemingly as shocked as I am at her. She wronged me. She destroyed my life. How could she shoot me? She doesn’t even know me.

I don’t know.

The world starts to shift. I fall to my knees.
Shit
. I feel that. Despite my previous numbness, I feel the thump of my knees when they land onto concrete. The colors swirl and bleed together, browns and greens and grays and blues, so much blue. Trees, leaves, concrete, buildings, and sky. Sky is everywhere now over me. Faces are gone. She is gone. I am gone.

Sam
.

Sam’s face fills my mind’s eye. Oh, Sam. What will you do now? What will you do without me? What will you do with this awful situation? Oh Sam…

No. No, Sam is gone. He’s gone. He’s not here.

I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I was wrong. I feel sorry for myself most of all because it’s too late for apologies. It’s too late for forgiveness. It’s too late for my life to continue.

I finally understand it! Anything could have been fixed while I was still alive. Anything, but this. Death? It really is the end. It really lasts forever. It’s only now, in this last moment of my life as the colors and the sky turn to gray and fade to black, that I fully understand how much time I wasted in life. As the black pinpricks overtake my eyes, which start to close, I understand this is actually
the end
.

Like always, my insistence on being right cost me every chance I had to be happy.

Chapter One

~Sam~

NO!
GOD… JUST… NO! This can’t be happening!

I close my eyes, but force them open again to meet the gaze of my wife who stands before me. She is frozen. Silent. In agony. I know that. I also know, in one second flat, what I’ve done to her. What this means to her. I’ve emotionally committed the equivalent of shooting, or stabbing her through the heart. I know I’ve ruined her life. Along with my life. I’ve ruined us, as in together. I just didn’t realize the depravity of my action, not fully, until this exact second.

Physically, everything stops. My body parts wither and my brain cowers from the truth of what I’ve just done. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to be
me
. I should never have been the guy caught screwing a meaningless woman in his office.

But I am. I really am that guy. And I just got caught. Red-handed. By my own wife. In this moment, this one endless moment that keeps replaying like it’s on a loop in my guilty mind. I am that terrible guy.

Natalie stands in the open doorway, completely mute. A statue of unmasked distress. Her eyes are huge and wide, her mouth just slightly parted. The only movement I can detect are the tears, streaming down her cheeks. She makes no sound. She doesn’t even seem to be aware she is crying.

That makes everything all the more tragic.

We stare at each other, looking directly into our eyes. Everything else is gone. The woman. The twenty feet of office that separate us. The furniture. Our future. Our past. All of it disappears in a flash. We stare in a hard, tragic eyelock amidst the silence.

I eventually must end it by shutting my eyes.

On my desk sits a woman. She is not my wife. I don’t even like her. With my eyes closed, I clearly picture what Natalie sees, and it shreds my heart. I’m a lying, cheating sack of shit. I don’t deserve the opportunity to try and explain, using the lamest of excuses, or beg my wife for forgiveness. I don’t deserve her forgiveness. Not Natalie’s.

But I wasn’t always that guy.

Once, I was a loving, attentive, adoring husband. I was upstanding in the community. I worked hard, and was always honest. I never lied. Once, I was the kind of guy who despises guys who commit adultery. My favorite quote was: no real man cheats.

But I did.

Her name is Chantal Bailey. She is a secretary here at the firm where I work. Yeah, typical, right? I nearly groan at the clichés and triviality of what I am doing and have done. Chantal catches on very quickly that something is wrong when I stop moving inside her and my penis rapidly shrivels up to a flaccid nothing. I need to cover up, or get some privacy. But I can’t seem to do either.

Chantal whips around before she finally notices my wife. She’s sitting on my desk, her legs splayed wide, her heels joined around my waist, holding her weight with her arms.

Natalie still doesn’t move.

That scares me more than if she came after me with a mail opener, or pulled her gun on me. That is what Natalie would normally do. That is the kind of woman she is. She’s a fighter. And she refuses to take shit from anyone. Ever. She has a mouth that could stop a trucker in his tracks. Where is that now? What happened to all of her anger? Her rage? Her horror? She is not like this. Not like the unmoving woman, I now see weeping in the doorway. Her broken heart shows in her dark eyes. I broke her heart. I broke the bond of who we are together. I shattered every illusion and admiration she had for me.

At this point, however, all I can really do is withdraw from Chantal. The condom drops to the carpeted floor beneath my desk as I quickly cover my stupid, awful, shrunken dick. That’s what I think of it now. It might as well be contaminated with hazardous waste. The shame burning in my heart heats up my chest and soon ascends into my cheeks. I am blushing with shame and profound regret. Oh God, I’ve never regretted anything in my life as much as I do this.

Still, Natalie doesn’t react. I wait for her to find her tongue. I imagine the litany of curses she’ll fling and hurl like weapons at me. I want her to do that. I deserve that. I’m ready and willing to take her verbal assault. It’s just the beginning of my punishment, but I need for her to start.

I hate seeing her just standing there, knowing I’ve ruined her, ruined us, ruined
everything
, forever.

Then without a word, a whimper, an insult, or even a sob, she spins on her heel and disappears from the doorway.

I wilt. I literally, fall over my desk, pressing my hands onto the surface to hold myself up. I am not five inches away from where Chantal still perches, now clumsily trying to close her legs. She too, is strangely silent. My chest hurts when I breathe. My heart is racing. My hands are clenched as tightly as my jaw. My extremities are going numb.
Shit.
I’m going to die right here and now from a heart attack. I deserve it. My legs are shaking. It would only be divine justice.

All the noise from the outside traffic is kind of a muted, like a clock ticking in the background.

“That was your wife?” Chantal finally asks. Her tone is incredulous. I glance up at her. She’s biting her lip. I can detect only a bit of chagrin in her face. Like the expression you might make after being caught cheating on a driving test, or lying about how much you make for a living. Not the face of someone who just ruined another person’s life and family and marriage.

Oh, wait, that’s not Chantal’s fault, is it? I’m the one to blame. I did that. To the only woman I have ever loved. Because despite how this looks… I love Natalie. I love her so much that what I’ve done makes me sick and bile begins to climb up in my throat.  

“Yes,” I whisper, staring down at my cluttered desktop. It’s all blurry. Shit. Why? I realize only then that tears are coursing down my face. I haven’t cried since I was eighteen when my grandfather passed away. But I am crying now as I lean over my desk, unable to move. I can’t bear to face what I’ve done. Or even the woman next to me. But most of all, I am ashamed to face my wife.

“I see,” Chantal says as she hops off my desk and smooths her skirt down. She bends over to grab her panties, which I ripped off earlier. She tucks them into her skirt pocket. “She doesn’t seem like your type.”

Not my type?
How the hell would this blond, girlie, ditzy bimbo know that? Natalie was wearing her uniform. Her hair was slicked back in a tight knot at the nape of her neck, the way she always wears it for work. It’s a little severe. She doesn’t wear makeup for work either.

When she’s at home, she lets the wild, softly curling hair fly free and wears just a little makeup. She’s so soft and sexy, the contrast drives me nuts. Or it used to. Until recently. Until…

Well, shit already here I am! Starting with the excuses. What could possibly justify me doing this? I know, there is no good reason.

Still, how can this strange woman say my wife isn’t my type?

She is all there is to me. But if that were so true, when Chantal came in and started coming on to me, I would have thrown her out, no matter what it took, now, wouldn’t I? If I loved my wife like I proclaim I do, that’s what I should have done.

But the thing is, I do love her that much.

“Th—this should have never happened,” I whisper like a little, scared girl caught passing a note by a teacher.

Chantal’s mouth tightens. She knows I am married. There is no shock to her here. She has been chasing me for months. Quite explicitly, she made it very clear she was ready and willing to do what we were just caught doing. Despite all the times I talked up my wife and often, in excess, just so she would stop pursuing me.

“But it did happen, Mr. Ford. Just because you didn’t come doesn’t change the fact that you were having sex with me. She won’t see any distinction there either.”

Mr. Ford.
I want to sink into the carpet with shame and humiliation. She still addresses me by my last name. She’s eight years younger than I am at twenty-two years old. She is also right. I don’t see her suffering from a guilty conscience over this. Is it because of her age? Or does she just not care? Or could she possibly think I would leave Natalie for her?

“I love her. This was a huge mistake. Chantal, I didn’t mean…”

She has shoulder-length, blond hair and, big cornflower-blue eyes. She bats her eyelashes at me. “You didn’t mean to rip my panties off? Things like that just happen to you?”

“No. I’m just… I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry I did that. I can’t—” I can’t even believe I would sacrifice the best part of my life for this silly woman, who means nothing to me. I’m not saying that Chantal isn’t a perfectly nice girl, making her way in the world however she has to. I honestly don’t know anything about her. I don’t know her at all. Not really anyway. I just know what she revealed while we were mildly flirting over the past few months. She’s always smiling when she sees me. Her voice is a little breathless when she says hello, and she’s a decent secretary with a good attendance record. Until today, until this evening, that is roughly all I knew about her. I don’t mean to imply she’s a slut or anything. Clearly, this is all on me. I just can’t believe I did it. It doesn’t matter whom I chose to do it with.

I run my hands through my hair and start shaking my head. “I have to go. I have to—”

Fuck this. Why am I wasting more time by trying to rationalize this to Chantal? I don’t care how she freaking feels about me. I only care about Natalie, who will be torn to pieces.

I’m crossing the office. My shirt is untucked. I’m a mess. Everything about me sucks. My appearance. My office. My marriage. My entire life. It’s all a mess and I can’t even picture how to start changing that.

“She won’t forgive you,” Chantal’s voice echoes behind me. I stop in the doorway. The same one that Natalie came through so innocently. She was probably coming to see why I was again working late. Perhaps to surprise me. Or talk to me.

I turn and cock an eyebrow at Chantal. How the hell does she know what my wife will or won’t do? “Pardon me?”

“She will start finding out about it all. And when she knows, she will never forgive you.”

There is nothing for her to find out about. Natalie witnessed everything that ever existed between Chantal and me. I stare at the woman I’d just been inside of and a chill runs down my spine. Her smile is soft and dewy, like you might have after realizing you’re in love. Not like having just been caught by a wife, while fucking her husband on his desk.

I don’t know what she’s about, but I don’t have time for that. I have to find Natalie. I have to… what? I don’t know what I plan to do. I just have to find her.

~Natalie~

I say nothing. Never in my life have I been rendered speechless. I’m usually the opposite. I am usually the first one who says what needs to be said to whomever it needs to be said to. I yell at bullies fearlessly. I scold any rule breakers. I cuss out criminals. I’m a good cop because I never take shit from anyone. I’m always ready and willing to say what I think of a person or a situation. I have a sharp tongue and even sharper retorts. I know how to use a filter when necessary, but I also know how to rip it off and truly express myself if the need arises.

As it is right now. This is the most critical situation of my life, and I just stand there. Stupid. Silent. Crying in muted shock. I act like such a fucking
girl
.

I think I must be catatonic. My stomach is jittery. My hands are shaking. I suddenly run through the empty hallway, past the closed office doors, and hit the elevator button half a dozen times. Hot tears course down my cheeks and fall off my face. I rub them dry, but more follow. I am sobbing as I lean against the wall, waiting, and wanting to scream for the elevator to hurry up and come. I glance back, panicked he’ll pursue me. I can’t even look at him anymore. I may never, ever be able to look at Sam’s face again.

Sam…

The thought of him makes me lean over and grasp my stomach with both hands. Oh God, it hurts so bad. So damn bad! My stomach cramps relentlessly. My hands are fisting and unfisting. I am trembling everywhere.

Finally! The elevator door dings and opens. I jump inside and push the close button in compulsive, crazy swipes. I know it won’t make it go any faster, but I want it to close
now!
I cannot face Sam. I can’t talk to Sam. Never again, can I see Sam the same way.

His face is swimming and floating through my brain. Our entire marriage, hell, our entire life history, flashes with familiar memories. The pain caused by all the images overwhelms me, and I have to stifle the miserable moan that escapes my lips.

I got off duty early. We were having a hard time of late. I wanted to see Sam. I wanted… I don’t even remember what I wanted now. I think I wanted to talk. I was hoping to work some things out. I think I was coming there to make some kind of peace. In neutral territory. My head feels so foggy. My reasons feel like they belong to another person, maybe even to another life. In one second, the amount of time it takes to shove a door open and peek into a room is how long it takes for my entire life to be turned upside-down. Etched in my memory forever is the moment before I opened the door, and the moment afterwards. One moment I was married, the next moment, I was not. That, for me, is what this means.