“Nick?” Kate asked, picking up the fresh drink in front of her.
“No, the Easter Bunny,” Billie huffed into the phone. “I’m in the bathroom. Oh, God. I don’t know what to say…I think I’m hyperventilating.”
Kate pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it. Where was her calm, self-assured friend? The one she needed now that her business was doomed? “Okay, first thing, head between your knees.”
“The toilet area’s not real clean. I’m gonna stand.”
Kate wanted to scream that she’d lost everything today and didn’t need to hear about Nick and his damned proposal. But she didn’t. Instead she said, “Okay.”
“Kate, he has a ring and everything. He actually got down on one knee.” Billie’s voice now sounded shell-shocked. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Kate picked up the vodka and tossed it back. It felt as good going down as the first one. “So you said…”
“I said I had to go pee,” Billie whispered.
Kate couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“Don’t you dare laugh, Kate Newman!” Billie snapped. “This is not funny.”
Kate sobered. Well, kinda sobered. The vodka was working its magic. “You’re right. It’s not funny. It’s sweet.”
“You can’t be serious,” Billie whispered. “He’s talking marriage. Marriage, Kate!”
Kate heard something muffled in the background, then Billie’s quick intake of breath. Then she heard Billie call, presumably to Nick, that she’d be right out.
“Okay, stop chewing your hair.”
“What?”
“Do you love him?” Kate asked.
“Yes. I totally love him,” Billie whispered.
“Then say yes.”
“Are you joking?” Billie said. “Did you just tell me to say yes? You don’t believe in marriage.”
It was true, she didn’t—well, at least not for herself. Love was fairy-tale bullshit. She shouldn’t be giving relationship advice to a dead cockroach, much less a living, breathing friend. “I don’t. But you do.”
The line remained silent.
“Can you imagine waking up with him every morning even when he’s old and wrinkly and…impotent? Can you imagine watching your grandchildren together? Filing joint taxes? Painting a nursery?” Kate couldn’t seem to stop the scenarios tumbling from her lips. “How about picking out china patterns or cleaning up your kids’ vomit—”
“Okay. I get it. Yes,” Billie said.
“Then hang up, open the door and take that ring.”
Kate punched the end button and tossed the phone on the bar. If Billie was so stupid as to reject a man who loved her despite her seriously weird attributes, then she deserved to stay locked in Nick’s bathroom. With pee on the floor.
When she looked up, the bartender and her previously pushy friend stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Well, she had. And her business along with it. And now Billie wasn’t even available to her. Kate was on her own.
Like always.
Before she’d hit the ATM machine several hours earlier, she’d contemplated borrowing the money she needed from Billie. As a successful glass artist with international acclaim, her friend had steady cash flow even in a bad economy. But Kate never asked for help. And to do so now, with a friend, felt not cool. With a possible wedding on the horizon for Billie, ten thousand would be hard to spare. Besides, if she were going to borrow money, it would be from her absolute best friend who lived in Texas and was loaded to the gills with old oil money. But Kate had never asked Nellie to help her before, not even when Kate had dropped out of college her freshman year to go to beauty school and spent three months eating bologna and ramen noodles.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Kate had always relied on herself to make it through whatever problem arose, and this was no different.
But what would she do? There was no way the salon could generate extra income in the coming months. It was post-Christmas and debt squashed unnecessary services for regular customers. Many spas had closed their doors and many friends had gone from esthetician to cocktail waitress in the past few months.
The bartender finally moseyed toward her. He eyed her a moment before asking, “You want another?”
Kate waved her hand over the empty tumbler. “No thanks. If I have any more, I might go home with Pushy over there.”
“In that case, I’d like to buy her another drink,” the bed-rumpled hunk deadpanned.
Kate laughed. What else could she do? Her life was falling apart and someone wanted to pick her up. Just not in the way she needed.
She turned to the guy. He stared back, amusement in his brown eyes. She almost rethought her position on taking him up on his not stated, but obviously intended offer. “Listen, you don’t want to deal with me tonight. It’s been a hell of a day, and I just lost eight hundred dollars at the blackjack table. Unless you’ve got ten thousand dollars in your pocket, there isn’t much else I want out of those pants.”
The bartender laughed. “She’s got you there, partner.”
The hunk joined in on the laughter. “Not only sexy, but a smart-ass mouth. Damn, if I don’t want to take you home right now.”
“How much are you worth?” Kate asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Not nearly enough.” He slid his own empty glass toward the bartender. “But I figure I can at least afford to buy you another drink.”
Kate smiled. “Well, I’m gonna pass. It’s almost midnight and that’s when my car turns into a pumpkin.”
She rummaged through her bag, found her matching Prada wallet, flipped it open and tossed her credit card onto the counter. As she snapped her wallet closed a small, yellowed piece of paper caught her eye. She’d carried it with her for years and years.
She pulled it from the pocket in which it had been nestled. Written in her grandmother’s shaky handwriting before she’d died was a name. It hadn’t mattered that Kate already knew the truth about him. That nearly everybody in her hometown had known the truth about the man. Her grandmother insisted on putting it in writing. Like that mattered. Justus Mitchell.
The name of her biological father.
The man who refused to claim her.
The man she hated.
She fingered the timeworn edges of the paper. Justus Mitchell had once been the richest man in East Texas. His lands had stretched as far as the eye could see and his oil money went as deep as the earth that sheltered the precious commodity. The man was rich, powerful and politically connected. In his heyday, he’d owned everyone from cocktail waitresses to governors. He still held influence, or had the last time she’d checked. But even the powerful were vulnerable to hidden truths. Look what illegitimate children and mistresses had done to politicians.
Kate had morals. She had character. But she wasn’t beyond blackmail in order to save her salon. And a low-down snake like Justus had mounds of money sitting in the bank.
So…if she needed money, he might as well provide what he’d refused to give her so many years ago. Child support.
He owed her. She’d feel no guilt because Justus wasn’t a victim.
And neither was she.
CHAPTER TWO
RICK MENDEZ SWALLOWED the words he wanted