His brothers, Sam and Cal, would rag on him relentlessly, which was bad enough. Katherine and Hastings Hart, his mother and her husband, and his younger sister, Ellie, would be disappointed in him for the way he’d handled the situation. But none of that mattered now. He and Rose had a problem and it was all on him.
“We should probably sit—”
“Don’t be nice to me, Linc. We both know that’s not who you are.”
“What I did to you was lousy, Rose, but that’s not who I am.” He wasn’t the man she thought she’d married, but he wasn’t a complete jerk, either.
They stood in the postage-stamp-sized living area of her apartment, which was upstairs from her small interior design studio in an old, redbrick building on one of Prosper, Texas’s, side streets. The fact that this one-room place had charm was a reflection of her skill as an interior designer. The paint was pale gold except for one olive-green accent wall in the living room. The kitchen and living areas were set apart by the clever placement of the love-seat-sized sofa. Wall hangings, knickknacks, lamps and throw pillows added color without being stuffy and formal. It was homey and warm. He liked her taste very much.
“You must have questions,” he said.
“How do you know we’re not divorced?” She tucked a strand of long black hair behind her ear.
“My lawyer passed away after a short illness and I had to hire a new one to handle my personal affairs. He insisted on looking over all of my official documents. There was a marriage license but no divorce decree. After researching the situation, he discovered that the papers were never filed with the court.”
“How could that happen?”
It was hard not to cringe at her bewildered tone, especially since he’d assured her he would handle everything. “I hired a half-price lawyer and got what I paid for—half a divorce.”
“Why would you do that, Linc? Your family is worth millions and Hart Industries must have a platoon of the best and brightest legal minds around. It doesn’t make sense that you would get an attorney from outside the company, especially someone incompetent. The Harts don’t do things like that.”
Leave it to Rose to zero in on the core of the problem. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, but she had a right to know. “I’m not a Hart.”
“Excuse me? You’re what now?”
“Hastings Hart isn’t my father.”
“No way.” She shook her head.
“It’s true. Hastings and Katherine confirmed it. I found out right after we got married.”
“How?”
“My biological father came to see me. He confessed he had a...thing with my mother.”
“You told me your parents were deliriously happy,” Rose said with equal amounts of accusation and defensiveness in her voice.
“That was their story. Turns out there was a rough patch. My older brothers were born nine months apart—twins the hard way, she always said. The fact is she had her hands full raising them and Hastings wasn’t around much. He was traveling, working long hours to build Hart Industries into something he could leave to his sons.”
“So she turned to another man and had an affair?”
“He and my mother were legally separated and headed for a divorce, so technically it wasn’t an extramarital affair.”
“And you never knew? Never suspected?” There was skepticism in the questions.
“No. They worked through their problems and he promised to give me his name. Both of them agreed there was no reason for me to know.”
“And your biological father was all right with the arrangement?”
“He was a lawyer on the partner track at an ultraconservative law firm that specialized in divorce. Sleeping with a client and getting her pregnant would have caused a scandal that might have cost him his career, so keeping it secret was fine with him.”
“Yet he told you all those years later. Why?”
“Midlife crisis, I guess. He never had children.” He stopped, waiting for the anger to roll through him so he could continue the act and pretend he was reconciled to the ugly secret. “No one to carry on the family name got to him, probably.”
“You don’t know?”
“It was a short conversation. At that moment I didn’t know whether or not he was lying.” Turned out the guy was the only one who hadn’t lied. “Hastings and Katherine confirmed.”
“And you haven’t talked to your father since? Asked him why he finally came forward?”
“No.” The man ruined his life. Sharing DNA didn’t make that okay. “The narcissistic bastard only thought about the fact that he had a son, not what the revelation would do to that son.”
“Oh, God. Linc—” Shock and resentment were replaced by pity in her eyes and that wasn’t much of an improvement. “I guess it hit you hard.”
“Let’s just say finding out your parents lied to you about Santa Claus is nothing compared to learning your father isn’t who you thought.” Linc had had no idea who he was and his only thought was to protect Rose, even from himself.
He remembered that time as if it was yesterday. She’d been hired for the summer at Hart Industries in the real-estate development branch of the company he was taking over. They fell madly in love, had a whirlwind romance and he swept her away to Las Vegas, where they got married. It was the best time of his life and he’d never been happier. Then everything went to hell.
He shook his head and met her gaze. “You thought you married a Hart but I’m not one.”
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You think that was important to me?”
Intensity rotated through him and was nearly as powerful as what he’d felt ten years ago. He recalled the anguish and pain in her voice when she’d pleaded with him to tell her why he was leaving. What she’d done. It was an understatement to say he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He left the Harts, too, and stayed away for a long time. “It mattered to me.”
“So you had to split from me and got a half-price lawyer to do it.”
“I didn’t feel it was right to use a Hart attorney since I wasn’t really part of the family. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I walked away from everyone.” He backpacked through Europe, although it would be more accurate to say that he drank his way from one country to the next. “After two years I came back.” But he never forgot that he was the bastard son who always needed to prove himself.
“And your father? The biological one?”
“What about him?”
“What’s he like?”
“Good question. Like I said, I don’t see him. And if it’s all the same to you I don’t want to talk about him. I only brought it up for context.”
“Don’t expect me to forgive you,” she said.
“I don’t.” But seeing her again, remembering that they’d once been two halves of a whole, made him wish she could. “I just thought you should know about the divorce.”
“It is kind of important,” she agreed. “Chances are I would have found out the hard way pretty soon.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been dating someone