Chapter Eighteen
How could a person drop that revelation, and then prance about pretending not to know she had sucker punched him?
Thirty minutes had passed since Patricia’s revelation eclipsed his own. They had cleared the candles, and Ryan suggested they move their discussion to their bedroom. She sent him ahead while she washed the wineglasses. Patricia returned with two glasses of water and placed one on his nightstand before going to her side of the bed. For once, his mind wasn’t on admiring her attributes. Ryan watched her progress trying to temper his patience.
“What do you mean you already know?” he asked, turning on the ceiling fan.
The woman had the nerve to make him wait. He gritted his teeth. Now she needed to tinkle. Ryan slinked into the chair while he waited until Patricia returned.
She gulped her water before easing under the covers.
“How about you start first?” she suggested. “We’ll piece the whole story together.”
All right. He would start first. “When Tiffany scheduled the paternity test, a panic set in. I don’t know why I felt the need to know before anyone else. But I hated not knowing. Once I submitted my sample, I flirted with the front desk clerk to get the name of the tech responsible for the results. Tiffany ensured complete privacy, but everyone has a price. I paid him twenty thousand dollars to provide me with the results before anyone else.”
“Why?”
Ryan shook his head. “Maybe it’s my control issue. Who knows why I did it.”
“I followed you,” Patricia said.
His eyes were wide with shock. “What do you mean you followed me?”
“You think I would let my husband take the most important test of his life without being there? I came, but it must’ve been too late.” She touched her chin. “I was about to pull out of the parking lot when a call came in. I parked my car to answer the phone. It was about a patient. When I finished the call and started to pull out of the lot, I saw your car. You rushed back into the building although you didn’t stay for more than five or ten minutes.”
“And you didn’t call to me?” Ryan asked.
“No, I was more interested in finding out why you returned so quickly.” Patricia shivered. She reached for a robe.
“Finish your story,” he commanded, rubbing his arms. Never would he let on how he hated her mistrust. Not when she was right to do so. He pushed himself to his feet and joined her on the bed.
“I asked to visit the tech—Geoffrey Turner—the front desk clerk provided his name.”
“That’s right,” Ryan said. “I had forgotten.”
Patricia placed a finger over his lips. “No more interruptions. This has been a long time coming.”
Ryan nodded.
“Unlike you, I didn’t flirt to get information. I played the doctor card.” She chuckled. “I made him tell me why you were there. Geoffrey spilled it and told me you paid him for the results. I paid him thirty thousand to tell you Karlie was your daughter.”
Ryan’s mouth dropped open. He reared back and pinned his eyes on her. “What? Why would you do that?” Who was this woman he had married? She looked like the woman he knew, but she didn’t sound like her. The woman in front of him was deceitful. His Patti wouldn’t have played such a cruel joke on him.
Would she?
“Two years passed before I understood my motives. We’d lost Anna. I was grieving. Having Karlie for a daughter would’ve soothed my aching heart. I was already spending time with her, and I’d come to care for her as if she were my own.”
“You wanted Karlie as your substitute?” Ryan asked.
“When you put it like that, it sounds . . . contrived.” Patricia bit her lip. For the first time she sounded less sure.
“Thanks to your interference, Geoffrey made another thirty thousand from me to declare Clifford as Karlie’s father.” He rubbed his temples.
“I thought you would come to me with the news. We would’ve had a daughter and a son.”
Through gritted teeth, Ryan said, “Karlie’s not Anna. There is no replacing our child.”
Patricia nodded rapidly. “I know that. Now. It was a mistake, honey. I was overcome and I . . . I . . .”
“You what? You wanted to make me pay, is that it?” He swallowed before ripping the pain of the past open. “It was payback, wasn’t it? Payback, because you blamed me. Admit it. You blame me.”
He lowered his head. Ryan registered the slight rustle of the covers being pulled back before Patricia touched his arm. He hated the tears rolling down her face and shrugged off her arm.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
How could he believe any word out of her lying mouth?
“You’ve got to believe me,” Patricia pleaded.
However, Ryan was past the point of listening to her. “All this time I carried the guilt of hiding my daughter from you when you knew. You knew. You did it because you blamed me for Anna’s death.” He remembered the night she had miscarried. “We had just made love because, as usual, I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I, I don’t blame you,” she wept. “The cramping wasn’t because of anything we’d done. She just wasn’t meant to be. We cannot control God’s will.”
Ryan didn’t want to hear that. Her explanation wouldn’t soothe the guilt stewing within him. Instead, he found himself becoming angry at Patricia’s thoughtless actions. His anger transformed his voice into steel. “Tell me something, wife. Why did you accuse me of wanting Karlie if you knew the truth all along?”
“I wasn’t sure of the truth anymore.” She ignored her runny nose. “I thought Geoffrey betrayed me when you told me Clifford Peterson was the father. I figured he’d pocketed the money and told the truth. I couldn’t very well expose him without exposing myself, so I took a loss. What’s thirty thousand, I told myself. I put the whole thing behind me as a bad experience and moved on.”
“A bad experience? That’s how you see it?”
Patricia’s robe fell open. Her half-naked body taunted him, reminding him of how his passion had killed their baby. No matter what Patricia offered as a clinical explanation, he knew the truth.
Ryan inhaled. “Put some clothes on.”
“Ryan, we need to get on our knees and throw all this pain to Christ. Only He can help us. When we got baptized, God washed away all our sins, including these.”
No, that’s too easy. Ryan was not in the mood to pray or accept salvation as justification for treachery. In a tone laced with scorn, he said, “How convenient. You want to bring God into this conversation now. Where was God when you paid someone to lie to me?”
“Whoa. Don’t put this all on me. You paid him as well.”
He clenched his fists. “I know that. I’ve been carrying that burden for five years. But I thought Karlie was my daughter. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a horrible parent to Brian. I was always busy. I didn’t think I would’ve been a good father to her.”
She curled her lips and pointed at him. “Your excuses might have helped you sleep at night, but they won’t wash when Karlie finds out. She’s going to see you as the weasel who betrayed her.”
The truth punched him in the guts. Patti was right. He had no justifiable excuse for not being in his daughter’s life. “Is she my daughter?”
“What do you mean?” Patricia asked.
“You paid Geoffrey to tell me a lie. How do I know what the truth is? I’ve seen Karlie’s mannerisms, and I see myself. But what if I’m seeing the similarities based upon what I think to be true?” He groaned. This was complicated enough without this added uncertainty. Ryan could not tell Karlie his wrongdoing and shred her life apart, again, unless he knew.
“There’s only one thing left to do and you must be urgent about it. Brian and Karlie are thrown together. What if they fall . . .?”
Ryan knew what she was going to say. That thought had given him many nights filled with tossing and turning.
“I can’t even utter the unimaginable,” Patricia said. “You must confront Karlie and have her take an unsullied paternity test. That’s the only way you’ll know for sure.”
Ryan shrugged into his clothes and grabbed his keys. “I’ll be back.”
She creased her forehead. “Where are you going? It’s almost midnight.”
His rage broiled and bubbled over. “To get some air. I need to put some distance between us or I’m going to say something I can’t take back. I can’t stand to look at your face.” He cut his eyes at her before turning away. He missed the raw pain slashed across her face at his harsh words.
“We need to talk. Make plans.” She came over to him and grasped his arm. “Let’s go down to Sarasota and tell them together. We can’t waste any time on the off chance something happens between them that cannot be undone.”
“I’ll book our flights when I get back,” he said. Right now, Ryan needed to get out of there.
“You did wrong too,” Patricia whispered.
He glared. “I’m not going to stay here if this conversation is going to become a tit-for-tat.” Ryan tromped over to the closet and threw some clothes in an overnight bag.
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?” He was not about to add he had not thought that far ahead. “I’ll be at my office.”
“Don’t leave,” she pleaded.
“I’ll call you with travel arrangements.”
And with that, Ryan snatched his bag and stormed out the door.