Chapter Six

By the time Rachel got home, she was ninety percent sure she had to tell Cam about Sofie. The initial flash of anger had dissipated so she could think again. He was Sofie’s father. And, if she believed him, he’d been financially supporting his soon-to-be ex through cancer when they met—which didn’t make him the same breed of lying scumbag her father had been.

Though that didn’t excuse the lying. Or the fact that he’d actually tried to blame her for the fact that he’d felt like he needed to lie. Or that he’d only seemed concerned with how he got caught and not actually apologetic for the lying and cheating.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure it had been cheating. Did it still count if you were only faking staying married? At what moment did it stop being adultery?

Her head hurt just thinking about it as she climbed the steps to the second floor apartment she’d moved into with her mother and grandmother shortly before Sofie was born. She’d needed the support system then, scared of doing the parenting thing on her own, and she’d been reaching for family however she could. She’d even gotten in touch with her father’s legitimate son—which had ultimately turned out to be a good thing, though she’d second-guessed sending that letter to Aaron Cross, Jr. a thousand times.

He was the image of their father—not just physically, but as a walking picture of success. A tall, handsome, former-NFL player, just like their dad. But he also appeared to be unfailingly faithful to his fiancée. Which was a big difference from their father. She didn’t know of any other half-siblings floating around in the world, but with their father it certainly wasn’t impossible that there were a dozen more.

He’d probably told each of their mothers that he loved them. That he was leaving his wife to be with them and only them. That he loved those other illegitimate babies just as much as he loved his legal son. That he hadn’t planned any of this, it had just happened, and he couldn’t be expected to be held accountable for any of it. It wasn’t his fault after all.

Her father. The Great Aaron Cross. Who hadn’t even had the courtesy to survive until she was old enough to be mad at him about all the lies—so now she always felt that awful flicker of guilt when she wanted to scream at his memory.

She unlocked the apartment and stepped inside, instantly clapping eyes on the reason she needed to stay far away from men like Aaron Cross and Cameron Cole.

Sofie was strapped into her high chair, shoving pieces of avocado into her mouth—and all over the lower half of her face. Her head turned toward the door and she flung her avocado-covered hands up in greeting, her tiny face lighting up with joy. “Mama!”

“Hi, baby! I missed you!” She made a beeline for her daughter and kissed the top of her head—the only part of her that appeared to be outside the avocado danger zone. “Is that a yummy avocado?”

“Mummy!” Sofie agreed emphatically—and Rachel’s heart ached with the strain of containing all the love her sweet girl inspired.

Yaya moved behind Sofie in the tiny galley kitchen, putting the finishing touches on what smelled like moussaka and smiling in greeting. “Hello, hrisa mou. Good day?”

“Mm,” Rachel mumbled noncommittally. She gave Yaya a one-armed hug before moving to put her laptop bag down in the room she shared with Sofie—and all of Sofie’s baby stuff. Thank God for organization or she’d never see the floor.

“I thought this was Mama’s shift,” she called through the open door as she stepped out of her heels and wriggled her relieved toes in the carpet.

“She had a last minute appointment come up,” Yaya explained.

Rachel sincerely hoped the “appointment” was an emergency manicure at the salon where she worked and not a date with whatever deeply unsuitable man she’d fallen for this week.

Since daycare was ludicrously expensive and none of them could afford not to work, Rachel, her mother, and Yaya had worked out a color-coded schedule to show who would watch Sofie at any given time—a strategy she’d stolen from Jane the Virgin, since Jane was her organizational soul mate.

And because she practically was Jane. If you didn’t count the whole virgin thing. They were both living with their mother and grandmother with an unexpected baby. Though thankfully Rachel hadn’t had to deal with telenovela levels of drama.

Yet.

There was no telling what would happen now that Cam was back in the picture.

If he was back in the picture.

Could he be back in the picture?

He’d still be in LA during the baseball season, which was more than half the year. She avoided sports, but she’d learned a little about baseball back when she’d actually thought he might be her future. She knew there were two leagues and he now played for the one that meant he wouldn’t be playing the Rockies as often during the season.

Would he want them to move to LA so he could see Sofie more? Aaron was there, but it would mean uprooting her mother and grandmother. Could she do that to them? Just for a man who might not even be a good father figure?

Maybe she shouldn’t tell him. Keep the status quo. This was good, wasn’t it? They were managing just fine on their own. Sofie was happy, and that was all the mattered. Rachel needed to protect that happiness at all costs.

After quickly changing into yoga pants and a faded t-shirt, she emerged from the bedroom and settled into the chair beside Sofie’s high chair, making faces at her daughter, who grinned delightedly.

“Your mama didn’t know how long she would be.” Yaya came out of the kitchen with a plate in each hand, setting one in front of Rachel and settling across the table with the other. Sofie’s portion was already sitting on the high chair tray—and being spread across her face.

Rachel knew she shouldn’t be relieved that her mother wasn’t joining them for dinner, but it was much more peaceful without her. Her mother tended to be a one-woman drama generator and after the day she’d had she didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with her.

Rachel’s phone binged with a text-alert from her bag in the other room and she grimaced, setting down her fork. “I should get that. I forgot I owe Aaron a text.”

Yaya sighed, her pinched face speaking volumes about her opinions on cell phones at the dinner table, but she didn’t say a word until Rachel had grabbed the phone and shot back a quick reply. “And how is your brother?”

It was a strange sentence. A sentence that never would have been spoken in the house two years ago. But it was their strange now. “He’s good.” Sofie smacked her plastic spoon against her tray and Rachel caught it before she could fling it to the floor. “He and Bree still haven’t set a date, and I think they’re getting more serious about eloping. I keep thinking I’m going to get a text one day telling me they’re in the Caribbean and it’s a done deal.”

“I’m sure they would tell you beforehand. Is that what the text was about? The wedding?”

Rachel tried not to squirm in her chair. She’d never been able to lie to Yaya—even lies of omission. Her grandmother had a way of looking right through her. “No,” she admitted. “He, ah, he invited us out for Christmas.”

“Oh.” A long pause. “That was nice of him.”

The words were carefully bland. Rachel tried not to grimace. It was a nice invitation. Even if all of them knew she could never accept. They were still trying to work out what it was to be family when none of them wanted to put their father’s former mistress and his widow in the same room. Not that Aaron’s mother wouldn’t have been perfectly civil—but no one wanted to rub it in her face and Rachel’s mother wasn’t exactly known for her tact.

Andromeda Persopoulos, Andie to her friends, was a strong personality, to say the least. She had a tendency to perform everything she was feeling—or whatever she felt she ought to be feeling—and Rachel invariably found herself embarrassed by the dramatics. She loved her mother, loved her like crazy, but sometimes she could be exhausting. Rachel had never understood why everything had to be a show. Why nothing could ever be contained or restrained.

Christmas with her mother was dramatic enough without adding her half-brother and her father’s widow to the mix. She wanted a peaceful Christmas this year. A perfectly organized, no drama, no last-minute-disasters Christmas. Her daughter wasn’t going to remember every Christmas by what had gone wrong. She probably wouldn’t remember this one—Sofie was barely old enough to understand what was going on—but Rachel wanted to set a precedent this year.

Last year they’d spent Christmas at a Chinese restaurant after her mother had tried to make dinner and ended up setting off the fire alarm. She’d insisted on cooking—though Yaya and Rachel had always shared those duties—and accidentally set the self-cleaning oven to clean rather than bake. After the smoke from the turkey filled the kitchen, Andie had joked that at least they got to spend their Christmas with hot firefighters—but it hadn’t exactly been the festive holiday Rachel had always dreamed of.

This year would be different.

Especially if Cam was involved.

Rachel’s stomach pitched at the thought and she poked at her moussaka rather than taking a bite.

“Are you all right?” Yaya asked, her all-seeing eyes catching the movement.

“I saw Cam today.”

Yaya froze, her fork in mid-air, her gaze on her plate. After a moment, she slowly lowered the fork before lifting her eyes to study Rachel’s face. “Did you?”

Yaya knew all about Cam. Rachel had told her mother and grandmother about him in gushing terms when they first met—and then in less gushing terms when she’d discovered he had a wife. They knew he was Sofie’s father. And they knew that Rachel had never told him—something her mother had always vocally objected to and Yaya had never spoken of one way or the other.

“He’s one of the bachelors for the Russell House Auction—which Trista put me in charge of today. We might have to tweak the schedule over the next couple weeks. I may be busier than usual until the auction—”

“Hrisa mou.”

Rachel snapped her mouth shut at the endearment, so soft and filled with so much disappointment. She looked away, her eyes landing automatically on Sofie who was chasing a piece of eggplant around her tray with pudgy fingers.

“Bachelor auction?” Yaya asked gently.

Rachel grimaced, still not meeting her eyes. “Apparently he’s divorced now.”

Yaya made a small sound in her throat.

And of course her mother, with her ever impeccable dramatic timing, chose that moment to sweep through the door.

“Hello, darlings!” Andie called, flinging her scarf onto the hooks by the door with a flourish. Andie never merely entered a room. She made an entrance. “The traffic is a nightmare with all this snow. It’s a miracle I made it home in one piece.” She twirled out of her coat—because God forbid she simply remove the damn thing—and hung it over the scarf. Turning toward them, she became aware of the rigid tension gripping the table and slapped a hand over her heart. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Cam is back,” Yaya said when Rachel couldn’t find the words.

“He is?” Andie clasped her hands together, her eyes glowing. “Oh, darling, that’s wonderful!”

“No, it isn’t,” Rachel reminded her—trying to keep the irritation out of her voice for Sofie’s sake. The baby had finished her moussaka and was now watching the conversation with wide eyes.

“He’s doing the Russell House Bachelor Auction,” Yaya provided helpfully.

“Which I’m in charge of now.” Let’s focus on the important things, people. Imminent career advancement was more important than a deadbeat dad. Though, to be fair, she probably couldn’t call him that if he’d never known he had a child.

“Bachelor?” Andie repeated—latching onto the word with a disconcertingly eager gleam in her eyes.

“I have to give Sofie her bath.” Rachel stood, unbuckling her daughter—and yes, using her as a human shield against the conversation.

“Apparently he’s divorced now,” Yaya explained—and Rachel retreated to the bathroom to get Sofie cleaned up and ready for bed with the sound of her mother’s glee chasing her down the hall.

Her mother had always been foolishly optimistic when it came to men. She’d believed every lie Rachel’s father had ever spun for her—and she seemed well on the way to believing anything Cam wanted to tell her too, without even having met the guy.

Now that he wasn’t married anymore, Andie was undoubtedly conjuring up fantasies of him sweeping Rachel off her feet and straight into a fairy tale happily-ever-after of two-parent family bliss. As if he hadn’t lied to her about being married. As if everything was automatically forgiven and the past wouldn’t continue to bleed into the future. As if patterns of behavior didn’t even exist.

Her mother had never seemed to see the bad things coming—even when they were just natural extensions of everything that had come before. And if Rachel had learned to be extra guarded because her mother had no defenses…well, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes caution was merited—especially when it came to protecting Sofie.

She took her time with the bath time and bed time routines, focusing all her attention on Sofie and trying to push everything else from her mind. These were the moments that mattered—counting and splashing with her daughter in the bath, reading her bedtime stories and singing lullabies. Everything else was secondary—or at least that’s what she told herself until Sofie nodded off and she turned on the baby monitor.

She was tempted to simply go to bed early—she was certainly tired enough—but she wouldn’t put it past her mother to come wake her up so she could get all the details about Cam.

Dragging her feet, she stepped out of the bedroom to find her mother and Yaya seated around the table, waiting for her. They’d cleaned up the remains of dinner and wiped down the high chair. They sat side-by-side with matching glasses of wine, watching her. Her grandmother’s face was expressionless, her eyes calm. Andie’s face, on the other hand, was so eager she reminded Rachel of Sofie’s jack-in-the-box, coiled and ready to spring. Sofie was terrified of that toy—and looking at her mother, Rachel could definitely empathize.

“Well?” Andie burst as Rachel walked past them to the kitchen to get her own glass.

“The auction is a big event—I’ll be working a lot now that it’s my responsibility.” She poured herself half a glass and screwed the cap back on the bottle. She’d never had much tolerance for alcohol, and nine months without and another year of breastfeeding had turned her into a bona fide lightweight.

Her mother made an impatient noise. Yaya was more direct, her words soft. “Have you decided how you’re going to tell him?”

Rachel looked down at the red wine, swirling it in the glass with her back to her mother and grandmother. “What makes you so sure I’m going to tell him?”

“Rachel.”

Rachel sighed at the soft, disappointed scold and turned to face them. “Nothing has changed.”

“Exactly. You should have told him before,” Andie insisted. “Though something has changed if he’s divorced. I told you that you should have told him. His marriage was obviously already ending. You could have been together all this time.”

Rachel took a long drink of wine to stop herself from commenting on exactly how reliable her mother was as a source of advice when it came to men.

“Are you really considering not telling him?” Yaya asked, and the quiet disappointment in the words was like a knife to the stomach.

Yaya had never said what she thought about it one way or the other, but Rachel had always assumed her grandmother was on her side. Yaya’d had a front row seat to the debacle that was Rachel’s parents’ relationship. She’d picked up the pieces every time Aaron had disappointed Andie and run back home to his wife. Not that Cam was like her father, but Yaya didn’t know that. For her to take his side…

It drove home the guilt that had been whispering in the back of Rachel’s mind all afternoon. She should have told him. She should have given him the chance to either step up or prove himself as unworthy as her father had been. She’d told herself she was protecting Sofie—before she even knew who Sofie would be—but she’d really been protecting herself. Trying to spare herself the disillusionment.

“He’s family,” Yaya murmured, the words so soft it was amazing how loudly they echoed in her heart.

Yaya had always wanted a big family. She’d never been shy about admitting that. Her only sister had died when she was a little girl and she’d never wanted her children to go through the loss of their only sibling. But after Andie was born, Rachel’s grandfather had gotten cancer for the first time and gone sterile as a result of the treatment. No more children. No big family.

Stavros Persopoulos had lost his third battle with cancer when Andie was fourteen. It seemed to have become a pattern in their family. Little girls without fathers. Women who longed for big families and found themselves raising daughters alone.

Rachel had reached out to her brother when she was pregnant because she wanted her daughter to have family—but she’d denied Sofie the chance to know her father. All because she was scared. Scared because she’d trusted him so much—when she knew better than to trust men. Scared because she’d wanted him so much—when she knew better than to let herself need someone like that. Scared because she knew she would believe him again if he lied—just like her mother had always believed her father. Just like she’d told herself she would never, ever do for any man.

But he was family. Sofie’s family. And he needed to know the truth.

She sank down at the table, reaching blindly for her mother’s and grandmother’s hands. “How do I do this?”