Their Surprise Daddy

“No.” He certainly hadn’t, but he was pretty sure he had raised the subject. “I just wanted you to know about the AC unit before you came walking up the driveway and saw the carnage by the street, waiting for pickup.”

“It will most likely be gone before we get back there,” she assured him.

He frowned.

“Scrap pickers. Dumpster divers. Nothing much gets left for garbage pickup. Someone will grab it to reuse.”

He couldn’t imagine such a thing. “People go around, intentionally picking up garbage?”

“Recyclables. Things with some use. Like in times of war, when everyone saved everything.”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Use it up, wear it out,” she told him. Then she folded her arms across her middle, over the tank top that showed off her small waist. “You don’t recycle in Manhattan?”

“Some, sure, but if it’s garbage, it’s garbage. They pick it up and carry it away.”

She sighed, but not one of those weary, long-suffering sighs. This was one of those “you’re exasperating and know nothing, so why don’t you get on your way” sighs. “Things are different here. I expect it will all come back to you once you’ve been here awhile.”

He didn’t plan on staying long, but she could be right. Maybe small-town interaction wouldn’t seem so alien in a few days. “I wasn’t in town much growing up. I went to school, played baseball with Drew and Dave in the summer when we were young, and basketball in the winter through high school, but once I got older, I worked the grape.”

“You worked in the vineyard?”

She looked surprised, as if he was some silver spoon that coasted through life. “Everyone did. The vines were our legacy, the basis for making Casa Blanca great, so yes. I worked. We all worked. And my mother polished her little dynasty like a newly minted coin. As long as everything appeared perfect on the outside, we were doing an okay job.”

Sympathy deepened her gaze, but he wasn’t after sympathy. He’d learned a lot from his mother. How to work long and hard, and take no prisoners.

She’d been ruthless.

So was he.

But he was also fair. Rosa had spent a lot of her life not playing fair with others. She’d alienated workers, suppliers and other event centers with her strong-armed dealings.

“Mimi says I can work the grape when I get bigger,” Lily told him while chewing a bite of sandwich, and he had to admit, the scent of peanut butter with fresh jam enticed him. “If we still have grapes, that is.”

Untended vines stopped producing, which meant Rosa was preparing the children for the vineyard’s demise. “We’ll have to see what happens, okay?”

She met his gaze and nodded, but not because she agreed. Because what choice did she have, a small child, with others planning her destiny?

His throat went thick.

Allergies? Maybe. But he knew better.

It wasn’t allergies causing his discomfort.

It was the reality he saw in Lily’s eyes, the uncertainty gazing back at him.

Their destiny lay in his hands.

He’d negotiated multimillion-dollar acquisitions without arching an eyebrow, overseen hedge fund bundles controlling mega-units of the economy without a twitch, but the thought of determining the outcome of two children struck fear into his heart, because Lily and Javi weren’t faceless documents, ready for signing.

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