Legacy of Lies by Tara Leigh

Author:Tara Leigh [Leigh, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tara Leigh Books
Published: 2018-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

32

Jolie

I never intended for you to find out this way.

Even as the words left my mouth I hated the way they sounded. Pathetic. Patronizing.

Wholly inadequate.

The sight of Tripp—here in Connecticut, with Romy just a few feet away—locked a vice around my ribcage, expelling every last ounce of oxygen from my lungs and making the bones feel brittle and insignificant.

The shock of his being here at all was completely overshadowed by what he now knew. The lies I’d told. The secret I’d kept. The daughter I’d hidden.

A muscle in Tripp’s jaw twitched from restraint, rage lending a vibrating timbre to his voice. “It’s obvious you didn’t intend for me to find out at all.” His eyes were pure steel, his body so rigid he looked like a jungle predator poised to strike, only holding himself in check by the thinnest of margins. I was the prey, frozen in fear.

Shame clogged my veins, making me want to curl in on myself. “No. I did. I just . . .” I dragged trembling hands through my hair before starting again. I could barely breathe, and I had no idea what to say. There was no fixing this.

If only I had gotten to Connecticut earlier, as I’d intended. My meeting had run long and I’d missed my train. I would have taken a car service but the last time I had, the driver gave me the creeps. Buying a car of my own was definitely on my To-Do list.

Arriving only a few minutes before Romy’s bus, there was no time to tell Nina that I’d reconnected with Tripp, or that I wanted to tell him about our daughter.

And now I was caught between them, choking on their mutual hatred and toxic outrage.

My eyes flicked to Romy as she landed a perfect kick toward the goal. “Tripp, she doesn’t know.”

“That I’m her father? Yeah, I got that. Loud and clear.”

Tripp’s bitterness electrified the air between us, a toxic cloud of hurt that made my skin throb. I wanted to ask what he was doing here, but my right to ask anything of him was on hold, if not permanently blocked.

However, there was no denying what he clearly already knew.

Romy was his daughter. Our daughter.

This situation was a bomb seconds from detonating. My plan for pulling the pin out—slowly, carefully—was now moot.

But somehow I had to contain the fallout. Whatever happened between me and Tripp and Nina, it was a distant second to making sure Romy was protected. That she would soon learn her entire life was a lie was inevitable . . . but I didn’t want it to happen on the side of a soccer field, in the half hour slice of time between practice and dinner. I had to convince Tripp to be patient, that we needed to come up with a plan based on what was best for Romy. “She doesn’t know I’m her mother, either.”

He finally spun to face me. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“So our daughter thinks your stepmother is her mother, and her father is dead.

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