never as communal as it had been with Sam, I enjoyed it just as much, albeit it for different reasons. By far, David’s favorite dish of mine was fried-dough pizzas—I only made them on special occasions, and I never showed him the recipe, much less let him help me make them. It had become something of a game between us—his attempted bribery and coaxing me to reveal the recipe, even let him watch me on the off chance that he might pick up the procedure. Much like the way I hounded him about the secret ingredient in the hot chocolate he made for me from scratch.
I sighed. “Fine. You win. Just don’t tell my brothers. I think they’d hang me for treason.”
“Deal,” he said, speaking and shaking hands in a professional manner before pulling me into a kiss. “We’ll start next week.”
I smiled. “Great,” I said, and exited the room. I was halfway down the hall when I stopped in my tracks. I had entered the room to have an entirely different conversation, the one we’d been avoiding for days. How did I let him steer it so far in the opposite direction?
Right, blame it all on David.
Like I didn’t initiate it.
I turned around and poked my head back into the study. He was back to reading his book. “Dev?”
“Yes?” He didn’t look up.
I stepped inside. “When are we going to talk about it?”
He stopped reading again and looked at me. “Talk about what?”
I gave him a look that said
You know damn well about what
.
He closed the book and huffed. “Andi…” he started in protest.
“It’s not gonna go away.”
“Andi…”
“You’re gonna just let it hang there, let
her
hang there?”
“Andi!”
He pounded his fist on the arm of the chair and stood up. “Enough!”
The word dropped in front of me like a thud.
“No.”
I didn’t raise my voice when I said it, but the way I said it stunned him. It was as if my claws had come out, and I dug in.
“Enough of
this
,” I said. “It’s been three days. Now you do something about it. But we’re not going to pretend for one more second that nothing happened. We’re not going to insult each other like that. And we’re not going to insult Wylie by depriving her of knowledge about her biological father.”
“You keep speaking as if you know for sure it’s me,” he said. “Just because she has the same eye color as me.”
“
David
,” I implored. “She doesn’t have the same eye color.
She has your eyes
.”
A wave of terror washed over him, as if the truth finally came to light. His breathing quickened.
“Andi?” He called my name like a child seized with panic. I rushed to him, wrapped my arms around him, and held him tight; he clung to me until his panic subsided.
“I’ve got you,” I assured him.
In that instant, I heard Margot Kidder as Lois Lane say with bewilderment to Christopher Reeve as Superman,
You’ve got me, but who’s got you?
chapter eight
“No. Way.” My best friend Maggie sat frozen in a purple upholstered chair with colorful squiggly prints at Perch after I finished telling her about Wylie. A jumbo blueberry muffin sat between us, untouched.
I nodded my head slowly, letting the news sink in for her.
“She showed up, just like that?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” I said. “It’s scary to know how easy it is to find someone these days. It’s getting so that your average Joe needs a Secret Service detail.”
“Pretty gutsy of her, if you ask me.”
“I’d say she takes after her mom in that regard. Thing is, there’s a chance that David really is her father.”
“You really think so?”
I nodded again. “You didn’t see her, Mags. She totally has his eyes. Same exact shape and color and expression. I mean, what are the odds that some other guy has those sienna eyes?”
“What color are her mom’s eyes?”
“Blue, I think. Not that that’s all it takes to claim paternity. But I just have this feeling.…” I sipped my vanilla chai. “David’s pretty freaked out about