Mine - A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

When I was little, I’d actually asked them why I looked so different to them, and they’d explained it away as me having taken after a long-lost cousin who happened to be darker than the rest of the family. Goddamn. I’d been lied to for so long, and I’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

I suppose I’d never had any reason to disbelieve what they told me. After all, who would ever suspect they’d been kidnapped as a newborn? That was some serious low-budget Hollywood crime thriller material right there.

Armstrong hesitated at my question. “Er…your biological mother passed away several years ago. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

There was another long silence as I collected my thoughts.

“So what’s going to happen to my father? Well, not my biological father…you know.”

“He’ll be remanded in custody until the case goes to trial,” Detective Armstrong replied. “We have numbers for therapists and other resources you might want to use. Anything you need, give us a call and we’ll do our best to help out.”

“I bet you’ve never seen a case like this, huh?” I asked, picking at my nails and trying my best to conjure up a rueful smile. Nothing came. Right now I doubted I’d ever smile again.

“No, not in my twenty-two years as a cop,” he replied slowly. “I’ll come back around in the next few days to update you on what’s going on, and I’ll also leave you with Mr. Vierra’s contact details. As I said earlier, he’s very keen to meet you.”

I nodded, and he patted me on the back before standing up and leaving behind a sheaf of papers with some numbers written down for me to contact if I wanted or needed to. As he left, he turned his head over his shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Miss Keller. You should call a friend or someone else close to come and stay with you. This is going to be a very difficult period for you.”

I bade him goodbye and then sat on the sofa, my whole body still numb. In just one hour, my life had basically turned into some sort of soap opera drama. It was so ridiculous I suddenly wanted to laugh, but all that came were tears. A seemingly never-ending flood of tears. My whole life had been a lie. Literally.

And to think on my way home from work I’d honestly thought my day couldn’t get any worse.

Happy freakin’ birthday to me.

CHAPTER FOUR

ARIZONA

The last few days had been like a blur, and the news that my parents had lied to me for my entire life was still sinking in. I didn’t even know what to call them anymore. I still thought of them as my parents, but they weren’t. I couldn’t even refer to them as my adoptive parents, because that wasn’t the case.

I’d gotten into contact with Roy Vierra’s personal assistant when the DNA results had confirmed he was my father. When I’d called, she immediately tried to transfer the call directly to him, but I refused. I did want to meet him, but I didn’t want the first time we spoke to be over the phone. It just felt like a copout that way. No, I wanted to meet him in person; my real father, the man who’d never given up looking for me.

His name still sounded really familiar to me, so I’d done a quick bit of Googling. The first thing that came up when I typed his name into the search bar was his company page, and it turned out he owned Rosacorp, a massive conglomerate that owned hotel and food chains, real estate ventures, tech companies…almost anything you could think of. That must have been where I’d heard of him before.

He obviously liked his privacy, because there wasn’t much about his personal life on the website. All it said was that he’d been born in Mexico City and moved to the States when he was a teenager. He’d built his company from scratch, and about fifteen years ago it had really taken off. Now he and his business partners were worth billions. Fifteen years ago…so I would have been four at the time. I would have barely been older than a toddler when my father became one of the richest men in the world, and I wondered how I would have turned out as a person if I hadn’t been stolen from that hospital. Would I have been some spoiled, uppity little brat? Would I have felt entitled to everything purely because of who my father was?

I wasn’t sure, but the one thing I did know was that my life would have been a lot easier.

We hadn’t been dirt poor growing up in my ‘fake’ family, but we hadn’t even been close to middle class, either. My Mom had handmade all my clothes in the early days, and Dad didn’t make much at the factory he worked at, but it was enough to put food on the table and pay for me to attend the local public school. I’d obtained my first part-time job at fifteen, making milkshakes and coffees at the local diner after school, and that had allowed me to contribute to the house and save enough to eventually buy a cheap secondhand car to get myself around when I was seventeen.

When I’d told Roy’s assistant that I wanted to meet him, she’d immediately laid out some ideas. He could come and visit me here, but apparently what he really wanted was for me to go and stay with him at his home in Rhode Island for a while, and it hadn’t taken me too long to agree to that. What did I really have here in Leyton that was worth staying for? Sure, I had a few good friends like Tina and Ewan, but was that enough? Aside from that all I had was a broken-down car, a low-paying job and a felon for a father…who as it turned out, wasn’t even my father.

It had been a fairly easy decision when those things were taken into consideration. Of course I’d go to Rhode Island. Why not? I’d get to meet my biological father, find out what he was like, and maybe experience a different kind of life for a while. It was going to suck not seeing my friends, but I was definitely going to come back and see them, and we could text or call whenever we wanted. If I wanted to see their faces, we could even use Skype.

I’d felt bad quitting my job and only giving a few days notice, but Barbara didn’t seem to care that much. There was always some other jobless nineteen year old to replace me. I’d originally planned on dipping into my savings to buy a plane ticket from Wisconsin to Rhode Island, but Roy’s assistant had shut me down immediately. She said he was insisting on sending one of his private planes to get me, and my heart had leapt into my mouth at that.
One
of his private planes. So he had more than one. Jeez. He really
was
rich.

So now here I was in the early hours of the morning, waiting to board at an airfield not far out of town. Tina and Ewan had dropped me off, and I tearfully said my goodbyes as we hugged.

“You better not forget about us now that you’ve got a big rich daddy,” Tina said jokingly.

“I won’t,” I said. “I promise I’ll text you every day and call you whenever I can.”

“I hope that includes me too,” Ewan said, pulling me into a bear hug.

“Of course.”

A crisp feminine voice called out to me a moment later. “Arizona Keller?”

I turned to see a slim blonde woman heading over to us. She looked fairly young; mid-twenties, maybe.

“Uh…yes, that’s me,” I said with a smile.

She didn’t return the smile and simply sniffed as if she had a cold. “My name is Victoria Shaw. We’ve spoken on the phone. I’m Roy’s chief personal assistant. He sent me to meet you and take you back to Newport.”

“Oh, of course,” I said.

“My apologies for being late. There was an incident with the espresso machine on board. Anyway, the pilot is getting ready to take off, so I’ll need you to board with me now.”

She spoke in such a professional yet robotic manner that I suddenly wondered if it was a good idea for me to join this world for even a second. I couldn’t possibly fit in. I didn’t know how to speak like I’d had some Ivy-league education. I didn’t even know what to wear. Right now I was clad in a faded pair of jeans with a cotton tank top and cardigan from Forever 21, and I’d assumed no one would notice or care how I was dressed. The look on Victoria’s face as she looked me up and down told me otherwise.

“Okay…well, I’m ready to go,” I said, summoning up a shred of confidence.

Victoria turned on her heel and strode away over the asphalt, her stiletto heels clacking against the ground.

“Guess I should follow her,” I said with a weak smile. Tina and Ewan gave me one last hug, and then I turned and headed towards the plane.

It suddenly hit me that I had no idea what I was walking towards, metaphorically speaking. What would Roy be like in person? Obviously he was an incredible businessman, based on the research I’d done on his company, but I had no idea what he was like personality-wise. Was he nice, or was he a Wolf Of Wall Street scumbag? Had he ever remarried after my mother died? Did I have five annoying stepsiblings to deal with now? So many questions, so few answers. In between packing and sorting everything out to leave, I’d barely had time to wonder.

Mentally kicking myself for not having done more research on him, I anxiously boarded the plane. It wasn’t like any other plane I’d ever seen. The seats were huge and actually looked like they might be comfortable as opposed to the cramped things they called seats in domestic planes, and there was even what appeared to be a fully-stocked bar on one side. Three elegantly-dressed flight attendants smiled at me and took my bags before gesturing towards my seat, and I returned their smile before heading towards it.

“Look around,” Victoria said sharply as she strapped herself into her seat. “This is all going to be yours, Arizona.”

***

Several hours later, I was yawning and being directed into a sleek black car at a private airstrip in Newport County. Victoria waved at a stout blond man who gathered up my bags and stowed them in the trunk, and her cell phone buzzed as the car took off.

“Yes, sir, the trip was fine. She’s with me now. Uh-huh, she’s looking forward to it. We’ll see you soon.”

I smiled at her, and once again she didn’t return the gesture. Jeez, what was her problem? I’d tried to ask her a few questions about Roy on the flight, and she’d pretended not to hear me.

I looked out of the window as we whizzed past houses, trees and gardens, and I swallowed a nervous lump in my throat as the buildings grew larger and the properties more magnificent. We were definitely entering Richville, as I’d taken to calling upscale areas of any given town or city.

The car approached a hill, and as we drove up it, I noticed that the ocean wasn’t that far away. There was a marina in the distance, dotted with hundreds of little white yachts, and I absentmindedly wondered how many boats Roy owned. Probably a lot. Wasn’t boating some sort of wealthy person pastime?

The car finally stopped at a set of wrought-iron gates, and I felt like I’d been transported back in time to some old English lord’s manor. I’d never been to an estate before, and I marveled as the driver spoke into some sort of intercom, the gates soon sliding to either side to let us pass. Wow. This was certainly going to take some getting used to. Back in Leyton, the only form of security people had was some sort of large dog and maybe a baseball bat in the bedroom cupboard.

The driveway was lined by immaculately-trimmed hedges, and my heart began to race as the car pulled to a final stop by a marble fountain.

This was it. Go time.

Victoria barked orders at someone who’d just come out of the house, telling him to make sure my bags made it safely upstairs, and then she turned to me.

“Roy is in his study. Follow me, please.”

The interior of the house was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The walls were paneled with dark cherry wood with accents of damask wallpaper, and I was willing to bet the gold trim that highlighted the pattern was real. I glanced at what appeared to be a dining room as Victoria led me to a sweeping staircase, and there was a full dining set laid out, obviously in preparation for lunch. There were enough crystals on the chandeliers hanging in every room to rival a Valentine’s Day sale at Swarovski, and once again I swallowed nervously. Jeez. It all seemed so foreign to me, like I was a medieval peasant walking into a royal palace.

We reached the top of the double staircase and turned left down a long hall with high ceilings, the walls adorned with presumably priceless paintings. Two wooden doors stood at the end, and Victoria rapped on them as I anxiously stood behind her.

“Sir? Arizona is here.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left. I hadn’t exactly warmed to her, but being here without her now suddenly filled me with panic. I needed some sort of buffer. What if Roy didn’t like me? What if he was totally ashamed of the way I’d turned out without him as a parent?

The doors flew open a second later, and I stared into the hazel eyes of a tall, dark-haired man I’d only seen before in photos on his company website. It was only now that we were up close that I realized I already shared something with him. My eyes. His were so similar to mine, only filled with years of pain and sorrow.

“Arizona,” he said, staring down at me. “You came. Thank god. You have no idea how long I’ve waited…”

His voice trailed off as he became choked with emotion, and he reached out and grabbed me in a tight bear hug. I wasn’t sure how to react, so I reached my arms around him and gingerly patted his back. Yeah, he was my real father, but it felt so awkward just jumping straight into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away a moment later. “I know you don’t know me at all. This probably feels very strange for you. Please, come in.”

He gestured towards a chaise sofa on one side of the room, and then he closed the door and sat across from me, staring at me silently for a solid three minutes.

“You look just like her,” he finally said. “Your mother. Except for your eyes. Hers were green. You got my eyes.”

“Oh,” I said in a tiny voice, not quite knowing what on earth I was meant to say in this situation.

He stood up and marched over to his desk before returning with a framed photograph. “This is her,” he said, passing it to me. “I thought you might want to see it. I just wish she could have been here to see this day.”

I gazed at the photo, and I had to admit he was right. She looked very similar to me, only older and with green eyes like he’d said. Her hair, nose, mouth and even her ears were the same as mine. She was smiling in the photo, and I felt a pang of sorrow for the mother I’d never known.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Rosa,” he said. “I named my company after her. We named you Hannah, after her sister. She died in the same car accident that took your mother.”

“I see. I’m really sorry. That’s awful. I wish I could have met her.”

There was another long silence, and I shifted my weight around the sofa, feeling awkward as hell.

“I don’t expect you to call me Dad, Arizona,” Roy said. “I realize you probably still think of those people as your parents, seeing as it’s been that way for nineteen years. But believe me when I say I want to get to know you. I want you to stay with me as long as you feel comfortable. I want you to know that no matter what, you’re my daughter. My family.”

I replied with a nod, not knowing what to say to that, and he smiled. I racked my brains, trying to think of some sort of topic for small talk, just to get things started. “So…um, what exactly does your company do?”

He smiled. “I started it twenty-four years ago, not long after I met your mother. It’s a long story that you’d probably find quite boring, but basically I owned a small boutique real estate agency. I made a few good investments, and then I acquired another small but failing company and helped turn it around. I kept on going with that sort of thing, and now here I am.”

We chatted about his business for a while longer, and then he asked me to tell him about myself. My life, my childhood, my likes and dislikes…everything. After a while it strangely didn’t seem awkward at all. Looking into his eyes and practically seeing a mirror-image of my own made me feel way more comfortable than I would be with any other random stranger, and he really seemed like a lovely man. Obviously it was going to take a very long time for me to get close to him and see him as my actual father, but this was a good start.