Spooning Leads to Forking (Hot in the Kitchen #2) - Kilby Blades Page 0,87

across her face.

“Turned out he had his own secrets and his own reasons for keeping them from Josie. And she didn’t find out the big one until she was pregnant with you. And when she saw him for who she really was—a lying, cheating, married man who had exploited the innocence of a teenage girl naive enough to fall in love with him—she told him to leave and never come back.”

Dev felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. No—kicked about five times, because that was how many blows that had just been dealt. He knew in that instant that John Hamren, in all his tall, dark-haired, green-eyed, never-been-married glory was not his father, just as Trudy had said. It hit him in one way to know that he’d come from a true love affair and not from some fling with a guy just passing through town. But it hit him another way to know that his father had been a betrayer. It hit him fully, to appreciate the intricacy of the lies of a woman he’d canonized. And it hadn’t escaped him that his too-young mother had been drawn in by a too-old man who had manipulated her, just like Shea had been manipulated by Keenan.

“But what about me?” Dev practically exclaimed, questioning his mother’s own endgame as much as his father’s. Why would both of them punish an innocent child? His mother, by choosing whether he would have a chance to know his father; and, his father, by letting her.

The compassion returned to Trudy’s eyes. “Oh, Dev…it was more complicated than that. She found out about his wife before she found out she was pregnant. He didn’t live here. But he spent a lot of time here, and he always came alone. One weekend, his wife showed up to surprise him. Walked right into the room and kissed him on the lips in front of everyone. The wife was pregnant, too. At least six months. When he played along—didn’t deny his wife and ignored your mom like she was garbage, she decided it was over right then. They fought, of course, in private. But she told him where he could go, and he did. Three weeks later, she found out about you.”

Dev clenched his fists at his sides, so hard that his very short nails dug into his palms, too livid to even sputter out his next question. He wanted to roar—to punch something—to run out the back door and keep running until he found himself deep in the forest. But there was more to be known. And what little control he had left reminded him not to take it out on her.

“Did—” He gulped around his question, pushing down a lump in his throat. “Did she ever even tell him?”

Trudy’s tears, which had been brimming, finally spilled over and made a rapid descent down her cheeks. “No. If it was anyone else, she would have. She knew he had a right. But she was scared. He was a powerful man.”

What does that even mean?” Dev demanded.

“It means he was rich and she was poor. It means, after his betrayal, she didn’t trust anymore that she knew what he would do. It means, after he showed her in that moment when he chose his wife over the woman he’d been saying he loved for two years, all she saw was his instinct for self-preservation.”

Dev frowned, hurt and raw and eager to find fault with his mother, but unable to deny some of her reasons. Even when he’d been a broken teenage boy in mourning, he hadn’t wished his mother back to life as fervently as he wished it now. He wanted to hear her justification from her.

“At the time, I’ll admit: I questioned her,” Trudy continued. “But there was a piece of it I didn’t understand until I was expecting my own children: that when you have a little life growing inside of you your instinct is to protect that life so fiercely, you might even protect him against his own father.”

Dev shook his head, and was suddenly exhausted, his limbs heavy and pulling him down. Sinking into a chair, he put his elbows on his knees.

“I don’t understand. Did she think he was dangerous?”

“Dangerous and powerful are two different things. She was sure he could’ve gotten custody if he wanted it.”

Trudy leaned closer, then, like she had when he was younger, like his mother had, for that matter. She cupped his cheek in her palm and, for