Summer Secrets - Barbara Freethy [69]
"I shouldn't tell you."
Tyler saw the indecision in her face. "Come on, spill it. It can't have anything to do with whatever you're hiding, or else you wouldn't be here. I already know you well enough to know that. It has to be personal, because you'd protect your family no matter what the cost. But yourself? That's a different story."
"I'm that easy to read?"
"I've been studying you for a while now."
"You're right. It was about me. David said, actually he implied, that K.C. might be my real father. Isn't that just ridiculous? It can't be true. I am my father's daughter, right? I certainly don't look like K.C. And my father and mother were madly in love with each other, especially when they first got married. There's no way there could have been an affair so early on. But then again ..." She paused, sending him a desperate look. "Say something, Tyler. Convince me that I'm right."
"I don't know what to say," he muttered, more than a little surprised by the twist in events. "I guess anything is possible."
"That's not what I wanted to hear."
He shook his head. "I have no idea if K.C. slept with your mother, or if he fathered you. It seems to me you have only two choices: ask your father or ask K.C."
"I doubt my father is in any condition to ask, if he continued drinking after I left him earlier."
Tyler tipped his head at her silent question.
"That's what I thought," she said grimly. "And I wouldn't give K.C. the satisfaction of the question. I know he's got something up his sleeve. I could see it in his eyes earlier, but I didn't think it was something like this."
"No, you thought it had something to do with your other secret," Tyler said, taking a wild guess.
She stiffened. "I don't have another secret. I wish you'd let that idea go. At any rate, I have enough to worry about besides you and your questions. I'm afraid your presence here is no longer going to make the top ten on my worry list."
He smiled. "I'm hurt. I thought I was at the top of your list."
Her returning smile was weak at best. "I have to talk to my father, but I really don't want to have that conversation."
"It's your best option, Kate."
"I suppose. To tell you the truth, I don't know how my mother got mixed up with either one of them. She was kind and honest, with tons of integrity, which is why this is so unbelievable. My father wasn't one to lean on, but my mom, she was rock solid. She knew right from wrong, and she always did the right thing."
"And she raised you to do the same." Tyler was beginning to understand how Kate had become so conflicted after her mother's death when she'd been left to temper her father's ambitions.
"My mom tried to raise me right. But I've let her down," she said with a sigh.
"I find that difficult to believe."
"I promised I would take care of my sisters and my father, that I would make sure the family stayed together, but I didn't do that."
He heard the regret in her voice, the blame, and he was moved by the torment in her eyes. He knew what that kind of guilt felt like and how it could eat away at your soul. He didn't want to see that happen to Kate.
"She asked me that last day," Kate continued, her voice somewhat dreamy as she recalled the memory. "I didn't know she was so close to the end. I guess a part of me still thought she'd get better. But she was so thin, and her hair was gone, just little wisps of reddish blond on the top of her bald head." Kate's mouth trembled.
"You don't have to tell me," he said quietly.
She gazed into his eyes with so much pain it almost hurt to look at her. "She took hold of my hand. She could barely lift her arm, but somehow she managed. I can still feel the pressure on my fingers. It was like she was trying to hang on to life through me. And I didn't want to let her go, but I didn't know what to do. She asked me to promise to keep the family together, to watch out for my dad, and to protect my younger sisters. She told me that I had to be the strong one. I had