Page 50 of 500 First Editions (The Romantics #3)

RYAN

DADDY ISSUES

W illow was sleeping soundly as I pressed a kiss to her temple and eased out from under the covers.

I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t stir.

It had been a late night for the two of us after we made love under the willow tree.

I carried her inside, forced her to eat something, and promised that—if she ate—we could have round two and three in bed.

Which we did.

Still, no amount of physical exertion could leach the rage out of my system.

I left a note on the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker, grabbed her keys, and silently slipped out the door.

The Ritual Salon was in a strip of renovated brick buildings that also housed a coffee shop, a record store, and a florist. The plate glass windows sported cleverly crafted vinyl decals that said “Hey, Good Lookin’” on one side of the door, and “Good Hair Days Start Here” on the other.

The space was decorated with black and white checkerboard floors, pale pink walls, and vintage photos of Marilyn Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald, Dorothy Dandridge, and Eartha Kitt. Lively music played through the speakers.

Two women sat under hooded dryers with rollers in their hair. Two more were being shampooed in the bowls. Three stylists had their chairs full as they snipped and trimmed.

Smack-dab in the middle of the chaos, Cynthia Hart stood behind a salon chair, chatting away with Amber as she painted bleach onto sections of her hair.

I didn’t expect to kill two birds with one stone, but I took both of them being here as a good sign from the universe.

“Good morning,” the receptionist said as I stepped past the entryway. “How can I help you?”

“I need to speak to Cynthia,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.

The receptionist smiled. “She’s with a client at the moment. I can take a message.”

“Don’t worry about it. I need to speak to her client too.” And with that, I waltzed past the front desk, into the belly of the salon.

“Ms. Hart!” the receptionist hollered as she scrambled out from behind the desk, chasing after me.

Cynthia looked up from the foil in her hand, brows lifting in surprise. “Ryan.”

“I’m so sorry,” the receptionist blurted out. “I tried to tell him that you were with a client.”

Cynthia must have seen the ire in my eyes, because she momentarily froze, then calmly resumed painting on the bleach and folding the foil. “It’s all right, Taylor. This is Autumn’s boyfriend, Ryan.”

Taylor scurried back to the front while Amber rocketed up from where she had been slumped over in the salon chair. She whipped her head around to look at me, ripping the section of hair out of her mom’s hand. “What are you doing here?”

“Stupid isn’t a good look on you, Amber,” I clipped as I crossed my arms.

Her mouth gaped open, and her chewing gum fell out and dropped onto the cape.

Cynthia’s passive expression tightened. “Excuse you, Mr. Ford. Speaking to my daughter like that in my salon is not acceptable.”

“Frankly, I don’t care what you deem to be acceptable. Not when my girl is hurting because she”—I pointed a finger at Amber—“decided to play a cruel joke and get Autumn’s hopes up that her father wanted to see her.”

Amber wavered between looking like she wanted to melt into the floor and trying to shoot fire out of her eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cynthia said as she applied the last foil.

“Sure you don’t,” I clipped. “You have no idea how fucking giddy and elated Autumn was when she got a text from her dad saying that he wanted to see her after she had been begging for his time for months. But Amber does. You have no idea how crushed Autumn was when he had no idea why she showed up at his office, and couldn’t even bear to sit the fuck down and talk to her before going off to a meeting.

But Amber does. Because she sent texts from their father’s phone because she knew their dad didn’t want to see Autumn.

You might not know what your daughter did to humiliate her sister, but I do.

Autumn shouldn’t have to beg for her father to talk to her, much less love her. But that’s between him and me.”

The salon fell deadly silent. Only the ambient noise of running water and the buzz of dryers filled the space. Even the music faded away.

Cynthia was seething, but kept her mouth shut.

Amber looked like she was about to murder me, but it was hard to take her seriously with all the foil in her hair. She looked like a satellite dish.

Cynthia set a timer and sighed. “We could have had this conversation in private if you had the decency to call.”

“You don’t deserve basic decency when you have made your own daughter feel like she doesn’t have a family who loves her. Autumn deserves basic fucking decency. I’m here to make sure she gets it.”

“What do you want me to do, Ryan?” she asked as if I were just an annoyed customer.

“I want you to take a hard look at the way you’re treating Autumn before you lose her.”

“It’s a complicated situation, and I don’t think you should be making demands of my relationship with her when yours started because of—what—a dare?”

“How my relationship started with her is not how it will end. How will yours end, Cynthia? Because, mark my words, you will lose her. And it will be soon.”

She reared back. “Are you threatening me?”

“Not at all. I’m giving you the reality check you shouldn’t have to have.”

Cynthia huffed. “My relationship with my daughter is my business.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Because you don’t have one.

I do. Which means that anyone who hurts her, becomes my problem.

This is your warning, Cynthia. Fix your relationship with Autumn, or I will end it.

” I looked at Amber. “And as far as you go, I really don’t care what you do with your life.

Never speak to her again. And if you even think about hurting her the way you did by texting Autumn from her dad’s phone, I will make it my life’s mission to make yours absolutely miserable.

And if you think I’m bluffing, I’m very good at understanding people, which means I’m very good at understanding what hurts them the most.”

I had turned my back to walk out of the salon when Amber angrily blurted out, “He’s not her dad!”

That was the only thing that could have stopped me from leaving.

When I turned back around, Cynthia’s face had gone white as a ghost. Every jaw in the salon was on the floor.

“He’s mine, ” Amber sniped as she crossed her arms like she had just won. She hadn’t.

“ Amber ,” Cynthia hissed with barely restrained fury. It was the first and only time she had truly lost her cool with the oldest Hart sister.

I waited, because I wanted the explanation. And then I had to figure out how to tell Willow.

“Let’s go to the back,” Cynthia said.

“You can tell me what you need to right here.”

Cynthia stammered. “B-But people will talk.”

“You mean like people probably talked when Willow got stood-up by a man she thinks is her father? Spit it out, Cynthia.”

She took a deep breath and spoke softly.

“Shep is Autumn’s biological father. I met him when he was passing through town and we had an affair.

I never told him I was married. I found out I was pregnant, and admitted everything to Greg.

We decided to try to make it work. I told Shep shortly before Autumn was born.

I didn’t want anything from him, but thought he should know.

He asked me to name her Autumn, and I did.

That was supposed to be it. But Shep moved to Manhattan so he could be in his child’s life, and it put a strain on my marriage.

Greg and I divorced, and Shep asked me to marry him. ”

Fury filled my veins, coursing through them like tar. When it solidified, it would be permanent.

She raked a hand through her hair. “Shep wanted to tell Autumn, but Autumn had been calling Greg ‘dad’ since she was a baby. She wouldn’t have understood why her sister got to keep calling Greg ‘dad’ and she couldn’t.

So when Amber would go spend weekends with Greg, Autumn would go too. Shep agreed to keep it quiet.”

I tapped my chin, wading through my utter disbelief of this family. “So instead of having one hard conversation because you fucked up, you lied to your daughter for thirty years and let her sister torture her over it.”

Cynthia looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock. “It was a complicated situation, Ryan. It is a complicated situation. It was hard for Greg to see Autumn have such a natural relationship with Shep.”

“I’ll deal with him later,” I snapped. “It can’t be that complicated if she could comprehend it.” I jerked my thumb toward Amber.

Cynthia sighed. “Amber found out when she was fifteen and heard Shep and me arguing about it.”

The fucking audacity . . .

“Autumn doesn’t get Shep and my dad,” Amber snapped. “It’s not fair.”

“Do you think it was fair for Autumn to lose her dad without ever knowing who he really was?” I was done here.

I needed to go on a run or lift some heavy shit to clear my head.

I had to figure out how to tell her. But no matter what I said, it would crush her.

“It makes sense now why Autumn has a good heart,” I said.

“I couldn’t figure it out before, because she’s nothing like you two. She really is Shep’s daughter.”

The fury hadn’t dissipated by the time I pulled into Lisa Winslow’s driveway. She was outside, working in her flower beds, when I parked behind her car.

She stood and turned, spotting me and then looking at the passenger’s side expectantly.

“Ryan,” she said as she tugged off her gardening gloves and set them beside a host of bulbs waiting to go in the ground.

I slammed the car door and walked up the drive.

When she realized I was alone, that expectation morphed to shock and realization. “You know.” It was both a question and a statement.

There it was. The confirmation I needed.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

It all made sense now. The box filled with mementos that Shep had saved. The ultrasounds hidden at the bottom. Lisa had tried to lead Willow to the truth.

“Let’s go inside,” Lisa said as she toed off her boots. “I need a drink. Looks like you need one too.”

We reconvened in the living room. Lisa handed me a glass of lemonade as I stared at the bookshelf shrine to Willow’s writing career.

“Sadly, I’m fresh out of tequila,” she said as she sidled up to me. “I think we could use some right now.” She took a long drink from her glass. “When did she find out?”

“Willow doesn’t know,” I said. “Yet.” Quickly, I unpacked what had happened over the last few months, what went down at Greg Hart’s office, and what I found out when I confronted Cynthia and Amber at the salon.

Lisa listened to every detail and never once looked surprised.

When I finished, it was her turn. “The night Shep and I met, he told me that he had a daughter. It was one of the first things out of his mouth. He was so proud of her. So proud to be in her life, even though she had no idea.” Her smile was sad.

“Every time he called, he told me what she was doing or something she had accomplished. Sometimes he’d ask for advice on how to navigate the ins and outs of being a dad to a teenage daughter.

Once we got to know each other a little more, he explained Cynthia’s position and what had been established as the norm since Autumn was born.

Apparently, when they were together, Shep had told Cynthia that Autumn was one of his favorite names, and that it would be what he’d name his daughter if he ever had one.

So Cynthia named her that. It was . . . a cruel honor and a tender insult all in one.

” Lisa laughed. “That was our first real fight. I had never seen a man so into being a dad. I told him it was ridiculous that Autumn had been kept in the dark, and that he should just tell her. But he was insistent on respecting Cynthia and Greg.” Her voice quieted.

“Sometimes I wish I had just told her myself.”

“You still can.”

It wasn’t that I was passing the buck. Fine . . . Maybe I was. But Willow loved Lisa. I couldn’t bear the thought of that relationship going up in flames too.

Lisa reached up to the top shelf and pulled down Willow’s debut novel. She opened the cover and pulled out an envelope, then did the same with the next book in the row. “You can always let someone else tell her.”