Page 128 of Ace My Heart

Julie gripped me by the shoulders.

“Seriously, Mel,don’tblame Joel. This isn’t his fault; I made him promise that he wouldn’t tell anyone. But I suppose you would have found out sooner or later, so we may as well just come clean now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?‘You would have found out sooner or later’? I shouldn’t have to find out like this! I shouldn’t have to deal with this! He should have been honest with me before we … did you know that we slept together?”

“Yes, I knew. He told me.”

I gaped. So, he talked about his sex life with the mother of hischild? His sex life withotherwomen? That just totally creeped me out.

“Mel, I made Joel promise not to tell anyone because it’s not his secret to tell. It’s mine.”

I sneered at her. “It’s his too! Does the kid call him Daddy?”

Something I said must have made Julie snap, because she glared at me, eyes ablaze. “Shaunhas a name, and no, he doesn’t call Joel ‘Daddy’. Why would I teach him to call Joel that?”

I shrugged, returning her gaze with a glare of my own. “What, so you’d rather your son grew up not knowing who his father is?” I was disgusted, and I was pretty sure that DJH wouldn’t want that either.

Julie looked away, towards the child still mashing his Lego blocks together.

“It wouldn’t be right to let Shaun think of Joel as his dad.” She turned back to me. “Mel, Joel’s not Shaun’s father.”

Relief flooded me, so intense that I nearly passed out again. “Joel’s not the father?” I repeated, stunned. Julie shook her head.

“No. Shaun’s never going to know his father.”

I breathed through the feeling of my heart beating vitally in my chest once more.

“What, don’t you know who the father is?”

“I know exactly who the father is, but he’s dead, so of course Shaun’s not going to know him. Mel, Steve was Shaun’s father.”

My vision blurred. “Woah. Okay, just give me a minute to process this. Steve? As in Steve Herbert?”

Julie nodded.

I rubbed at my temples. “Does Joel know?” I whispered. Julie nodded again. I swallowed, trying to make my mouth feel less dry.

“DoesSandraknow?”

Julie looked away. I had my answer right there.

“I can’t believe that he cheated on her. I can’t believe thatyou… Julie, why? You knew he was married!”

She turned back to me suddenly, tears in her eyes. “Ilovedhim, Mel! I was in love with him. I know it was stupid and wrong, and don’t think that I don’t regret every day what I’ve done. But Mel,love isn’t something that’s rational. You can’t pick and choose who you fall in love with. I made a stupid decision because of love.”

I pursed my lips. Her words were too close for comfort for me, and I didn’t want to let my mind follow that path.

“So, Steve knew that he had a child with you?” I asked.

Julie nodded. “He wouldn’t meet Shaun or openly acknowledge he was the father, but he set up a trust which regularly deposited money into an account that I could access, so that he felt like he was contributing to raising Shaun. I don’t know how he kept it from Sandra.”

My eyebrows knitted together. “But now he’s … gone. So how does the trust work now? Wouldn’t those sorts of things have been frozen when Steve died?”

Julie shook her head. “Don’t ask me the ins and outs of it, because I have no idea. All I know is that the trust is under Joel’s control now. He’s making sure that there continues to be money available for Shaun.”

Holy fuck. The gravity of the situation really hit me then. Joel had an illegitimate half-brother and he was now responsible financially for that child. A child that Sandra didn’t know her husband had fathered to Julie.

“How long has Joel known about this?” I asked quietly.

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