Page 23 of The Chase
“What?” He was under the impression the boy was only three. “Carly said he was born nine months after we dated. And she was already divorced then. I don’t sleep with married women. Ever.”
“No. Just innocent young women too damned young for you.” Gene laughed at him. Right in his face. Kurt wanted to slug the asshole right where he stood. “Carly is the biggest liar on theplanet. I watched her slap one of my sisters across the face, then she lied tomy faceabout it. I kicked her out the next morning.”
“Which sister?” Kurt asked, immediately.
“That’s irrelevant,” the attorney, Hanan, said. “What’s relevant is that you need to drop the paternity case. Unless you were involved with the boy’s mother five years ago, during Gene’s marriage to the woman in question? Did you help Carly commit adultery?”
“I don’t screw around with married women. Ever.” Kurt had to reevaluate here. But he’d always been fast. “Can you prove it?”
“You mean besides the fact that his birthday is obviously listed on his birth certificate?” Gene asked. “I could put you in touch with his biological father? I’m well aware of who it is. We did the test years ago, and he signed over all rights.”
Kurt hadn’t ever expectedthat.“You know he’s not yours.”
“I’ve known from two days after he was born. It doesn’t matter. I love him. He’s my son,legally. And I’m raising him as such. And I don’t need assholes like you coming around every few years whenever Carly wants to screw with me. You are not the first guy she’s yanked around like this, Chase. Just the first stupid enough to come after my kid. No doubt in a few months she’ll be demanding money from one or the both of us to keep thisquiet.She played you. Surprise. She’s good at that.”
Kurt felt like a damned idiot. He didn’t know what to say.
If what the guy was saying was the truth…All of this was for nothing—and he’d probably just made everything worse with Greer.
But he wasn’t finished with Gene yet. Just…not yet. Greer was just more immediate. He didn’t know how he was going to make it work, but he would. He wasn’t ready to let her go.
If Calvin wasn’t his…that still left what had happened fifteen years ago. Gene Hiller was hiding something—they probably all were. And Kurt was going to get to the bottom of it.
All he wanted was the truth—and to see the person responsible for his brother’s death punished. He owed his brother that much.
“You send me the proof, and I’ll have my own attorney drop the suit,” he finally said. He hadn’t forgotten his brother. Not by a long shot. But he needed to make a strategic retreat. Especially since this was the brother of the woman Kurt wanted. “I just wanted to make certain, if he was my son, that he was in a healthy, safe environment. I was trying to do the right thing. I had no intention of doing anything that would have hurt Calvin. I just wanted to know if he was mine biologically.”
“I’ll send you the damned proof. Then you stay the hell away from my family. You should have just come to me. I’d have filled you in on how Carly is, and it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper for both of us. The woman is a piranha, pal. Took your life into your hands sleeping with that one.”
Kurt jerked a nod. There wasn’t much more he could say to that at all.
The other men were almost to the door, where an incensed Luna waited, when he called Gene’s name.
The man turned, impatience on the face that was more like Greer’s than Kurt wanted to think about. The resemblance between the Hillers was definitely obvious. “What?”
“Give your sister a message for me, will you?” He lifted Bronte out of her playpen when she fussed.
“What?”
“Tell Greer I’ll be calling her soon.”
“Like hell you will. You stay away from my baby sister, Chase. You won’t like what happens if you don’t.”
Well, that was a threat, now, wasn’t it?
18
Kurt had donea lot of thinking after Gene had left, his big lawyer goon beside him. A direct approach was probably best at this point. He had no doubt Gene would have told everyone in her family what had happened Wednesday.
He wasn’t going to give them that long to plan against him. To get her defenses in place even more.
He found himself at her apartment Thursday, early afternoon. Thursdays were the days she worked early hours, and left early, so she could work later hours on Fridays. He hoped her schedule hadn’t changed that much in the eleven weeks since he’d been stupid.
Now…he had to reevaluate.
Greer had apparentlymoved.
Kurt suspected he knew exactly where his woman had ended up—at the Hiller Castle, with those goon-brothers to protect her.
