Still Here: A Secret Baby Romance Read Free

what you need to do, but you aren’t going to be able to change my mind. I’m too old to work the land, Rose. I can’t do this anymore. It’s better to give it to someone who can.” All of a sudden my mother looked tired. She looked like the sixty-year-old woman she was. The lines stretching across her face, the sadness in her eyes.
    This was hard for her. But I couldn’t just let her give up. Not yet.
    “I just want to make sure that you are not being taken advantage of, mom,” I said as I grabbed the papers. “I’ll let you know what the lawyers say, Mr. Graves.” I had to keep it professional. I couldn’t let Wyatt get to me.
    “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Mrs. Shannon.” He wasn’t looking at her, but at me. “Shannons are known to drive a hard bargain. I have no doubt you’ll get the upper hand on this one.”
    My mom just smiled sweetly and looked from me to him. “That’s the idea, Wyatt.”
    “I have a feeling that the two of you together will drive a hard bargain,” he said. He kept his tone light, his eyes happy.
    I wasn’t sure how he could do that when all I wanted to do was smack him across the face.
    He was a damn asshole, and he knew it.

I don’t know what it was about her, but the look in her eyes when I showed up lit a fire somewhere deep inside of me.
    And unlike with most women, it wasn’t just lust.
    She was angry, she was hurt. Good. I wanted to see her irate. Wanted to see her squirm.
    She looks so damn beautiful when she’s angry.
    I wasn’t cruel, not unnecessarily so, but I wasn’t going to let her off the hook. I didn’t hold grudges, but this deserved, at least, a little bit of torture.
    Then she’d know one-tenth of the way I felt after she left me. Not so much as a goodbye.
    Even worse, when she ignored every email, text, and voicemail I sent her for a month afterward. Maybe it was what I deserved. Lord knows I did it to at least a dozen women. But she was different. I was different.
    Twenty-four years old, and still as beautiful as the day I first laid eyes on her, when she was working for my dad. Just cleaning up around the office, filing some paperwork. It was a local outreach he did for any student willing to apply.
    She was seventeen, but I waited until her eighteenth birthday until I asked her out. Until I made my move.
    I was a dick but I wasn’t a creep.
    It was her last summer before college.
    I was home, just graduated and there was nothing more beautiful than her. Not all the dozens of women I’d dated before or after. She was a little too young, but she was so strong-willed. So fiery. None of that was gone.
    No.
    It was just like the first time I saw her. I’d made a joke she didn’t like, and she glared at me with those bright blue eyes. Just like she did today. She still felt something. I knew it. I could convince her to repeat the past. I knew I could. I wanted to. Hell, this was one project worth pursuing. I wanted to relive it all.
    Except the part about her breaking my heart.
    No, this time, I’d get exactly the ending I wanted. I wasn’t going to let her slip away from me a second time.

Chapter Two
    “ B ranch ,” I said the word through clenched teeth.
    He was never here when I needed him. And I needed him the last year.
    Shit was getting heavy with the business, it was growing like nothing I’d seen since I’d taken over, but he was off running around with his women.
    First it was St. Lucas, then it was Martinique, and then the last two months at his retreat in Key West. Sure, he clocked in from his vacation homes doing some work from his computer, here and there but mostly he was enjoying the retirement he was supposed to be easing into.
    What he wasn’t doing was giving me insights in how to run this aspect of the business. Not that it was the worst thing in the world. I had to admit, it was easier without him here, hounding over me.
    “Son.” Branch Graves had several folders spread out across my desk. Of course he