Читать книгу Finding Glory - Sara Arden - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

SEEING REED AGAIN up close and personal had gone better and worse than Gina had hoped. Better because after his initial anger, he seemed willing. Worse, because...

Because he still made her heart flutter like a stupid butterfly and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She wanted to stop. Gina wanted to push him and all of her stupid hopes and resurrected teen desires out of her head. Two days had passed, and she still couldn’t stop. Maybe she was the addict.

She almost hadn’t recognized him at first. His thin features had filled in and it was obvious he was taking much better care of his body. He was bigger, stronger, a hunger inside him striving to get out and obvious in his every action. He looked like the GQ model version of Reed Hollingsworth with perfect hair, a perfect suit, but his eyes were the same. In those depths was the familiar hopeful kid she’d known.

Once upon a time, she’d wished it had been her that he wanted and while good sense told her that it was just the leftovers of a high school infatuation, her body didn’t know the difference. The hard planes of his powerful body in that suit that had been tailor-made for him, the determined set to his jaw and the ferocity of his expression conveyed that now, there was nothing he wanted that he couldn’t have. Gina found that kind of confidence and power titillating, as much as she hated to admit it.

But he wasn’t a fairy-tale prince on a valiant steed. He was an addict. That didn’t change. He could manage his addiction, but there was no magic cure to free him from the curse. And if there was, it certainly wasn’t her. He’d picked Crystal, not Gina. No, he was no hero.

Though she realized he wasn’t the villain she’d thought he’d become, either.

She knew that she’d agree to whatever Reed wanted if it meant that she could keep Amanda Jane. And she would never just let her go with a stranger. When it was distilled down to its most basic, Reed was a stranger to them both. Amanda Jane played on the floor with a myriad of secondhand toys. She had a doll in an evening gown riding a fire truck. That was her current obsession. She said she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up and apparently, she planned on doing it in sparkles.

Which was just fine with Gina. Gina made it a point to tell her that with enough hard work, she could do anything—be anything.

Amanda Jane sang a little song to herself quietly and rather than distract Gina from her studies, it soothed her.

No, what distracted her was seeing Reed Hollingsworth.

Gina had always wondered what happened to Reed. If he’d taken the same path that Crystal had, he’d have been in prison or dead. Then her economics class had been assigned an article about rags-to-riches businessman Reed Hollingsworth.

And the article had pissed her off.

How dare he sit there on his velvet throne looking down on the rest of them while she struggled to feed and clothe his daughter? Crystal may have been fine with no help from Reed, but Gina wasn’t. He had a responsibility to his daughter. If he didn’t want to physically parent, fine. But he could contribute financially. It was the least he could do. The man made millions of dollars a year. Twelve grand a year plus a college education for his daughter wasn’t going to beggar him.

Gina was torn between anger, regret and betrayal. These washed over her all at once and she imagined if the emotions had colors, they’d look like a mess of spilled ink after they’d roiled around inside of her. At the end of the day, there was no discernible difference between them.

She was so tired. She’d just come off a twenty-four-hour shift and she had to study for a test the next day, but she needed to spend some time with Amanda Jane, too. The girl was just getting over the latest bout of bronchitis. Amanda Jane had a weak immune system, but they were lucky that was her only problem considering Crystal’s mistreatment of herself while she was pregnant.

Gina sighed and put her head down on the table. She wished she could learn by osmosis, then maybe banging her head against things would actually serve a purpose.

“Are you tired, Gina-bee?” Amanda Jane asked her in a small, scratchy voice.

She smiled. Crystal had called her Gina-bee when she was tiny. It reminded her of the person her sister had been and the hope she had for the person and mother she hoped she could be again. “Yes, darling.”

“Maybe it’s nap time.”

“But you don’t like naps.”

“No.” Amanda shook her head earnestly. “But you like them. So, maybe we should have one.”

“I’m fine, honey. I have to study for this test.”

“Tests are dumb.”

Tests made Gina feel dumb sometimes. She smiled again. “No, they’re good. This test means I can go to my next class and then I can be Doctor Gina.”

“And Doctor Gina means no more EMT Gina,” Amanda Jane recited with her.

“You got it, kiddo.” She stared back down at the paper, trying to make sense of the words as they danced over the page, but she didn’t see any of them. All she could see was Reed’s thin face.

Maybe because Amanda Jane looked so much like him. Or as he had as a boy, before things had gotten so bad.

He’d been so beautiful to her then, so tragic. With a face like an angel and a heart so full of hope, even after it had been crushed again and again. She’d waited for him to notice her as something other than Crystal’s sister.

It was ironic, really.

She’d ended up a parent the end of her senior year and she’d never had sex to prevent exactly that thing. Gina wanted to get an education, a career, before she started a family. And she wanted to do it the right way. She wanted to fall in love, have babies with a man who wanted to be a father and a husband. She wanted the white picket fence and the American dream.

And now, she supposed she had fallen in love, but with Amanda Jane. That girl was her heart and soul, and Gina would do anything she had to do to provide a good life for her. Anything.

Gina had a feeling that the universe was going to test her mettle with that statement, but she didn’t care. There was nothing more important to her than giving Amanda Jane the life she deserved.

She knew that meant seeing Reed again and she also knew it meant that she couldn’t let her softer feelings for the boy he’d been get in the way. He wasn’t that boy anymore. He was a grown man who’d had no problem playing hardball.

But neither would Gina.

She just couldn’t reconcile that with the boy he’d been.

Gina looked back down at Amanda Jane’s serious blue eyes and found another smile. “Hey, you want to help me study for this test?”

Amanda Jane put down her doll and her small fingers reached for the flash cards. She was probably the only six-year-old who knew the names of all the bones in the human body. She’d been tested as gifted, and Gina wasn’t sure if it was because she included Amanda Jane in her studies as a means to double task spending time with her as well as test prep, or if it was because she was wired much like Gina herself.

Either way, it both warmed and broke her heart at the same time. She never wanted Amanda Jane to feel the way that she did growing up. She never wanted her to be the dirty kid who had to eat free lunch, who was the hope in teachers’ eyes. That someday, they knew she’d be the story they told to their class about how if Gina Townsend could do it, they could do it, too.

Reed’s financial support could change all of that.

She wouldn’t care what he thought of her, as long as Amanda Jane was taken care of.

But there was a secret part of her that wanted him to come back to Glory and realize that he’d always been in love with her and they’d get married, raise Amanda Jane together and live happily ever after.

Silly as it was.

Crystal was her mother, not Gina. And if Reed had ever had any feelings for her, he would’ve told her somehow. Acted on them in some way. She didn’t even know him anymore.

She had Amanda Jane. She was going to be a doctor. Nothing could stop her. Not her past, not her sister and definitely not Reed Hollingsworth.

Her cell rang and she saw that it was Emma.

A knot tightened in on itself in her gut. It had to be the meeting to discuss this whole insane idea of marriage.

“Hit me with it,” she said by way of greeting.

“What, no hello?”

“Come on, Emma.” Gina was sure if she had to wait another second, the anticipation might kill her. Whatever the answer here was, it would change her life.

“Reed and his lawyer want to meet today to talk about the judge’s suggestion. He’s offering so much more than we asked for and if we can hash this out together, you’ll be more likely to get what you want.”

“What do you mean?” That was when the knot tightened so hard she thought she was going to be sick. She knew somehow he was going to get his way or she was going to lose custody or something else awful. But she needed Emma to lay it out on the table for her.

“He’s agreed to the marriage. Coparenting, cohabitation... Because he’s being so generous, the judge will look more favorably on his requests. He’s got his lawyer setting up a trust for Amanda Jane and one for you—”

“I didn’t want a trust. I don’t want his money for myself. I can make my own.” She was horrified at the thought. Because she didn’t want his money for herself. She just wanted Amanda Jane to get what was hers. She just wanted her to be safe and secure. She didn’t need his money.

“You can. But he thinks that time would be better spent with Amanda Jane.”

“Excuse me, what?” She blinked.

“He wants you to quit both jobs and focus only on school and being a caregiver.”

Her first instinct was to rail against this. How dare he demand that of her? How dare he make the decision for her? He wasn’t a king on a golden throne. He didn’t get to dictate. But her reasons for fighting it would be simple pride. Deep down, she knew it would be better for her niece. But she couldn’t get past how much control that would give him. “And that leaves him holding the purse strings and us his puppets. He wants us totally dependent on him.”

That idea terrified her. She didn’t want anyone to have control over her. She had worked too long and too hard to pull herself up to suddenly throw herself on his mercy. To be legally and financially bound...

“I think that’s part of it, but you can’t deny it would be good for Amanda Jane.”

“I know that. But it won’t be good for me.”

“Won’t it?” Emma asked gently. “But he doesn’t need to know that. Just think about what it will mean to have an address on Knob Hill and his connections. How much faster you’ll get to medical school and the internships... Imagine what it will do for Amanda Jane. She’ll never be the kid no one wants to sit by, who gets picked last for teams, who has to rely on what she can scrape together for her lunch.”

Tears stung her eyes because that’s exactly what she feared it would be like for Amanda Jane, but she didn’t want to be dependent on Reed, either. What if he slipped back into old behaviors? What if he— She was afraid, not just of the possibility of him, but of herself.

What if she couldn’t handle raising Amanda Jane with him without falling for him? She was setting herself up for misery.

“Why don’t you think about it for a few hours? But we don’t have much time. Judge Gunderson wanted the prenup on her desk by next week.”

She thought about Reed again. The clash between them, but the pain underneath. “Let’s get it over with. Putting it off won’t make it any easier and frankly, with Crys gone and my lack of income, I’m afraid that he’ll take her away from me if we go to court.” She sighed. “At least this way, maybe I can get him to agree to some safeguards for my piece of mind.”

“I’ll tell Gray to come by my office at five. You be here now. Bring Amanda Jane with you and I’ll have Missy watch her.”

Missy was Emma’s secretary/assistant/friend who’d recently come through a horrible divorce from an even worse man and was trying to get back on her feet. She never felt as though she was doing enough to repay Emma for helping her, so she was always looking for extra duties and frequently offered to watch Amanda Jane. They were friends, and Missy never tried to correct Amanda Jane when she wanted her dolls to be firemen rather than beauty queens.

Gina agreed and hung up.

Then it hit her. This was happening. This was real.

That sounded so stupid when she stopped to think about it, but when she’d signed the paperwork to set all of this in motion, it had seemed like some diaphanous thing that wouldn’t have any more impact on her life than a changing breeze.

But it would.

It had.

She thought about him at that corner table in the Bullhorn. The restaurant she’d worked at since she was fourteen.

Gina remembered him coming in for scraps, hungry and tired. She’d snuck him the leftovers as best she could. Until the Old Man had caught her. Then she’d washed his car to pay for them. But that hadn’t mattered back then.

She smiled, thinking about how horrified Reed had been when he found out she’d had to pay for what he’d eaten and how he’d asked the Old Man for a job himself. And he’d done really well for about two years.

Until the drugs.

Her smile melted into a frown.

Gina wasn’t ready for this.

Amanda Jane looked up at her. “Gina-bee?”

She inhaled carefully, filling her lungs slowly, feeling them expand, and when she exhaled she tried to push all of her fear out with her breath. “You want to go visit Miss Emma?”

“Okay.” The girl cocked her head to the side. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m nervous.”

“About what?”

She didn’t want to tell her, but Gina didn’t really have a choice. Reed would want to see her. “About you meeting your daddy.”

Her eyes widened. “He wants to meet me?”

“I’m sure he will.”

“What if he doesn’t like me?” Her voice was suddenly as small as she was.

“Of course he’ll like you. What if you don’t like him?” Gina tapped her nose with the tip of her finger and Amanda Jane giggled. “Actually, I’m sure you’ll like each other fine.”

“What if we don’t?”

“What if you do?” She grinned. “Get ready. Bring your travel bag.”

Amanda Jane scurried off to do as Gina had told her. Sometimes Gina wished she could bottle that excess energy and borrow a little now and then. She yawned.

Soon, she wouldn’t have to work two jobs and go to school. She could just be with Amanda Jane and study.

The idea was so foreign...

And it wouldn’t just be with Amanda Jane, either.

It would be with Reed, as well.

She’d be his wife.

They’d been friends once, but she imagined this would be a cold marriage. One of separate rooms, separate lives.

This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined for herself. She thought someday, she’d find someone to love. Someone who’d love her.

She supposed she had that, only in a different way. She had Amanda Jane. This was about her, not Gina. She could do this for her.