Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“And so?” I asked quickly, wrapping my arms around myself.
“Well––”
But she was stopped when the door opened and Jake came out, having taken off the heavy cardigan he was wearing, walking over and holding it up so Hannah could put one arm in, then the other. He got a kiss for that, and then he returned to the house. I noted that my daughter moved the shawl collar of the sweater over her face for a moment, breathed in, and then wrapped the garment she was swimming in around her. Aaron always did something similar when he wore something of Duncan’s. I found it endearing.
Smiling, she looked at both of us.
“Go on,” Sam prodded her.
“I asked Uncle Aaron if I could have my lawyer, Weaver Bryant, who, sidebar, when I’m in charge, I’m going to make my chief counsel,” she said with a grin, “talk to the adoption agency and the orphanage in Montevideo, and he said what he always does.”
“Which is what?” I asked, even though I could guess.
“That she’s my lawyer and I can ask her to do whatever I need.”
“You have your own lawyer?” Sam sounded both annoyed and impressed.
“At the moment she’s not just mine, but yeah. I needed someone to look over my work, mostly contracts and bids, and the occasional speech.”
“I’m upset that Aaron did that without telling me,” I stated.
“Got me a lawyer?” Hannah was trying for levity.
“It’s not funny,” I cautioned her.
“I’ve been of legal age to ask him to act on my behalf for more than a bit,” she replied with a gentle smile. “But more important are the facts.”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanna hear,” Sam declared as our front door opened and Dane walked out onto the porch with his deep brown double-breasted camel-hair topcoat that he’d worn in from where he parked his car on the street two hours before.
“Pardon the interruption,” he said, holding the coat up so I could slide each arm in. He then turned me around like I was five, buttoned me up, and then went back inside.
When I glanced at Sam, he was scowling.
“I was cold.”
Shaking his head, he told his daughter to go on.
“So it turns out, my mother had me when she was twenty-one, after having an affair with her agent.”
“Her agent?” Sam was surprised, and shivered a bit. “What does she do?”
“She’s an actress. She lives in Milan now with her husband and kids.”
“Okay.”
“My mother told Weaver that she and my father agreed she would have the baby, me, and put me up for adoption. Neither one of them wanted to be bothered after that.”
“Oh, love,” I whispered.
“No, Pa, it’s okay. When Weaver spoke to my biological father, who now lives in Los Angeles with his fourth wife and their new daughter—he’s sixty-five and she’s twenty-seven––” She rolled her eyes. “––he told her that if I was looking for a handout, I was barking up the wrong tree. Apparently, with children from three other marriages, he was not about to be shelling out any more money, especially without a paternity test.”
“But he knows you’re his daughter. You said he and your mother agreed to put you up for adoption. I don’t understand.”
“I think he meant that without a paternity test he wasn’t even having a discussion.”
“I hate him,” Sam said as the front door opened again and Duncan was in the doorway. “Will you guys knock it off.”
His voice would have had more power in it, but his teeth chattering got in the way.
Duncan scowled, and then beaned him in the face with his heavy cardigan that he’d worn over to our house, that he’d taken off for Sam so Sam wouldn’t freeze to death out there in the cold. But because Sam had growled at him, Duncan still loaned him his sweater, but he wadded it up a bit and then flung it at his old friend. He then smirked and put the exclamation point on the whole interaction by slamming the door shut.
“The hell was that?” Sam asked us.
I snorted out a laugh. Hannah cackled.
“Is he insane?” he grumbled as he put the heavy article of clothing on.
“You deserved that,” Hannah told him, shaking her head.
“This reeks of cheap aftershave,” he grumbled.
“Oh it does not,” she said, chuckling as she gazed at her father. “Duncan Stiel owns nothing at all that is cheap. Think about what you said for a second.”
“Just go on,” he snapped at her.
“That’s all there is,” she told him. “Neither of them could care less about me. My mother is married to a retired soccer player, and she hosts a television show there in Milan about leisure and travel. And as I said, my father is on his fourth marriage, and he’s still an agent, but now he works in Hollywood.”
I stared at her.
“You look weird,” she apprised me.