The bottom line was she had made love with someone who hadn’t been honest with her. And to her, dishonesty was just about the worst.
Hailey jumped when the bathroom door suddenly opened. She swung around just in time to look Dillon straight in the eye.
“Who is Julie and why is she asking you to come home?” Hailey asked him in a shaky voice.
Startled, Dillon looked at her. “You read my texts?” he asked, surprised.
“That’s not the important part here,” she informed him in a strained, angry voice. “Who is Julie?” she asked again.
“It’s not what you think,” Dillon began, searching for words that wouldn’t escalate what already felt like a totally volatile disaster about to explode.
“I don’t know what to think,” Hailey cried, exasperated. “Because you keep shutting me out. Every time I think we’ve made a little progress, every time it looks like we’ve taken one step forward, you do something to push me back not one step but two. I’m through with you keeping things to yourself,” she declared, then, out of patience, she demanded, “Is Julie your wife?”
Dillon looked at her, stunned. “No, Julie’s not my wife,” he answered. “She is—”
He was talking too slow, Hailey thought angrily. She wanted to jump down his throat and physically drag all his words out.
“She’s what, Dillon?” Hailey cried, frustrated. “Your girlfriend?”
His blue eyes turning darker, he finally replied, “Julie’s my daughter.”
Hailey felt as if all the air had just been pumped out of her lungs. For a second, her head reeling, she was totally speechless and could only stare at Dillon, wide-eyed.
“Your daughter,” she finally said, repeating the words numbly. The import of what Dillon had just said hit her right between the eyes. “Oh, my Lord, I’m a home-wrecker,” she cried.
“No,” Dillon firmly insisted. “You’re not a home-wrecker, Hailey.”
He could see that she wasn’t convinced. That was when Dillon did something he never did. He forced himself to open up, at least a little, about his private life.
“There is no home to wreck, Hailey,” Dillon told her quietly.
“But your daughter—” she protested.
“Is the product of a teenage romance.” He could see that she was waiting for more so he forced himself to keep talking. “When I found out that my girlfriend, Maura, was pregnant, I wanted to step up and do the right thing. I told her that I’d marry her. Hell, I wanted to marry her.”
“So what happened?” Hailey wanted to know. Heaven knew that if he had offered to marry her, to give their child a father as well as his name, she certainly wouldn’t have hesitated saying yes to him. She would have said it so fast his head would have spun.
She found herself not liking this Maura person because she could see that the woman had obviously hurt Dillon.
“She didn’t want to marry me. I thought that maybe she was being stubborn, that she was embarrassed to be in this condition and didn’t want me to feel I had to marry her.
“But as it turned out, she really wasn’t in love with me. She didn’t want to get married just because it was the right thing to do, or just to give her baby a last name.” He smiled ruefully, remembering the scene as if it had been yesterday. “She told me that her baby would have a last name. Her last name.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Hailey confessed.
Though it was painful for him, Dillon continued telling her the story. “For whatever reason, Maura decided to keep me from having any contact with Julie. She disappeared right after she had the baby. I tried to keep track of her and the baby because, well, after all, Julie was my responsibility, my child.
“I finally managed to track her down a couple of years ago and found that Maura had relocated not all that far away from where I lived. As it turned out, she had gone on to marry someone she did love.” He smiled sadly. “As for Julie, she turned out to be a very headstrong, stubborn girl. She got it into her head to look into finding me on her own. The internet can be a very helpful tool if you’re as resourceful as Julie is.”
There was no missing the pride in Dillon’s voice, Hailey thought. He really was a decent human being, she decided, relieved.
“It took some time, but Julie managed to track me down. She’s a stubborn girl. I guess she takes after me,” he said with a smile. “Once she did, she got in contact with me behind Maura’s back. We started exchanging cards and letters. That went on for two years and then she asked if she could see me. By then Callum had gotten involved with building up Rambling Rose and we were all about to relocate. He was counting on me for my help, so I told Julie that we would get together once I got back to Fort Lauderdale. She accepted it at first. Julie’s resourceful and bright, but she is still a twelve-year-old girl and they tend to be impatient at that age. I suppose that’s the reason she sent all those texts to me. She became impatient.”
Hailey ached for the little girl, thinking how she had to feel, finally finding her father and not being able to get together with him. “So what are you going to do?” she wanted to know.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Dillon admitted. “The one thing I do plan to do is see Julie. She deserves a father, her real father, and I don’t plan on abandoning her for a second time now that we’ve made contact of a sort. I’ve already missed too much of her life. I don’t intend to miss the rest of it.”
“And what about Julie’s mother? You said she wouldn’t let you see Julie. What if she doesn’t change her mind?” Hailey asked.
