Read Online A Family Affair: Winter: Truth in Lies, Book 1 by Mary Campisi - Free Book Online

Should she tell him the real reason?   I just found out I have a half sister?  No, the Pendletons were very particular about bloodlines and heritage. They would not take kindly to learning about an illegitimacy. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t telling anyone about Lily Desantro.
    “You must be really bored,” Connor said, chuckling into the phone. “Didn’t you bring your laptop? At least you could stay connected to the real world while you’re out there in the boondocks.”
    “It’s here,” she said, surprised she hadn’t opened it yet, not even to check the Dow. “I’ve just been busy.”
    “Oh?” He sounded intrigued. “Doing what?”
    Driving seventy-eight miles to track down my half sister... confronting my father’s mistress... and her son.  “Well, for one, trying to figure out how to operate a tub with a rubber plug.” She tried for humor, anything to avoid the real question. Connor only wanted to know when she’d be on her way back to Chicago.
    His next words proved this. “So, when are you coming back? I’m still hoping you’ll come to New York with me.”
    “So I can work the deal with Glen Systems for you?”
    “No, of course not.”
    But she knew the truth, heard it in the split-second hesitation. He might want her there because he cared about her, but he also wanted her friendly personality seated right beside Niles Furband when he tried to land the deal. This should have upset her, and the mere fact that it didn’t worried her most.
    “Will you come? It’s the twenty-sixth.”
    “I don’t know.” She still didn’t know what she was going to do about the situation here. Should she just leave? Tell Thurman Jacobs to disburse the funds and be done with it? But what about the girl? Could she let her walk around without ever seeing her, without knowing if they shared the same color hair, the same cowlick on the right side of their forehead, the same blue eyes, Blacksworth eyes?
    “I could meet you in New York on the twenty-sixth if you’d like.” Connor wanted his deal; he didn’t care what she was doing in the middle of nowhere that kept her so busy.
    If Mr. Saro from Japan had called and spoken to him in Japanese about financial issues, Connor would have dragged in a translator, maybe two, to interpret the words in English, then he’d have analyzed them, dissected meaning and inflection, spent hours, perhaps a whole day, trying to understand.
    But this, something as mundane and uneventful as a girlfriend in her dead father’s cabin in the Catskills—it smacked of emotion and angst and Connor was careful about avoiding both.
    “I’m not sure when I’m leaving.” She was suddenly tired of talking. “I might stay on another day or so, or it could be longer. I’ll let you know, okay?”
    “Do you want me to come up there?” He wanted to make a trip to the Catskills about as much as she wanted to throw herself naked into a pile of snow.
    “No. I want to be by myself right now.” There, she’d give him his out because it would ease his conscience, and because it was true.
    “Okay, then.” He sighed into the phone, a long breath that she supposed was intended to make her feel a tinge of guilt for remaining undecided about the New York trip. “Let me know as soon as you can.”
    “Sure.”
    And then, this last bit, perhaps to boost her spirits. “The Dow was up two hundred points today. You should check it out.”
    “Thanks. Maybe I will.”
    Click. He was gone.
    She placed the cell phone on the nightstand and fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was dark outside, a cocoon of blackness but for the tiniest sliver of moon sifting through the window, settling in a faint arc above her.
    It was then, as she stared at the arc, followed its faint shimmering trail, that she realized the truth about her relationship with Connor Pendleton.
    He’d made certain he told her about the Dow but had never once said,  I love you.
    And neither had she.
    ***
    Christine