Read Online Just Desserts by Barbara Bretton - Free Book Online Page B

put up with your shit.”
    â€œNot funny,” he said, although he was laughing. He wasn’t about to get into the wisdom of dating a woman who would probably turn out to be Tommy’s daughter. “Want to pick up some burgers? There’s a McDonald’s at the next rest stop.”
    â€œIf you want to change the subject, that’s cool.”
    â€œI don’t want to change the subject. I just don’t want you running with the wrong idea.”
    â€œThat you thought she was hot?”
    â€œIs this going somewhere,” Finn asked, “or are you just trying to break my balls?”
    â€œShe asked me about you when we were working on the cake.”
    â€œYeah?” He slid a glance in his friend’s direction. “What did she want to know?”
    â€œIf you were married.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Anton started to laugh. “Gotcha.”
    â€œYou’re a real son of a bitch. You know that, don’t you?”
    â€œI’ve heard that a few times before.”
    â€œThat’s all she asked?” Could he sound any more like a sixteen-year-old kid without a date for the big dance?
    â€œShe tried to get some on Tommy but I stuck to what’s been in People .”
    â€œSmart move. That way we won’t have to sue your ass from here to L.A. for breach of contract.”
    The thought of Tommy suing one of his own made them both laugh out loud.
    â€œWhen’s he going to tell her?”
    â€œI don’t know but I almost told her the whole story when she was signing the contract.” Only loyalty to Tommy had stopped him but it had been close.
    â€œSome people would be real happy to find out their father is a famous rocker. Everyone knows Tommy takes care of his own. She won’t have to worry about paying her bills anymore, that’s for damn sure.”
    â€œI don’t think she’ll be one of them.” The woman he’d met had something to prove.
    â€œShe drives a twelve-year-old Buick,” Anton pointed out. “She cuts her own hair. Her life is going to do a one-eighty when she finds out about Tommy.”
    The thought depressed the hell out of him and, once again, he didn’t know why.
    Usually he rolled with things the same way Tommy did. The Stiles clan grew larger, the family tree more complicated, and the updates and codicils to Tommy’s will more frequent. It was what it was and the emotional fallout washed right over him and away.
    Tommy wasn’t an absentee father with a checkbook and a guilty conscience. He was the real deal, a hands-on parent who didn’t just want the best for his kids, he tried to help them achieve it. Okay, so maybe he had a few tats, some random piercings, and an addiction to highlights and supermodels, but when it came to family nobody did it better.
    If Hayley Maitland Goldstein turned out to be Tommy’s daughter, the sky would be the limit. That dented Buick would be history. Her Target days would be over. Tommy, in his benevolent way, would roll over her like a gift-wrapped tank.
    Finn tried to imagine what it would feel like if someone walked into his life right now and claimed to be his father. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept. By the time you reached your thirties, you had a pretty good idea who you were and where you came from. You knew why you were the way you were and if you didn’t, it was only because you weren’t paying attention.
    That wasn’t the case with Hayley Maitland Goldstein and her daughter, Lizzie. There was no way they could see this coming and as far as Finn could tell, they had Jane Maitland, Ph.D., to thank. The good doctor knew how to keep a secret. How she had managed to keep that particular secret for thirty-eight years was one of the things he hoped to find out someday.
    In the meantime Hayley was living over a bakery in South Jersey with a beautiful young daughter whose IQ was higher than Finn could count. She had