Read Online Undeniably Yours by Heather Webber - Free Book Online Page A

hands.
    There was nothing Maggie liked more than feeding people.
    Well, maybe Raphael.
    “Starving,” I said.
    Aiden only smiled. He was humoring me with this lunch, but I wasn’t going to complain. More than food, I’d needed the visit with Raphael. Aiden and I both ordered lemonades and Maggie rushed off. She rarely moved at any speed other than fast.
    Aiden shook out his napkin and placed it on his lap and looked out the window. Even though he sat directly across from me, I could tell he was somewhere far, far away.
    “We’ll find her,” I said.
    His gaze snapped to me. “What then, Lucy?”
    What then? It was a good question—one I didn’t have an answer to.
    “If she’s alive, is she going to fight me for shared custody? Because I’m not letting Ava go. Now that I know about her, I’m not stepping aside to let her slip seamlessly back into her old life.”
    I hadn’t needed any kind of psychic ability to predict that Aiden wouldn’t let Ava out of his life after all this was said and done. All it had taken was one look at him this morning cuddling the little girl to know he’d fallen head over heels for her.
    “And sure as hell,” he added scathingly, “I’m not letting that jackhole Trey Fisher raise my daughter…”
    I lifted an eyebrow and fought a smile. Fought it hard. Aiden rarely cursed. “Jackhole?”
    A smile teased the corners of his lips. “I might be being a bit harsh, but you know his reputation.”
    I did. Womanizer. Temperamental. Conceited.
    Not exactly a father figure.
    “They haven’t been dating long,” I said. “I doubt marriage is on the table at this point.”
    He glared.
    I got the message. He needed to vent.
    “Carry on,” I said.
    “On the flip side of that, if Kira’s dead…,” he began, then shook his head. After a second, he cleared his throat. “If she’s dead, how can I explain to Ava that I waited days to look for her mother?”
    “Aiden, you can’t—”
    “Here you go,” Maggie said, sliding two frosty glasses of lemonade onto the tabletop. She quickly rattled off the daily specials, and the passion she had for her food was evident in the way she described each meal. I ordered a chicken spinach wrap, and Aiden ordered gazpacho. She rushed off, and I couldn’t help but smile at her zest for life.
    On the surface, it didn’t seem like she would be a good fit for Raphael. He loved the Red Sox, she loved the Yankees. He loved eighties music, she loved classical. He was quiet, she was loud. Yet, the undeniable chemistry between them was palpable. And, of course, there were the auras. My father had known from the moment he met Maggie that she was the one to fill the void in Raphael’s heart. Dad had leased this space to her at the fraction of the cost so she and Raphael could find their way to each other. Turned out, their internal navigational systems were a wee bit off course. It had taken my interference (I wanted full credit) to get them to finally look at each other. A whirlwind relationship later and they were engaged and living together.
    It never ceased to amaze me how little it took to completely change the direction of someone’s life. For good…or for bad.
    I ran my fingers up and down my glass, drawing in the condensation. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for what might or might not have happened to Kira.”
    His jaw jutted.
    Because he knew I spoke the truth, I didn’t press. Instead, I refocused the conversation. “It sure seems as though that doll was a warning to Kira about the McDaniel case.”
    “Yes.” He ripped the paper from his straw and jabbed it into his drink. “I keep thinking about that note. It feels like someone went to an exaggerated length to make us believe they were uneducated. Why?”
    It did, in fact, seem that way. I was fairly sure a third grader had better writing skills than whoever penned the note. “If I had to guess, someone well-educated wrote it.”
    “That’s what I was thinking,