“Don’t I know it,” Kylie said softly, feeling terribly drained but knowing she would need all her strength when she confronted Tiffany after school.
“Well, I’d better be going.”
“Again, thanks for coming by and letting me know what’s going on.”
He nodded. “There was no way I could not let you know, considering what they’d planned to do. Have a good day, Ms. Hagan.”
As Kylie watched him walk out of her shop, she knew that as much as she wished it to be so, there was no way that this would be a good day.
The moment Chance got into his truck and closed the door, he leaned back against the seat and released a long sigh. If the daughter looked anything like the mother, he was in deep trouble. No wonder his usually smart son had begun acting downright stupid.
Kylie Hagan was definitely a beauty. He had noticed that fact the moment he had walked into the flower shop and headed straight toward the counter. When she had come from behind that same counter and he’d seen that she was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, he’d thought the outfit fit just right on her curvy, petite body and showed off her shapely legs too perfectly. Braided dark brown hair had been stylishly cut to accent her face. Her creamy chocolate skin complemented a pair of beautiful brown eyes, a perky nose and an incredibly feminine pair of lips.
How in the world could she be the mother of a fifteen-year-old when she looked barely older than twenty herself? She looked more like Tiffany’s sister than her mother. Perhaps Tiffany had been adopted. There were a lot of questions circulating around in his mind, but the foremost was what the two of them could do about their kids who seemed hell-bent on starting a relationship that neither was ready for.
He understood Marcus’s interest in girls—after all he was a Steele—and Chance could distinctly remember when he was younger. He had fallen in love with Cyndi when he’d been just a few years older than Marcus, and had married her before his nineteenth birthday after she had gotten pregnant.
Pregnant.
He would never forget that day when Cyndi had come to him, a mere week before he was to leave for Yale University, to let him know she was having his baby. He had loved her so much he decided not to accept a full college scholarship and leave her alone. Instead, he had married her, gone to work at his father’s manufacturing company and attended college at night. It hadn’t been easy and it had taken him almost six years to get a degree, but he and Cyndi had made the best of it and he could look back and honestly say that although there were hard years, they had been happy ones.
And then the unthinkable happened. Cyndi had noticed changes in a mole on the side of her neck, a mole that was later determined to be cancerous. Even after surgery and chemo treatments, four years later, on the day Marcus should have been celebrating his ninth birthday, they were in the cemetery putting to rest the one woman who had meant the world to Chance.
He straightened and started up his truck. Although he would never think of marrying Cyndi as a mistake, he couldn’t help but remember her plans of attending college; plans that had gotten thrown by the wayside with her pregnancy. If he had it all to do over, he would have been more responsible that night when they had gotten carried away by the moment.
And then on top of everything else, he couldn’t forget the promise he had made to Cyndi on her deathbed; a promise that he would make sure that their son got to do everything they hadn’t done, and take advantage of every opportunity offered to him, which included one day attending a university that would give him the best education.
That was the reason he was driven to make sure Marcus did well in school. Of course it was Chance’s hope for him to one day join the family business, the Steele Corporation, but if Marcus wanted to do something else after finishing college, then he could do so with Chance’s blessings.
As he began backing out of the parking lot, he contemplated the emergence of Tiffany Hagan in Marcus’s life. He didn’t think his son’s interest in the girl was going to fade away anytime soon, regardless of what kind of talk Kylie Hagan had with her daughter. That meant Chance needed to have a “Plan B” ready. Under no circumstances would he let Marcus succumb to teen lust and ruin the life he and Cyndi always wanted for him.
His thoughts shifted to Tiffany’s mother again, and he felt lust invading his own body. The difference was he was a man and he could handle it.
At least he hoped he could.
After reading the note, Helena Spears glanced up at the woman who’d been her best friend since high school. “Are you sure Tiffy wrote this, Kylie?”
The two of them had met for lunch and were sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant. Kylie shook her head. Leave it to Lena to try to wiggle her goddaughter out of any kind of trouble. “Of course I’m sure. I can recognize Tiffany’s handwriting when I see it and so can you. Those curls at the end of certain letters give her away and you know it.”
Lena shrugged as she handed the note back to Kylie. “Well, the only thing I have to say in defense of my godchild is that if Marcus looks anything like his daddy, then I can see why Tiffy fell for him.”
Kylie didn’t want to admit that she’d thought the same thing. “You know Chance Steele?”
“Oh, yeah. There are few people living in Charlotte who don’t know the Steele brothers. They own a huge manufacturing company, the Steele Corporation. There are four of them who were born and raised here. They’re not transplants like rest of us, and they are very successful, as well as handsome. Chance is the CEO and his brothers have key positions in the corporation. There are also three female cousins, one of which works in the PR Department. The other two chose careers outside of the company, but all three are members of the board of directors.”
Lena took a sip of her drink before continuing. “Chance is the oldest and the one I see most often with my charity work. He’s a big supporter of the American Cancer Society. His wife died of cancer around seven years ago.”
Kylie, who had been putting the note back in her purse, suddenly lifted her head. “He’s a widower?”
“Yes, and from what I understand, he’s doing a good job raising his son.”
Kylie frowned. “Not if his son is enticing girls to cut school with him.”
Lena laughed. “Oh, come on, Kylie. You were young once.”
“I remember. And that’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, meeting Lena’s gaze with a concerned expression. “You recall how I was all into Sam. I thought I was madly in love. It was like my day wasn’t complete until I saw his face. I was obsessed.”
Lena shook her head. “Yeah, you did have it bad. You thought you were in love, and nobody could tell you differently.”
“And you saw what happened to me. One day of acting irresponsibly changed my entire life. I was pregnant on my sixteenth birthday.”
And rejected at sixteen as well.
She would never forget the day Sam told her that he wanted no part of her or the baby, and that he would get his parents to give her money for an abortion, but that was about all she would ever get from him. He intended to go to college on a football scholarship and under no circumstances would he let her mess up his future with a baby he didn’t want. He agreed with his parents that there was no sense in him throwing away a promising career in pro football because of one foolish mistake. So instead of hanging around and doing the right thing, he had split the first chance he got. Even now she could count on one hand the number of times Tiffany had seen her father. Sam did get the football career in the NFL that he’d wanted, at least for a short while before an injury ended things. Now he was living in California, married with a family, and rarely had time for his daughter.
Emotions tightened her throat as she remembered that time she had gotten pregnant. She had hurt her parents something awful. And disappointed them as well. They had had so many high hopes for her,