The Tycoon's Temporary Baby(58)
Had it been hard? Had he ever looked back? Ever wondered about the family he’d left behind?
“And you haven’t seen him since?” Wendy had to ask, even though in her heart she knew the answer to the question.
“Not really.” Lacey shrugged, though her expression was more thoughtful than sad.
“What do you mean, not really?” Most of the time, she knew Jonathon’s schedule better than her own. If he’d been within fifty miles of Palo Verde in the last five years, she would have known about it.
“I mean, sure, he never visits.” Lacey spoke around a mouthful of waffle. “But it’s not like we don’t all know he’s out there. Keeping an eye on us.”
“Keeping an eye on you?” Wendy asked.
“Sure. Just watching out for us, you know?”
No. Wendy didn’t know. She didn’t have the faintest clue what Lacey was talking about. Luckily Lacey was a babbler and kept talking.
“Just little stuff mostly.” She rolled her shoulder in a shrug. “Though sometimes it was big stuff. It used to make Mom so mad.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Like, oh, I don’t know. I guess it started with the lab at school.”
“Uh-huh,” Wendy said encouragingly.
“That was about ten years ago. I won the regional science fair, but we didn’t have the cash for me to go to the state competition. The newspaper ran this article about a fundraiser we were doing at school to raise money for it. Then—bam—anonymous donor steps in to cover the costs. The next year, the school district science labs were completely remodeled—middle school, all the way up to high school.”
Lacey forked off another bite of her waffle, while Wendy poked listlessly at hers.
“I used to think that we were just incredibly, unbelievably lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like the science lab. I needed money and it magically appears. Or the time when Mom was out of work—this was before she got married—and this frozen-food delivery truck broke down right outside our house. The driver begged us to take the food inside to our own freezer before it went bad. Stuff like that happened all the time.”
“And you think Jonathon was responsible?”
“Well, sure. Who else could it be? It’s always made Mom so mad, but I kind of like it. It’s nice knowing he’s out there, keeping an eye out for us.”
“Why does it make your Mom mad?”
“Because she always says it’d be nicer to have her brother back.”
It was so like him. He wanted to help. Always wanted to be the hero, but never wanted the credit for it. He never wanted to be beholden to anyone. Never wanted to risk having someone know he was a decent guy beneath the mantle of corporate greed he wore. And he never let anyone close enough to see the man he really was underneath.
No wonder it pissed off Marie. Hell, it pissed her off.
“He finally wore Mom down,” Lacey was saying. “I think it was the scholarship that did it.”
“There’s a scholarship?” Wendy asked, then instantly realized how stupid that sounded. With Jonathon’s fervor for education, of course there would be scholarship.
Lacey nodded. “Ten top science students in the high school get a full ride to the university of their choice as long as they major in a science or engineering program.”
“Naturally.”
How had she not known about any of this?
She had thought she had her thumb in every pie on his plate, but here was this one element of his life that she’d never glimpsed until now.
He’d told her he’d cut himself off from his family entirely. Claimed that he had nothing to do with them anymore. And yet now she found out he’d been meddling in their lives for years. Not bad meddling, just…from a distance.
Which was the way he did everything. God forbid he let anyone get truly close.
“Hey. Yoowoo?”
Wendy looked up to see Lacey waving her fork back and forth in front of Wendy’s face. Apparently she’d been caught drifting off into what-the-hell-have-I-got-myself-into land. “Oh. Sorry. I was just lost in thought.”
Lacey smirked. “Obviously. No one lets waffles this good go uneaten without good reason.”
Well, at least confidence ran in the family.
“I was just…wondering what to think about all this.”
“All what?”
“The generosity. The altruism.”
“Really?” Lacey’s expression turned shrewd and assessing. “Because if I was with a guy like that, it would be one of the things I loved most about him.”
“Well, sure. It would have been. If I’d known about it.” She gave her waffle a particularly savage poke.