Tempt (Cloverleigh Farms Next Generation Book 4)

OCTOBER

I woke up slowly, reluctantly.

I fought back at consciousness, clinging to the softness of a dream. To long hair caressing my chest. To a sweet, feminine sigh in the dark of a Manhattan hotel room. To her hands sweeping over my skin. To my lips skimming her throat. To my body moving inside her.

But the dream faded, and I was left with the reality of an empty bed in my San Diego apartment and a massive hard-on. Groaning, I reached down and stroked myself, my eyes closed tight, as if opening them might allow some visual detail to escape. I pictured her for the hours she’d been mine—walking across the bar turning every guy’s head, leaning toward me with her hand on my leg, perched on the edge of my bed with her leg over my shoulder, holding onto the headboard while I spanked her, writhing beneath me as she came on my cock, the wonder in her big brown eyes when she confessed she’d never had so much sex in her life.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so insatiable either. There was just something about her I couldn’t get enough of. I’d spent hours trying to get my fill, but when she’d walked out the door the next morning, I had the crazy urge to pull her back in because I wanted more. I’d been fantasizing about her every night for a month.

I did it now as I fucked my fist, the way her pussy tightened around me as she cried out, her hands on my ass pulling me deeper. Fuck, fuck, fuck—I grunted through my release, leaving a warm, sticky puddle on my stomach.

I opened my eyes and frowned at it, wondering if this was how it would be for the rest of my life. Waking up hard, getting myself off, showering up, going on about the business of being close to fifty, divorced, the father of an adult son I’d never even met, and worried that somewhere along the line I’d peaked, only I couldn’t tell you exactly when or where that was.

During my years as a SEAL probably. That was when I’d felt the most alive, had the most purpose, done the most good. The work I did for Cole Security paid well, appealed to my protective nature, and occasionally allowed me to flex my muscles, but it didn’t feed my appetite for punishing bad guys the way a raid did.

But I wasn’t an idiot. Bodies aged, even if minds didn’t. They got injured. They got fucking tired. You could still want the same things you always wanted, you could still crave the rush, but you start moving a fraction of a second slower every time, and eventually you become a liability to your team.

I’d never once been afraid of dying. But I was always afraid of someone dying on my watch.

My cell phone vibrated with a call on the nightstand where it was plugged in, and I let it go to voicemail while I jumped in the shower. My flight east was leaving at eleven-thirty a.m., and it was already going on eight. I was packed, but I still had some shit to do before I left.

Ten minutes later, I came out of the bathroom, threw on some jeans, and checked to see who’d called.

Mason Holt.

My son.

It was still odd for me to think of him that way—it caused a brain glitch every single time. My immediate thought was always, I don’t have a son. I don’t have any kids at all. At least, I hadn’t right up until a couple months ago, when I got the email that said differently.

It was three months ago—a Tuesday in early July. Sitting in the conference room at Cole Security, waiting for a meeting to start, I’d pulled out my phone to check my email. At the top of my inbox was a message from a name I didn’t recognize, but the subject line said possible family connection please read. I thought maybe some distant cousins on one side or the other had found me through one of those ancestry sites. Since the meeting wouldn’t start for another five minutes, I opened it up.

Hello,

This will probably come as a shock to you, but I think I might be your son.

My brow furrowed, my head pulling back. Was this a joke? I glanced around the room, half expecting to see Jackson or one of the other jackasses I worked with pointing and laughing—I could see them trying to pull this kind of prank.

But the room was empty, the hum of the air conditioner the only sound. As the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I looked at the email again.

My name is Mason Holt and I’m twenty-eight years old. My mother’s maiden name was Andrea Weber. She passed away a couple years ago, but she would be forty-six now.

Two sentences in, I was pretty confident that there had been some kind of mistake, and this Mason Holt had me confused with someone else. I didn’t know anyone by that name, nor by the name of Andrea Weber, and twenty-eight years ago I was nineteen, stationed on a ship in the Persian Gulf.

And then I read the next sentence.

She grew up in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

My stomach lurched—

Frankenmuth.

Michigan.

Ten days’ leave after “A school” graduation.

Andi—the pretty girl with the blond braids.

Memories filled in like ink spreading on paper.

My dad and stepmom lived in Frankenmuth back then, which is this tourist town that looks like someone plucked it off out of Bavaria and stuck it in the middle of Michigan. It’s got German-themed everything—architecture, food, beer, clothing—as well as a gigantic Christmas store that’s open year-round in case you need tinsel in June. It made no sense to me.

I’d gone up to visit for a few days before I had to report to Norfolk. I hadn’t really wanted to go—my dad and I didn’t get along great, and my stepmom thought I had “anger issues.” She wasn’t wrong, I was still angry about the way my father had left my mom—I was angry about a lot of things—but my mother said visiting him was the right thing to do, since I’d only seen him once in the last year and wouldn’t be back for a while. So I made the drive from Cleveland and stayed for five days.

But I spent most of my time chasing after Andi, who I’d seen at her waitressing job at a brewpub dressed in one of those sexy Oktoberfest sort of outfits, like the chick on the St. Pauli Girl beer labels.

Later she told me it was called a dirndl, but I can’t remember if that was before or after we had sex in the pub’s bathroom when she got off work, or the back seat of my car, or maybe against the side of a barn on her parents’ farm just outside town. She was eighteen and had graduated from high school earlier that year, just like me. But she still lived at home with strict religious parents, and if I remembered right, she was working to save up for beauty school and her own apartment. She also had a possessive ex-boyfriend who heard about me, showed up at my dad’s house, and took a swing at my face.

That stupid motherfucker was on the ground begging for mercy inside a minute while I beat the shit out of him on the front lawn, my dad yelling at me to knock it off, my stepmom screaming that this was why she hadn’t wanted me here in the first place.

They kicked me out, so I threw my shit in the car and left that night without even saying goodbye to Andi, and we never spoke again. A week later, I shipped out. For a while, I wondered what happened to her—had she gone to beauty school? Gotten back together with the asshole ex?—but eventually she faded from memory.

Given the decades that had passed since I’d even thought of her, the sadness I felt learning she was gone gripped me unexpectedly hard. I hoped that she’d had a happy life.

But it wasn’t possible I was the father of her child . . . was it?

The room spun, and a trickle of sweat made its way down my chest. I closed my eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and read on.

She was very young when she had me, barely nineteen, and for the early years of my life, I believed her first husband, Mick Holt, was my father. His name is on my birth certificate. But he was not around much. They split when I was four, and I haven’t seen him since.

Mick Holt—the asshole I’d pummeled on my dad’s lawn. She’d married that guy?

Eventually she told me Mick was not my biological father. When I asked her who my real dad was, she would not give me a name. She would only say it didn’t matter anymore. When I asked if he was a good person, she said, “I thought so at the time.”

It fucking stung.

Even after all this time, that arrow hit the mark. I grit my teeth and read on.

We moved to Traverse City, Michigan, and she got married again, but they also divorced. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She lived another two years. I took care of her.

My mom was everything to me, and her death was very difficult. I could not bring myself to go through her things for a full year. When I did, I found an envelope with my name on it buried at the back of a high shelf in her closet.

It was a letter in which she told me about the circumstances of my birth, and she named as my father a Zachary Barrett from Cleveland, Ohio who was in the Navy and was hoping to be a SEAL someday. After some digging, those things led me to you.

I stood up and began to pace beside the table. I prided myself on remaining cool under pressure, but this was next-level heat. Could I actually have a grown son? The answer stopped me in my tracks.

Of course I could.

Andi and I hadn’t been careful. We’d been young and reckless and full of raging hormones. It was entirely possible Mason Holt was the result.

Remaining on my feet, I forced myself to finish the email.

I don’t want any money from you, if you’re worried. I have a good job (I’m a high school social studies teacher and track coach), I’m getting married soon, and even though I will always miss my mom, I’ve made peace with her death.

It’s a little harder to make peace with the fact that she chose to hide my father’s identity from me, but she must have had her reasons. I would like to know you, if you are really my father. Probably we should take a paternity test to determine if that’s the case. I think we would have results in about a week.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Mason Holt

Beneath his name, he’d written a phone number with a 231 area code. I was still staring at it, wondering what the fuck I was going to do, when Jackson poked his head in the door. “Hey. Meeting postponed, I have a—” He stopped mid-thought when I looked up at him. My expression must have set off an alarm. “What’s wrong?”

I swallowed. “I just got a really weird email.”

“Don’t send any money to Nigeria.”

“It’s not that.” My throat was dry and scratchy, and my vision was a little gray at the edges. I glanced down at my phone again, and the words were all still there.

“What is it?” Jackson came into the conference room, his forehead wrinkled with concern. “Did you get bad news?”

“I’m not sure what kind of news it is.”

“Barrett, quit fucking with me.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but . . .” I met his eyes again. “I think I might have a son.”

The voicemail was brief. “Hey Zach, just wanted to confirm that we’re all set for lunch tomorrow. I made a reservation at noon, and I’ll text you the restaurant name and location. Hope Italian is okay. Lori and I are really looking forward to meeting you. Safe travels.”

I wrote a quick reply, saying I heard the message and lunch sounded good. I’d see him at noon tomorrow.

Setting my phone aside, I packed up the charger and added it to my carry-on bag. Sure, Italian is okay, I thought. What better occasion was there to enjoy spaghetti and meatballs than when meeting your grown son for the first time?

My stomach muscles clenched up the way they always did when I thought about sitting across the table from him. Having to make conversation. Having to make an excuse for myself. Did I owe him an apology if I’d never known of his existence?

As I pulled the pieces of my suit from the closet and packed them in a garment bag, I thought about the day the results of the paternity test came back indicating Mason Holt was my son.

Although I’d had a gut feeling that was the case, I still felt panicked. That wasn’t a feeling I was used to. Years of having to keep calm and stay focused in situations that could derail in a hurry meant I was equipped to deal with surprise. I always knew what to do—put myself aside and protect others.

But who needed protecting here?

Mason Holt was a complication I didn’t need in my life. I’d never wanted children, and now I’d have to feel guilty about having one I’d never known about. I’d have to feel shitty for abandoning Andi without even a goodbye. I’d have to grapple with the knowledge that her life had been forever altered by what we’d done—her dreams abandoned—while my life had gone on as planned.

I’d spent my entire life wanting to fight bad guys. Was I one of them?

After one sleepless night, I called Mason the next day. That initial conversation was awkward as hell, mostly just me giving stiff, automatic answers to his questions, which were pretty basic.

Where’d you grow up? Cleveland.

What was your family like? Parents divorced when I was ten. I lived with my mom.

Did you like being a SEAL? Yes.

Why’d you quit? Got wounded.

Where do you live now? San Diego.

Are you married? I was. Didn’t last long.

Do you have kids? No.

What do you do? Work private security.

My only hesitation came when he asked if I had brothers or sisters. After a second of silence, I said no.

Then I glanced out the window of my apartment, and for a moment, I saw her standing there, a little girl with pigtails and chubby cheeks, a butterfly T-shirt and huge, trusting eyes.

I blinked and she was gone.

“Me neither,” he said. “I was an only child too. We have that in common.”

I’m not sure what was said after that, but we began emailing back and forth a couple times a week and talking by phone every Sunday.

In the beginning, I was doing it out of obligation, but after our first few talks, I found myself genuinely interested in him. I relaxed enough to ask him about his childhood, his hobbies, his job, the girl he was going to marry. He said he’d always been close to his mom, who had always worked two jobs and made sure he didn’t lack for things. He’d put himself through college. I liked that.

He didn’t press me for details about my relationship with Andi, and I wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t want to scare me off or he didn’t want the answers. Mostly he seemed interested in talking about the present.

During our third or fourth conversation, he told me more about his fiancée, Lori. How outgoing and smart she was, how much she knew about wine, how she was always volunteering for things, what a good mom she would be. “She’s really amazing,” he said. “I’m just glad I had my shit together when I met her. If I’d met her sooner, I wouldn’t have been ready. I had so much baggage to work through.”

“Sounds like you have a good therapist.” Mason had mentioned therapy a few times, and it seemed like it had helped him. I’d had the opposite experience, but then again, I’d never liked talking about my feelings. My parents got tired of paying for me to sit in silence for an hour.

“I do have a good therapist, but the girl I dated right before Lori also helped me out a lot. She was really there for me when I needed someone to pick up the pieces. The relationship just didn’t work out.” Then he laughed. “Funny enough, she’s a wedding planner, and she actually planned our wedding.”

“So there were no hard feelings, huh?”

“None. We’re friends. In fact, she introduced me to Lori last Christmas—after she and I’d broken up, of course.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“First weekend in October.” He paused. “Would you like to come?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but he went on before I could think of a way to do it without being a dick.

“No pressure, but I’d love to have some family there. My mom’s family isn’t coming, not that I ever knew any of them that well. They weren’t supportive of her after she got pregnant, and she never really forgave them.”

I felt even worse. Was that why she’d married Mick Holt? She’d been turned out by her family and had nowhere else to go?

“Sure,” I heard myself saying. “I could come to the wedding.”

“Oh my God, this is so great. I can’t wait to tell Lori. And you know what?” He sounded so excited. “Could you maybe come in a couple days early so we can spend a little time together before the wedding? The weekend will be so busy.”

“Uh, I might be able to do that. I’ll check my work schedule.”

“Awesome. That would be great. I—I have a lot of questions that I think would be better asked in person.”

After we hung up, I groaned aloud and rubbed my face with my hands. I didn’t like weddings to begin with, and now I’d have to go to one by myself, and Mason would probably be eager to introduce me to everyone he knew as his father. The poor guy was obviously desperate for family. And his questions . . . I had a pretty good idea what they would be, and I didn’t really want to face them. I didn’t have any good answers.

But I didn’t have it in me to refuse. He’d spent twenty-eight years wondering about me. His mother had worked two jobs to provide for him. He grew up not knowing if his dad was a total deadbeat or a decent human being.

Still, last night while I was packing, I started to panic about what I was going to say once we were face to face. I’d called Jackson and begged him to meet me for a beer so I could get his advice.

“I mean, what the fuck do I even say? Sorry I wasn’t there your whole life?”

Jackson considered the question. “I think you take your cues from him.”

“How so?”

“Well, you can’t change the past. It’s not like anything that happens from here on out will give him a childhood with a father. But maybe he’s just curious. Maybe he doesn’t want an apology. It’s not like it was your fault.”

“No, but you can still feel guilty about something that wasn’t your fault.” I was an expert at that. I had been since I was seven years old.

Jackson stared at his beer bottle and thought for a moment. “You can, but you don’t have to let it drag you under.”

I glanced at him. He’d lost team members as a SEAL and still carried the burden, even though he hadn’t been at fault. I knew he didn’t say those words lightly.

“And maybe you can alleviate some of the guilt by giving this kid what he wants, which is just to know you. Right?”

“Right.”

“So I think you say you’re sorry about the loss of his mom, and you wish things had gone down differently, but then maybe just let him talk. Answer his questions.”

“Yeah.” I tipped up my beer, wondering what exactly Mason would ask. What else Andi had told him.

“Anyway, once he gets to know what a dick you are, he’ll probably change his mind and leave you alone.” Jackson laughed as he lifted his beer for a swig.

I told him to fuck off, but I was grateful for his advice. He had two teenage daughters with his wife, Catherine, and he was much better than I was at relationships in general. He was a good husband and father and friend—loyal to a fault, one of those guys who actually deserved all the good things he had in life. But he’d never hesitate to tell you when you were fucking something up, or just mess with you in general if he could.

For example.

“Hey, did that girl ever call you?” he poked.

“What girl?” I knew exactly what girl.

“The one you banged in Manhattan when you were supposed to be on the job.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t on the job anymore, asshole. I was supposed to be on a plane, but my flight was canceled.”

“Sure.” He signaled to the bartender to bring us another round.

“I seriously regret telling you about her.” I didn’t often share personal details, but Jackson had called me out for being distracted after returning from New York, and I’d confessed that I’d met a woman I couldn’t stop thinking about. “Anyway, no, she never called.”

“Huh. Maybe you lost your touch.”

“I didn’t lose my touch.” I rolled my shoulders. “It was just a one-night thing.”

“I thought you said you gave her your business card.”

“I did.”

“So you must have wanted to see her again,” he prodded.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing her again.” I tried to sound casual, as if she hadn’t been starring in my dreams for a month. “But I’ve got other things to worry about.”

“True,” agreed Jackson.

“I don’t really want to make this trip,” I admitted, running a hand over my jaw.

“I know you don’t.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “But I also know what kind of man you are, so you’ll make it anyway.”

Then I’d gone home and lain awake for hours, recalling again how Mason had asked Andi if I was a good person.

And I thought about her response too.

I thought so at the time.