I tossed my head back and swallowed half of my bottle of beer before I replied, “I already love Maya like she’s mine. So what in the hell do I do now?”
“Love isn’t about DNA,” he remarked with uncharacteristic candor. “I guess I think a kid can still be yours without having your genes.”
“I’d still love her just as much,” I confessed. “This is more about Skye lying to me in the first place. Hell, she didn’t have to. If she’d shown interest when she got back to Citrus Beach, I’d have dated her. Maybe that makes me a fucking idiot, but I could have fallen for both her and Maya once she’d come back home. She didn’t have to lie.”
“I don’t really see her as a user,” Seth mused. “All she seems to want is a successful business. And you said yourself that she’s been helping you get your shit together for Sinclair Seafood. I’m not defending her, because most likely she did lie. I’m just being honest about what I’ve seen since you two have gotten together. She’s not exactly out spending your money, if that’s what she was really after.”
And if she’d asked, I would have given it to her. Any damn thing she wanted. But Skye has never even hinted that she wanted money.
That observation made everything just that much more complicated. I had no idea what her motives could have been.
I drained my beer. “She has been helping me,” I admitted. “And her business ideas for the restaurant are phenomenal. She even insisted we do the partnership paperwork so my investment was safe.”
“Hard worker. Honest in business. And a good mother. Does it make sense that she’s trying to get something for nothing?” Seth pondered.
“I’ll call the lab in the morning,” I said flatly. “If I have to, I’ll do the test again just to verify the results.”
“Maybe the results are true. Then what are you going to do?” he asked.
“I have no goddamn idea,” I admitted. “I can’t really imagine my life without them anymore. But if I can’t trust Skye, I can’t be with her. Those lies would destroy me. But it’s going to kill me if I don’t have any rights to be a father to Maya.”
“Maybe she was desperate,” Seth suggested. “You did say she had lived in a pretty run-down apartment. What if she just wanted better for her kid?”
“At my expense?” I questioned. “She could have just dated me until I married her.”
As crazy as I was about Skye, it wouldn’t have taken very long for me to suggest she live with me.
“Most parents would do anything to make sure their children can eat. There wasn’t much we weren’t willing to do to keep our family together,” Seth said.
I thought about his words for a moment. Really, I had to admit that family was a pretty good motivator. I knew what it was like to want something better for my siblings. It was the reason I’d busted my ass to see the younger ones get an education. “She could have asked me for help.”
Seth snorted. “After she left you for another guy? I’m pretty sure she wasn’t expecting to get a nice, warm welcome.”
“I would have helped her,” I shared. “I sure as hell wouldn’t have let her and her kid starve, even though she did leave me.”
“I think you need to prepare yourself for either possibility. One: she lied to you because she was desperate, which is the most likely scenario. Two: somebody messed up on the test results.”
I took a deep breath and then let it out. I needed to think rationally. My brother was right about that. But every sensible thought had flown out of my head when I’d looked at those results from the lab. I’d felt like my entire world had just collapsed.
Now, my gut instinct was telling me that Skye wouldn’t lie unless she was somehow backed into a corner. And maybe she had been. Yeah, she was living with me, but she had yet to ask me for a penny for anything she personally wanted. Hell, she hadn’t even accepted anything for Maya. And if I wanted to get honest, I owed her for years of child support if Maya was my biological child. The only reason I’d never paid her for that was because I was under the impression that I’d always be there to take care of her and Maya.
“It doesn’t really matter if Maya doesn’t have my DNA,” I finally told my brother. “I’d be pretty damn proud to call her my daughter.”
“Then talk to Skye and be reasonable,” he answered.
I looked at Seth as a light bulb went on in my head. “You like her.”
He nodded. “I like her because she makes you happy. And so does Maya. And I already know you’re crazy about her. You’ve never hit me before, even though there were times I might have deserved it. Only a guy who’s head over heels does that.”
“You really deserved it this time,” I grumbled. “And I’m not apologizing.”
Seth smirked. “No apologies necessary. Just go patch things up with Skye. Your sad mug is starting to depress me.”
It was probably time for me to head home. I’d been gone a couple of hours now, dumping all my bullshit on Seth. “I’ll talk to her.”
He nodded. “I don’t want you to be with somebody who is going to be a habitual liar, or a woman who isn’t going to put as much emotional energy into the relationship as you are. But I also don’t want you to screw this up twice because you don’t have all the facts. Get all the information before you lose it.”
Was it possible that Skye was so desperate that she’d made stuff up just to house Maya somewhere better? To give her daughter a better life? And if she did, could I really blame her?
“She really acted like it was all a mistake,” I considered as I stood up. “She looked as surprised as I was.”
I was just now getting rational enough to think about her reaction. There had been no guilty expression, or any hesitation when she’d said that Maya was most definitely my daughter.
Seth followed me to the door. “Just listen to her, Aiden. Get her side, and follow your gut until you can get a new test done. Until you know the truth, don’t do something that can never be undone.”
“I plan on it,” I answered. “How are things going with the tree hugger who doesn’t want you to develop the land on the water?”
“Not good,” my brother answered unhappily. “She’s taking legal action to stop it. And since she’s an attorney, she has connections. And she knows how to write some scathing emails. I hate environmentalists.”
I grinned despite my worries because Seth looked so disgruntled. It wasn’t often that anybody really annoyed him.
“You don’t hate your little sister, and she’s a conservationist. And don’t voice your opinion to Jade,” I cautioned him. “She might punch you in the face, too. You know she’d side with your tree hugger.”
“Hopefully this will be over before she gets back,” he replied. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how things worked out.”
I nodded and walked out the door, suddenly eager to straighten out the mystery of why Skye had lied to me, now that I was thinking straight again.
By the time I arrived home, I was considerably more composed than I had been when I’d left my house.