If Love Had A Price

Kris had never noticed how loud clocks were.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

She fisted her hands, resisting the urge to punch the library’s stately grandfather clock in its noisy, ticking face. If she did that, the only sound left would be silence—heavy, oppressive silence, the kind filled with secrets and things best left unspoken.

Too bad Kris had never cared much for the way things should be left, best or not. She’d lived a lie her entire life, and she wanted the truth—the entire truth—right now.

“How did you find me?” Her sharp question severed the thick wordlessness between herself and Gemma. She frowned before shaking her head and clarifying her question. “At Alchemy. You were always there. Was it a coincidence or did you know I’d be there?”

Gemma twisted her hands in her lap, looking like a nervous schoolgirl. There were echoes of Kris in her features—the eyes, the slant of her cheekbones, the shape of her nose. Now that Kris knew they were biologically mother and daughter, she couldn’t believe she’d never noticed the resemblance before.

Inanely, she realized her father hadn’t lied when he’d told her growing up that he and her mother had been a love match, except said mother wasn’t the woman Kris thought she was. Literally.

“I knew.” It came out as a whisper. Gemma coughed and said in a clearer voice, “After I received Mariana’s letter, I heeded her wishes and left you and your father alone. I wanted to keep an eye on you from afar, just to see how you were doing and—and feel like I was part of your life, in a way—but I resisted. I was afraid if I saw you, I would give in to the temptation to talk to you. I was selfish, running away from my family like that and putting them through the grief of thinking I was dead, even if I thought it was justified, and I considered not knowing you my penance. You already had a mother, I thought. You didn’t need me. Until…”

Kris’s pulse thrummed in warning. “Until what?”

“Mariana came to see me,” Gemma said. “Three years ago.”

The blood rushed to Kris’s face. Three years ago. Her mother, or the woman she’d thought was her mother, had been alive all this time and, apparently, well enough to seek out her sister. Even if Mariana wasn’t Kris’s biological mom, she was family. She’d promised to look after Kris and had raised her for the first two years of her life—until she’d abandoned her. Not only that, she’d warned Gemma to stay away, ensuring Kris would grow up without a mother figure.

Kris hated a lot of things—waiting in line, cheap knockoffs, assholes who cut her off on the freeway, serial killers and rapists—but in that moment, she’d never hated anyone as much as she hated Mariana.

“What did she say?” Kris sounded wooden to her own ears.

“She was sick. Cancer. When she sought me out, she was on borrowed time and she wanted to make amends.” Gemma’s gaze dropped, her eyes suspiciously watery. “Kris, your mother—your aunt—Mariana—” She stumbled over the phrasing, apparently unsure how to refer to Kris’s relationship with Mariana now that the truth was out. She wasn’t the only one. “You have to understand, she wasn’t a bad person. She was my sister, and I loved her. But she could be…selfish. Entitled. She was the greatest beauty in our town, and everyone did whatever she asked because she was so beautiful and smart and charming. The only time she didn’t get what she wanted was when it came to love. She was in love with Antonio, the local fisherman’s son, but she couldn’t be with him, because she was promised to Roger. It was her one unselfish act, giving up the love of her life to be with your father for our mother’s sake. She knew Roger didn’t love her either, and that made things worse. It stung her pride. The one thing Mariana held in higher esteem than anything else was her pride. When she lost her baby—the one thing she had left that was hers and Antonio’s—and found out her husband had a baby with her sister…well, she was furious.”

Gemma’s face twisted with grief, regret, and sorrow. “I don’t blame her for her anger. I never did. She was right to be upset, and I was so grateful she agreed to raise you as her own. You deserved a healthy, whole family, and I thought that was what you were getting. But Mariana…” She hesitated. “She never got over the fact that you weren’t really her baby. When she came to see me years ago, she admitted that every time she looked at you, she was reminded of Roger’s and my affair. But for all her anger, she was loyal to me. She thought I was dead, and she pushed aside her hurt out of respect for my memory. Once I contacted her, though, all that anger came rushing back. I saw hints of it even during our first reunion. She was furious. With the situation and especially with me, for living life on my terms, free of cares and responsibilities. It wasn’t true, but that was what she thought, and she resented me for it. She wanted me to pay, which was why she sent me that letter, alleging Roger wanted nothing to do with me. She also couldn’t stay. She said she couldn’t bear pretending to be in a happy family any longer, not when every day with you and your father reminded her of what she’d lost. So she left. It was a punishment for those she’d felt had wronged her.”

“Including me.” Kris curled her hands into fists until her nails dug into her palms. She couldn’t breathe, her brain spinning with a velocity that stole the oxygen from her lungs. It was too much. A lifetime’s worth of secrets and revelations dumped on her in the space of forty-eight hours—and that wasn’t counting her conversation with her father earlier, when he’d explained why he had gone looking for her at Alchemy and why Gloria wasn’t around.

“No. Not you.” Gemma looked horrified. “Me and Roger. We were the ones who’d wronged her. You were just a baby.”

“One she couldn’t stand.” Kris set her jaw. “But you and Daddy weren’t the only ones in the wrong. She’d cheated, too. She had a baby with another man.”

“We couldn’t blame her for that,” Gemma said, her eyes heavy with guilt. With penance. “The three of us, we all wronged each other in our own ways, but ultimately, we loved people we shouldn’t have loved.”

“She didn’t do what she did out of love. She did it out of spite.” Kris hadn’t known Mariana, not really. She’d built the woman up in her mind all these years because she figured there had to be a good reason why she’d abandoned her family. Perhaps Mariana had been kidnapped or suffered an accident that caused amnesia. The timing didn’t quite make sense, but a daughter would grasp onto anything that painted her mother in a good light.

“She did,” Gemma said honestly. “I won’t lie and say what she did—abandoning you and Roger like that without a word—wasn’t selfish and hurtful beyond measure. She ran away instead of dealing with her issues, and she took her anger out on an innocent child. She created a new life for herself in New Orleans, under a new name, with no thought to the lives she’d left behind. But this wasn’t so different from what I did, and when she asked for my forgiveness, I gave it to her.”

Kris noticed Gemma spoke of her sister in the past tense. She knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Did she beat the cancer?”

The grief deepened and etched itself into the contours of Gemma’s face. “No. She died six months after we met. She’d planned on visiting you and Roger too, but I think she thought what she did was beyond redemption. Plus, her condition deteriorated rapidly, and she became too sick to travel.”

“So you knew the truth for years and you didn’t say a word.” Bright, piercing hurt flared in Kris’s chest. “If you hadn’t run into my dad at the cafe, I would’ve never found out the truth. I’m your daughter. Your biological daughter.” She blinked back the moisture gathering in her eyes. “How could you stay away for so long?” Didn’t you know how much I needed a mom?

Kris had thought she’d outgrown the need for a mother after she turned eighteen, but in reality, no one ever outgrew their need for a mother.

“Oh, honey.” Tears welled up in Gemma’s eyes and she rushed to embrace Kris, who instinctively turned away, torn between twin desires to throw herself into her mother’s arms and to make her suffer the way she’d suffered the past twenty-one years.

Gemma fell back, but the tears tracked down her face without abandon. “You’re right. I’m sorry. To tell you the truth, I was terrified of showing up after so long. I wasn’t sure how you or your father would react, and a part of me wanted to hold on to fantasies of what could be instead of deal with the reality of what would be. That was on me, and I am so sorry. But I did hire a private investigator to check up on you.” She bit her lip. “That sounds creepy, but I wanted to make sure you were okay. I found out your father started dating a woman named Gloria, that you’d gone abroad to Shanghai for a year, and that you would be in L.A. for the summer. He told me you stopped in Alchemy a lot, so I started showing up, hoping to run into you. Trying to figure out what I’d say once I did, especially with your father getting married soon.”

Gemma drew in a deep breath. “I was going to tell you, I swear. But your father showed up and, well.” A helpless shrug. “It wasn’t how I wanted to break it to you, but I’m not sorry you know. Like you said, I should’ve reached out a long time ago.”

Kris stared at the grandfather clock, taking in its elaborately carved, reeded columns and polished-brass pendulum while she debated where to go from here. She was furious at everyone—at Mariana, for being so selfish and vindictive; at her father, for lying all these years about her real mother; at Gemma, for not reaching out sooner—but they’d already wasted decades. Did she want to waste more time being upset over the past?

If this had happened at the beginning of the summer, she would’ve thrown a tantrum and given her father and Gemma the cold shoulder for weeks, if not months. But now, after everything that had happened—after meeting Nate and realizing the importance of every second spent together—she couldn’t bring herself to lash out.

It would take her time to digest everything, and she wasn’t ready to call Gemma “Mom” yet, but she was willing to give her a chance. See where it went.

“My dad isn’t getting married to Gloria,” Kris said. “Ever.”

Gemma’s brows lowered. “But I thought—this November—”

“He ended it the day he came to the cafe.” Satisfaction blossomed in Kris’s stomach, as beautiful and long-awaited as a night-blooming flower. The sudden death of her father’s relationship with Gloria was the one unequivocally bright spot in this tangled mess. “He found out she was cheating on him.”

Kris thought Gloria was smart enough not to carry on an affair right under Roger’s nose, especially before she’d sealed the matrimonial deal. Apparently, she’d overestimated the Stepmonster’s intelligence.

According to Roger, he’d found a burner phone filled with explicit texts and pictures between Gloria and her personal trainer. The Stepmonster had denied it, but the proof was in the pudding: she’d been cheating on Roger for at least a month.

Roger, who’d already been suspicious after Kris’s claims and who had not appreciated Gloria’s lack of concern over her soon-to-be stepdaughter’s welfare over the past few days, had dumped her on the spot. He’d gotten Kris’s whereabouts from Teague and showed up at Alchemy to apologize, only to run into Gemma.

The rest was history.

“Oh.” Gemma sucked in a breath. “Oh.”

“Didn’t your P.I. tell you?”

“I—no,” the other woman said, looking dazed. “I ended our contract after I came to L.A. and saw you for the first time. I wanted to get to know you myself, not get the information secondhand.”

Kris swallowed the lump in her throat. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “We could have a real coffee date next week and…start the whole ‘getting to each other’ process?”

It would take time to heal the wounds of the past, but Kris was going to focus on the present and future instead of bygones. There was no use dwelling on things she couldn’t change.

Gemma’s eyes shimmered as her mouth curved up into a hopeful smile. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”