Texas Redeemed Read Online Free Page B

want to see him. Ever.”
    “Who’s here …?”
    And the words fragmented on Valerie’s tongue.
    The man she’d spent years searching for stood at the end
of the hall. She clutched her daughter tighter, her eyes drinking in the sight
of Peyton Turner.
    He seemed rougher, almost dangerous, and impossibly sexy.
Jaw tight, lips set in a grim line, he stared hard into her eyes in silent
interrogation.
    Sensing that the ambiance had shifted, Lucy scooted to
Valerie’s side and frowned at Peyton as he approached. “Go away.”
    “Valerie.” His voice was an intimate touch, sliding
beneath her clothes, claiming her body, seducing her soul. His very presence
stripped away anger and fear, baring her to him and making her want to know if
she had the same devastating effect on him.
    She needed to
know. Drawn into the inferno she found in his gaze, she reached out a hand to
him.
    “No!” Lucy protested, jerking her back. “D-don’t go to
him.” Then, hiccupping, she said to Peyton, “You don’t g-get to talk to her. Or
me. You were never h-here for us before, and we don’t w-want you here now.” She
turned teary eyes to Valerie, her body shuddering with hiccups and sobs. “He
w-was in the library asking a-about Anna’s foundation.”
    “Tell me, Valerie.” His words were laced with
desperation. “I need to hear it from you.”
    Over the years she’d fantasized about what she would say
to him if this moment ever came. But those thoughts danced away like ghosts in
the night, and there was only the raw truth. “Anna’s your daughter, Peyton.
Yours and mine. And so is Lucy.”

CHAPTER TWO
    T HE REALITY OF it all sank deep into
Peyton like a hot, sharp blade—painless for that first nanosecond, then
excruciating, shocking. It floored him, and how could he have thought that it
wouldn’t? He’d demanded the truth from Valerie and there it was. There she was. His daughter.
    “My daughter,” he said, then regretted it once Lucy’s
eyes narrowed. Yeah, I get it, he
wanted to respond. You don’t want me to
stake a claim on you.
    He flicked his gaze about the hallway—from the polished
toes of his Italian shoes to the pendant lights affixed to the ceiling to the
janitor emerging from the public restroom with a cleaning cart in tow. Anything
to avoid staring at Valerie. He’d gotten one full look at her when he’d found
her holding Lucy and had hoarded in his memory every detail of her
appearance—lithe-as-a-cat body, tousled dark hair, olive complexion with
freckles dusted across her nose, serious brown eyes holding panic and surprise,
and a scar halfway between her temple and left eye. Now he wanted answers, and
looking at her would only take him in a direction he didn’t want to go.
    “The plaque in the children’s library … the foundation …
Anna.” He stumbled over the words, suddenly inarticulate, confused and so damn
frustrated with his inability to bounce back from a punch to the gut like this.
“Please. Tell me about—”
    “No.”
    The single word had Peyton snapping his head up and
pinning Valerie with a glare.
    “No, we can’t talk here,” she said evenly, her solid
push-me-and-I’ll-push-you-back tone a contrast to the uncertainty in her
expression. “I was in the middle of a board meeting in there.” She indicated
the mahogany double doors a few feet down the hall. “Give me a minute to say my
goodbyes.”
    He watched her turn and stride to the boardroom with Lucy
not far behind. The girl waited outside the door with her back to him, a
deliberate message to back off. He
could respect her space and could even understand her distrust of a man who was
practically a stranger, but it left him feeling cold to be shooed away from the
family he didn’t know he had. And it cut to the bone that he would never get
even this close to Anna.
    “I didn’t know about you.” He’d almost spoken her name.
Still, it was apparent from the slight turn of her head and the abrupt way she
crossed her