PROLOGUE
JENSEN
ONE MONTH PRIOR
My hands strangle the steering wheel, the adrenaline coursing through me making it feel like I’m vibrating as I sit in the parking lot of the courthouse.
I have a daughter.
The words ricochet around my mind like a pinball in a maze. The first test had been a formality, but standing in an open courtroom, my neck heating from the implications of having fathered a child I knew nothing about, had opened the floodgate of emotions I’d held in check.
I wasn’t there when she was born.
I didn’t change her first diaper.
I don’t even know her name.
How much have I missed?
I don’t bother choking back the sob that is ripped from my throat at being informed that the woman I’d been with had passed away after giving life to our child.
Our daughter.
She didn’t know my name and I didn’t know hers, and we’d parted ways after a single night together. Guilt threatens to rip me apart at the knowledge that she’d been alone.
Alone during the pregnancy.
Alone during the birth of our daughter.
Alone when her life had slipped away shortly thereafter.
The details I’d received had been minimal, but just thinking about what she must have gone through has bile creeping up my throat.
I grip the wheel harder, my eyelids squeezing shut as I try to breathe through the onslaught of emotion. Grief, anger, confusion, and devastation don’t scratch the surface of the war battling inside me.
Her name was Scarlett Hart.
Memories of being served with that initial paternity test assault me. The order on behalf of her estate.
I hadn’t recognized her name.
But the math had been easy to do and that realization had me sick all over again.
One minute a guy is laughing and joking with his friends and the next his heart is hammering, holding a sealed envelope, the words you’ve been served echoing in his head. I watched as the taillights of the dark sedan faded from view, not daring to breathe because even though I’d been served before, I knew in the depths of my soul that this was different.
This wasn’t business for the sheriff’s department.
This was for me.
I remember how the envelope crinkled in my hand as I staggered back a step, my ass unceremoniously knocking into the hood of my cruiser.
I’d had an audience that day, reading the words surrounded by my friends—my chosen family—but today I’d opted to come alone.
It was a mistake, one illustrated by the way sweat soaked through the fabric of my dress shirt, my suit coat, and tie thrown unceremoniously in the passenger seat after I thought I might pass out.
Today, I’m not Sheriff Kade, youngest sheriff in the county’s history.
Today, I’m Jensen Wayne Kade with a list of phone numbers and appointments for home visits and supervised visitation to ensure I’m fit to care for my child.
