“That won’t bring my mom back.” Paget glared at him, her heart breaking into a million little pieces.
Hearing the tail end of his conversation with Ariana had nearly killed her. She’d raced upstairs and purged some tears in a quick shower. She thought she was going to have to put on some real acting skills when she’d come back down the stairs, but instead, her father’s confessions and finding out more about Boone’s past tossed her into a maze of confusion.
Her heart squeezed. Pain filled her extremities as she glanced between the father she admired and the man she loved.
Life sure had taken some unexpected twists. How could she love Boone? Besides the fact he’d lied to her, he wasn’t her type at all. He was just supposed to be a distraction. Something to get her through this rough time in her life.
And now it turns out he had been responsible for all her problems.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. She snagged the drink Boone had made for her and chugged half of it. A million questions raced through her mind, but she couldn’t pluck one to ask.
“Dad. How long have you known Boone was really William Bone?” She categorized all the information she needed and focused her attention on simple facts. She’d move her way toward the more complex as she filled in the blanks.
“A couple of months,” her father said. “That’s a random and weird question to ask after what he just told us.”
“Just go with it,” she mumbled. “And how long have you known you’ve had cancer?”
“About the same time.”
She turned to Boone. “Did you know he had cancer?”
He shook his head. “Not until just now.”
“Anyone else know who you really are?” she asked.
Boone blinked.
“Who?” she asked.
“Just JB and JD,” Boone said.
“That means the rest of the Whiskey family knows,” she said, letting out a long breath. “Not that I care.” Only she did because it made her and her father look like a pair of idiots, but she’d get over that shame. It could be worse. More people could know about her and Boone.
And that thought brought her right back to the woman he said he loved on the phone earlier.
God, she didn’t want to deal with that and all of this.
But she had to.
“Are you prepared to be totally honest with us?”
“I see no point in lying anymore.” Boone polished off his drink. He pushed himself from the railing and set his glass on the table.
“How can I trust that what you’re saying is the truth now?” Paget crossed her arms.
“I suppose you don’t.” He ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair. “Except I have no reason now to keep anything from you.” He cocked his head as if to dare her to call him out on anything. “And I do need to tell you something important.”
She swallowed her breath. “I’m on the edge of my seat.”
Boone chuckled, but it wasn’t a haha funny laugh. No. It drew more of a sarcastic tone than anything else.
“When Rylee and I divorced and I sold her my half of Bone and White, I wanted to just wash my hands of her and everything she represented.”
Paget opened her mouth, but Boone covered it with his index finger. She slapped it away. “Don’t you dare shush me.”
“Then let me finish.”
“Fine.” She sat down in the chair next to her father.
He reached out and took her hand.
She resisted the urge to yank it away. She was just as pissed at her father as she was at Boone, but she couldn’t afford to stay mad at him for very long because her father would soon be taken from her too early.
Just like her mother.
And while she couldn’t blame Boone for that fact, she could forever remain angry and resentful for his lies and for making her the other woman.
Something she couldn’t tolerate and something her father would break out the gun over.
She laced her fingers around her father’s. Confronting Boone with her father at her side might be fun.
“But before you express yourself, I have a question.” She lifted her chin, letting the sun smack her face.
“What’s that?” Boone asked.
“Does Ariana know about me?”
“Of course she does,” Boone said with narrowed eyes. “But how do you know about her?”
Paget coughed. That wasn’t close to the response she expected. “Excuse me? Your girlfriend or whoever doesn’t have a problem with you being with me?”
“Girlfriend?” Boone tossed his head back and laughed. “I can’t wait to tell Ariana’s husband you said that.”
“Husband?”
“Yes. She’s married to one of my best friends,” Boone said. “How on earth did you uncover her name?”
“I overheard you talking to her when I came home.” She raised her hand and bit down on her thumbnail.
Her father pushed her finger out of her mouth. “Don’t do that. Your mother hated it about as much as she hated us keeping secrets, and it seems the three of us have been keeping a lot of important details from one another that if we’d just been honest, could have saved us all a little bit of angst.”
“Speak for yourself, Dad,” she mumbled. “Now, go ahead and get off your chest whatever it is you need to, Boone. And then leave us alone. For good. We don’t need or want your help.”
“Hey. Like you said, I should speak for myself, and I for one want him around. I’d rather Boone was here doing stuff around the house than a perfect stranger. If I have to be indebted to anyone, I want it to be someone I know, value, and respect.”
“I don’t know how the hell you can respect a man—”
“I’ll let you tear me down all you want after I tell you what I’ve done.” Boone blocked the sun with his body. “I used to think if could just build another company and go about finding ways to help people the way I always wanted, but anonymously and just forget about Rylee, that the past would right itself. But life doesn’t work that way, and I know that now. And I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. I won’t let Rylee get away with making a profit on selling people bullshit.”
“She killed people,” Paget said. “And you’re wasting our time. Please get to the fucking point.”
Boone nodded. “I need to find a batch of supplements made before your mom’s death and compare it to the last batch Rylee made before she took the product off the market. Or, I need to see if I can get a judge to exhume a couple of bodies and let an independent lab run some tests.”
“My mom was cremated so—”
Her father grabbed her arm. “I kept the supplements.”
“You did what?” Boone dropped to his knees in front of Henry. “How many?”
“I have an entire five hundred count jar,” Henry said.
“Daddy, why would you keep them?”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t seem to throw them away,” her father said.
Boone smiled and cupped Henry’s face. “Where are they, old man?”
“I put them in a shoebox with some of my memorabilia stuff in my chest in my bedroom.”
“May I go get them?”