Silas pulled her over to the stone wall off the barn. He sat down and then surprised the hell out of her when he pulled her onto his lap.

“Keep going,” he said.

She took a breath and pressed on. “Our relationship existed only in that shop. Inside the house, I was just a reminder to his wife that her husband had an affair. Their daughter, my half-sister, took her lead from her mother. One of my first weekends at their house, they took Dayana out to dinner for her birthday and left me at the house. They didn’t want word to get out that there was an illegitimate daughter. So I ate clam chowder with Mrs. Briggs, the cook.

“‘He doesn’t belong to you.’ That’s what Dayana’s mother said to me when they walked out the front door.”

“Fucking asshole,” Sy said succinctly.

“I can see it through her lens. I was the product of a betrayal.”

“It wasn’t your fault. And her taking it out on you proves more about her character than yours.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Maggie agreed. “But I was the result.”

“What did your father do about it?” he asked.

Her shoulders hunched. “What could he do? My existence was his penance. He had to provide for me but prove to his wife that I didn’t matter. He couldn’t protect me without further damaging that relationship.”

“That’s bullshit.”

His anger soothed something raw in her. Like aloe on a burn.

“It wasn’t all bad,” she assured him. “I made friends with the staff. Mrs. Briggs used to take me to a fancy farmers market with her on Saturdays, and she’d make a special dessert. Just for me. When I turned sixteen, my father’s driver took me out in the Jaguar and taught me to parallel park downtown. I was so excited and terrified that, to this day, I’m an excellent parallel parker.”

He laughed because she wanted him to, and she appreciated it.

“I went. One weekend every month. Until I turned eighteen. That’s when I decided I didn’t want to have anything to do with him or them. It was a relief for everyone. He paid for my college, at least the years I attended. Something that was hard for me to swallow, but Mom stuck on that. She died when I was twenty-one. A car accident. She had a job she loved finally. With Dad’s financial support, she’d moved us into a little house in a nice neighborhood. But it was only home because she was there.

“When she died, I lost my balance. I dropped out and got married. I tried to replace my mom and my father with Dean.”

“Twenty-one, Mags. Who knows what the hell they’re doing at twenty-one?”

She gave him a smile. “Hardly anyone.”

“And look where you are now.”