Hell. “Did Hayden run away?” he asked, going with one of those possibilities. “Do I need to go looking for her?”
Lily still didn’t answer. She merely patted the porch again and kept her attention nailed to him while he sank down.
“The note wasn’t for Hayden,” she said. “It was for Eli.”
Jonas was certain he blinked, and his mind went blank for a moment as he tried to process that. Then it hit him. Hit him hard, not like a gut punch but a lead-footed kick right in the balls.
“Shit,” Jonas managed to say, though it did take him a couple of seconds just to drag some air into his lungs so he could speak.
“Yes,” Lily agreed. She took his hand, clamping it into hers. “I called the number on the note last night. I expected Cam to answer, but it was this guy named Wade Bentley.”
Jonas didn’t have enough breath to repeat the guy’s name aloud, but it meant nothing to him. He’d certainly never heard Maddie mention him by name. Then again, Maddie had never told him who Eli’s bio father was.
“Wade Bentley claimed that Eli is his son,” Lily finished, and she squeezed his hand even harder. “Is he?”
Jonas had to shake his head. “Maybe,” he settled for saying.
But he immediately had to mentally amend that. Even though Maddie had never said who’d gotten her pregnant, she’d had a child. So, there was a bio father out there, and this guy must have believed he was the one. And that was when the words in the message flashed through his head.
It’s time you hear the truth. Call me. Love, Dad.
“Shit,” Jonas repeated, and rather than risk spilling hot coffee on his crotch, he set his cup aside, eased his other hand from Lily’s so he could scrub them over his face. And he released the loud groan that was piling up in his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Lily muttered.
That wasn’t just lip service. In a way, Lily and he were family, and had Griff been alive, she would have no doubt been his sister-in-law. Still, Jonas figured her empathy went deeper than that. Once Hayden learned the truth about her dad, it could tear Lily and her apart. The same could happen to Jonas if this guy was truly Eli’s father.
Jonas let out another of those groans, and then he tried to shove away some of the emotion so he could think this through. Best to start by getting as many facts as possible. Including the big fact. What the hell did this man want?
“Tell me about the conversation you had with this guy,” Jonas insisted. “Why did he leave the note in the mailbox?”
“We didn’t talk long,” Lily readily explained. “And he said he left the note because he thought Eli and he should talk before he visited him.”
That was another kick to the balls. A visit. Hell. Of course the man would want that, but Jonas wasn’t sure how either Eli or he would handle it.
“Bentley finished the conversation by telling me to give Eli the note,” Lily explained. She reached in her jeans pocket, extracted said note and handed it to him. “He insisted that Eli needed to hear what he had to say.”
Jonas did some more repeating of shit and hell. The man wouldn’t be satisfied with just a conversation and a visit. No, there was the whole “it’s time you knew the truth” part that he’d written in the damn note.
A truth that would probably smear the hell out of Maddie. And since Maddie was dead, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself.
But Jonas sure as hell could do that.
“The few times Maddie mentioned the birth father to me, she said they were better off without him,” Jonas stated. “That tells me he’s a son of a bitch. Or at least he was fourteen-plus years ago.”
It twisted at his gut even more to think that the SOB could have changed. Changed enough to be worthy of Eli hearing him out and forgiving him for not being a part of his life. Because if Eli bought into that, then he would also have to buy into that so-called “truth” that could hurt Maddie from beyond the grave.
Could hurt Jonas, too.
Except it would be a hell of a lot more than hurt. It would be the worst kind of heart crushing. It would feel as if he could lose the only part of Maddie that he had left. Added to that, it felt as if he’d be letting Maddie down since he’d made a deathbed promise to her to take care of the son they’d raised together.
“I googled this guy,” Lily added a moment later.
Jonas whipped his gaze to her, and he was hoping he saw something in her eyes or expression to indicate this Wade Bentley was a lying sack of shit that Jonas would need to keep far, far away from Eli. But Jonas saw just the opposite.
“Wade Bentley is a doctor. A pediatrician,” she explained. “He has a practice in San Antonio.”
San Antonio was only a half hour’s drive from Last Ride. Too damn close. Then again, any place on the planet suddenly felt too close. Then there was his profession. Jonas had been hoping the guy would be less than stellar. And maybe he was. But if Bentley had a medical practice, then he was likely doing something right. Now, anyway. That didn’t account for how he’d been with Maddie and how badly he’d treated her to make her want to cut him out of their life.
“He’s thirty-eight,” Lily went on, obviously recalling the details of what she’d learned since she wasn’t reading from notes. “Same age as you. No criminal record that I could find, but I asked Azzie to take a look.”
Good, because if there was something to find, Deputy Azzie Parkman would find it.
“Is he married?” Jonas asked. Because that could play into this as well if his spouse either wanted or didn’t want him to start giving a damn about the son he’d fathered.
Lily shook her head. “Divorced. For about ten years now, and he was involved with a few women since then. He has a couple of social media pages, and he currently doesn’t seem to have a partner or significant other. No other kids either.”
That could explain why the man suddenly wanted to see Eli. Bentley might be searching for something missing in his life. Then again, Jonas didn’t have a partner or significant other either, and he wasn’t looking to make any changes.
At the exact moment that thought went through his head, Lily looked up at him, and their gazes collided. She obviously wasn’t prepared for the intense eye contact. Obviously wasn’t prepared for the kick of...well, whatever the hell it was...because she had a “deer caught in the headlights” moment before she shut off the intensity and glanced away.
Jonas couldn’t quite force himself to tear his gaze from her. Which made him stupid. Because he wasn’t so vague about the whatever the hell it was he was feeling. He’d just gotten a slam of lust. It was natural since Lily was an attractive woman.