Crazy Little Thing Called Love

MCD-Chapter Two

"This is great!"

Rebecca stared at me with her big brown eyes, seemingly confused. "Really?"

"Of course!" I pointed toward the television, where the news was broadcasting the footage of the Tennessean girl, staring back at the cameras in bewilderment. "Do you know how much publicity I’m already getting out of this?"

"Brad, I don’t think that’s the point of all this……" Rebecca floundered. "We still don’t know who leaked the information about you having a daughter. I mean, is any of it true?"

"Of course not," I said with a snort. "Have you seen her?" I looked back at the girl on the screen, with her golden brown hair, chestnut eyes, and freckles across her tiny nose and cheeks. "She looks nothing like me!"

"But if she is you daughter….."

"I’m telling you, it’s impossible!" I laughed. "Can you see me as a father? I can’t! I don’t want kids, Rebecca. There’s a reason I don’t have any."

Rebecca sat in a chair, taking a deep breath and then sighing loudly. "I know I’ve only been your agent for a few years, but…..I mean, have you seen the woman they’re saying is her mother?"

I snorted again. "No. Why do I care? The woman’s obviously lying. I would never be so careless as to have a kid."

"Really?" Rebecca sifted through the contents of her briefcase and pulled out a photograph. "Do you recognize her?"

I rolled my eyes and took the picture. "It’s no secret I’ve been with a lotta women. Just because it’s on camera doesn’t mean that…."

"Her name’s Natalie Thornton," Rebecca droned on as I studied that picture. "Are you sure you don’t recognize her?"

It was amazing I hadn’t seen it in her daughter, but there she was. The one that got away. The woman I had spent years trying to forget. She had the same golden brown hair, but what the cameras didn’t catch was how impossibly green those eyes of hers were. It’d been years since I’d seen that face. Seeing her now, even in an old photo, made my blood run cold.

"You do know her…….don’t you?"

I nodded slowly. "She was Nat Baker when I knew her."

Rebecca leaped out of her seat in excitement. She could see it all over my face, how much that piece of paper affected me. "Oh my God! You were in love with her! How’d you two meet? How long did you know eachother?" she demanded, sounding just like the reporters that morning.

I didn’t answer her right away. My mind was somewhere else entirely. Back in the past. The way she laughed, throwing her head back obnoxiously and snorting like a piglet. The way her eyes lit up when she tried to be sly. And that smile. God. Those lips would absolutely taunt you the way they pulled back and turned at the corners, creating dimples rarely seen. She had a movie star’s smile, even though she was just an ordinary woman.

But she had never been ordinary to me. Not ever.

"We grew up together," I murmured, and that hole in my heart began opening up again. I hadn’t felt that kind of pain in eighteen years. It had me gasping for breath.

Sensing this, Rebecca quietly left the room, leaving me to my past and staring at a photograph of the only woman I had ever loved.

And then it dawned on me.

Natalie would never lie to get attention. So that could only mean one thing…..Either the media was stirring around the rumor mill and digging up my past or….