“But you got amnesia,” Aidan interjected with a flat, disbelieving tone.
“Yes. My phone was crushed in the accident, so I lost any new data since my last backup, which probably included your number. Any memories or traces of our time together were erased from my life.” Well, most of them. One huge daily reminder remained—she just hadn’t realized the significance of it until now.
“That’s all very convenient.”
Violet didn’t like his tone. “Are you suggesting that I’m lying about all of this?”
Aidan just shrugged. “It’s just a pretty big pill to swallow, that’s all.”
“I assure you that if all I wanted was to discontinue our...” What was it, exactly? Relationship? Affair? Hookup? “Time together, I would’ve had no problem just saying so. There’s no need to make up a story about amnesia and broken phones just to get out of seeing you again.”
“So you did want to see me again.” It was a statement, not a question. His subdued grin was unnerving, making her muscles tense and her stomach flip. He seemed to like having that effect on her.
Violet wasn’t entirely sure she minded it, either. She couldn’t remember another man being able to make her stomach flutter with just a glance. Without a touch, with just the memory of a touch, she felt her resolve crumbling beneath her. She wouldn’t tell him the truth, but the nights they’d spent together had been the best she’d ever had. He’d mastered her body almost instantly, playing her like a violin until she nearly made herself hoarse screaming out his name. How could she ever have forgotten it?
“I did,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.
She followed his gaze as it flickered over to her bare left hand. For months, she’d worn Beau’s engagement ring. Now the tan line had faded and she’d lost the strange sensation that going without it caused.
“And what about now?”
That was a dangerous question. Spending a weekend with Aidan was one thing, but now...everything had changed. It just wasn’t that simple any longer.
“Now isn’t relevant,” she said, avoiding the answer.
“The hell it isn’t!” Aidan stood up from his seat and rounded her desk. He leaned over her, planting his hands on the arms of her chair. He was close without touching her, his warm scent invading her space even as he hovered at the edge of it.
Violet’s breath caught in her throat. The large, hulking figure of manhood was so close, tempting her to reach out and close the gap he’d left. The last few months had been scary and lonely. She was tempted to give in to her attraction to him again and let him remind her of everything she’d missed.
“I’ve spent almost a year and a half wondering what happened to you, Violet. Even when I didn’t want to think about you, when I wanted to just move on, the vision of your naked body writhing beneath mine would creep into my head and derail my thoughts.” He paused, his gaze flicking over her body then returning to her face. “Now you show back up in my life with this wild story and your big doe eyes and you tell me that your attraction to me isn’t relevant?”
How could she explain that things were more complicated than just whether or not she was attracted to him? There were more factors at play, things she needed to tell him, stuff that went beyond her work at the foundation.
Aidan leaned in farther, pausing when their lips were a fraction of an inch apart. Violet’s heart was pounding in her chest, her lungs burning with the rapid breaths she was taking. Each one drew his scent into her lungs, reminding her of burying her face in his neck and snuggling into the pillows that smelled like him. He was so close. If she moved, they would be kissing and if she was honest with herself, it took everything she had to stay still.
“Say it,” he demanded.
Violet couldn’t turn away from his commanding gaze. When he looked at her that way, she’d do anything he wanted. But this wouldn’t be just a simple admission of attraction. “Aidan...”
“Say it.”
She swallowed hard. “Okay, fine. Yes, I’m still attracted to you. Does that make you happy?”
He narrowed his gaze and eased back from her. “Not really. I’ve never met a woman who fought her desires so strongly. You don’t want to want me at all. Is it because I’m a bartender and not some flashy investment banker like your boyfriend?”
Violet flinched. That wasn’t the reason, but it certainly didn’t help their situation. She didn’t need a man’s money—she was a billionaire in her own right—but she had made a habit of dating wealthy men in the past. It made her feel less like a prize to be won, a lottery ticket to change a man’s fortune forever. Although they were rarely discussed, there were plenty of male gold-diggers in the world, too.
“No,” Violet argued. “It’s not about that. And anyway, he’s my ex-boyfriend. Listen, there’s something we need to talk about.” She pressed her hand to his chest, hoping to get some breathing room, but he didn’t budge. All she ended up doing was getting a handful of his hard muscles beneath his dress shirt. “Please have a seat so we can talk for a minute.”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t even move. She realized then that his attention had shifted to something over her shoulder.
“Aidan?” Was he even listening to her?
Violet turned and followed Aidan’s gaze to the framed photograph on her desk. It was the only picture of Knox she kept in the office, and now she regretted even having this one here. Everyone who saw it asked about the cherubic baby with the bright red curls and big blue eyes. Apparently it had caught his attention as well, but not just because her son was adorable. The similarities were impossible to ignore, a fact that had nearly blown her over when the memories of their time together hit her all at once. At last, the final, crucial puzzle piece had fallen into place.
The panic was evident by his big eyes and slack jaw. He knew what the photo meant. There was no need to do math or conduct a paternity test for him to understand the truth. Finally, he turned back to her and swallowed hard. “Is that your baby?”
She nodded and he stood upright, leaving her personal space and making her suddenly feel cold without him. “Yes. That’s Lennox, my son. He’s almost six months old.”
“Lennox,” he repeated, as though he were trying to get used to the sound of the name.
“I call him Knox for short. He’s amazing. So smart, so loving. I’ve truly been blessed as a mother.”
Aidan turned back to the photo, the unasked question hanging on his lips.
“And yes,” Violet began, with a mix of relief and apprehension climbing up the back of her throat. How long had she worried she would never get to say these words to someone? That she might never know the truth about Knox? Now in the moment, she wasn’t even sure she could get the words out. She gripped the arms of her chair to steady herself and looked up into the familiar sky-blue eyes of the near-stranger standing in front of her.
“I’m pretty sure that he’s...your son.”
Two
“My son?”
Her words were like a swift kick to his gut. Aidan had known—known from the moment he’d laid eyes on the baby in the picture—that it was his, but hearing it aloud carried an impact he didn’t expect.
“Yes. I’m sorry this is how you had to find out. Please sit down so we can talk about this.”
Aidan reluctantly pulled away and returned to his seat. It was better that he sit, anyway, before his legs failed him and he had no choice. His mind was spinning with thoughts he couldn’t grab ahold of. He’d come here to apply for money to start a halfway house and had managed, instead, to get a son. A son named Knox. A son he’d never met before.
The thought made his stomach twist into knots. He’d always wanted a family of his own when the time came. He’d wanted a chance to be a better father than his own had been, to prove that he was better than his alcoholic, waste-of-space dad. He knew that when he de
cided to get married and start a family, he would dedicate his world to them, because that was the way it should be.
But instead, he’d just found out his son was six months old and he’d missed everything so far. He would remedy that, and soon. He wasn’t sure what Violet had in mind, but he would be a father to Knox. He would take him to Yankees games, be there for every T-ball tryout and parent-teacher conference.
“Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?” He was surprised at how cold his own voice sounded, but he was choking back a sea of emotions. It was better to show none at all than to let them rush out of him all at once.
Violet’s expression twisted in irritation. “You’re really asking me that?”
Apparently she was going to stick fast to her amnesia story. He didn’t really buy it, but he’d go along with it for now. “So I guess you’re saying since you forgot we slept together, you forgot I was the father?”
She slid her chair closer to the desk and folded her neatly manicured hands over the leather and parchment blotter. Her brow furrowed as she seemed to search for her words. “The way you say it sounds so convenient, as though I haven’t spent the last six months of my life agonizing over the fact that I had no idea who my baby’s father was.”
“Who did you think it belonged to for the months before that?”
Her gaze dropped down to her desk, avoiding him. “I thought it was Beau’s child—my ex you mentioned before. Since I had no memory of our time together, I had no reason to think otherwise. We got engaged. We planned a wedding and future together. And then the doctor in the delivery room handed him a baby with a full head of curly red hair and the whole room just went into shock.”
Aidan tried not to laugh. He could just picture the scene with everyone wondering where this pasty Irish kid had come from. It would be funny if it hadn’t meant that he’d missed the birth of his first child in the process. “How’d he take that? Not well I’d imagine.”
Violet sighed and looked up at him. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re not together anymore and we know he isn’t Knox’s father. I’ve got the lab results to prove it.”
“What did your parents say?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Did we discuss my parents before?”
It seemed as though Violet didn’t remember their conversation. That probably had more to do with the tequila than her head injury. She’d been pretty upset when she’d strolled into his bar and demanded a shot with tears in her eyes. He’d listened to her story and made it his mission to make her smile again, never imagining that decision would lead them to this point. To a child.
“Not at length,” he explained. “Only that they were pushing you to be with this guy even though he was a grade-A jerk. I can imagine having another man’s baby was a disappointment for them after thinking you two were going to get married and they’d get their way.”
“Well, yes, but not as much of a disappointment as having an unknown man’s baby. They certainly can’t have their fancy friends and family finding out the truth. They’d be much happier if I just took Beau back and pretended like Knox belonged to him. I think they’re still telling people that Beau is the father and we’re just having a rough patch. My mother tried to convince me that we had a recessive pale, redheaded gene in our Greek and Israeli heritage.” She shook her head. “I’ve never met one. They’re just grasping at straws.”
“I suppose that means they’re not going to be too happy to find out his real father is a broke Irishman who owns a bar.”
Violet looked at him with an expression of grave seriousness. He could tell the past year had weighed heavily on her mind. If she was telling the truth about forgetting everything, he imagined it would be difficult. The one week you forget ending up being the most important week of your life.
“I’m not worried about them. In the past few months, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and one of the things I’ve discovered is that I’m no longer concerned with what makes my parents happy. My whole life has been about what makes them happy. Now my focus is on myself and my son, where it should be.”
Needing to see it again, Aidan reached out and took the framed portrait from her desk. He ran his finger across the rosy cheeks and bright smile of the child he’d never met. Knox definitely had his coloring, but he had Violet’s almond-shaped eyes and full lips. He had her smile, even though his was toothless at the moment. He imagined their son had an infectious giggle the way babies did. He hoped to hear it in person as soon as possible.
“I would’ve told you,” Violet said in a small voice. He looked up from the photo and searched her dark eyes for the truth of her words. “This isn’t about other people’s opinions or whether or not I wanted you in Knox’s life. If I had known, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you, or to find you again. But I truly didn’t remember until now. That’s why I cried when it all came back at once. It was an overwhelming sense of relief, finally knowing the truth after all these months.”
Aidan sighed and looked back at his son. He wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth, but at the moment it didn’t really matter. If he wanted to see his child, he’d take her at her word and hope for the best. “So now what?” he asked.
Violet tapped her fingers anxiously at the edge of her desk. “Well, I suppose I should start by calling my attorney. He can get the ball rolling on setting up a paternity test, just to be certain, then we can start working on arrangements for visitation and such.”
Only a rich person would start off this process with calling their attorney instead of going for the obvious choice of allowing him to meet his son. Aidan didn’t even have an attorney, much less one on retainer who took his calls whenever he needed him.
Of course, Aidan didn’t have anywhere near the amount of the money he suspected Violet had. The Niarchos Foundation gave away millions of dollars every year to worthy causes, and that was just a small fraction of the family’s fortune. He’d done a little reading about the family when he was looking for places to help with his project. Her grandfather had made a fortune in Greece shipping steel to the United States. When the family came to America, their wealth only grew by leaps and bounds.
Aidan couldn’t imagine how many billions of dollars the Niarchos family empire controlled. They probably just started this foundation so the IRS didn’t eat them alive. He didn’t really like or trust the rich as a rule, but if they were handing out money, he certainly could use some. All he wanted was a small piece to help him kick off his halfway house since every penny he’d saved went into Murphy’s.
He never dreamed the daughter and chair of the foundation would be the woman he remembered from all those nights ago. Or that coming here today would put him on a path to meeting the son he never knew about.
“That’s all well and good,” he said, “and I’m sure it needs to be done, but I was thinking something a little less legally binding to start off with.”
“Like what?” Violet asked.
“Like a playdate with my son.”
* * *
Violet couldn’t shake the anxiety that curled up in her belly. It was one thing to agree to Aidan coming over to her apartment so he could meet Knox; it was another to know he’d arrive any moment.
It had been two days since he’d walked into her office and turned her world upside down. Two days of memories circling in her mind at the most inopportune of times. Memories of the nights she’d spent with Aidan. How he’d held her, how he’d touched her. How he’d made her feel things, both physically and emotionally, that she’d never experienced before.
Losing her memory had at first been an annoyance. When Knox was born, it became an unfortunate complication. Now, knowing how much she’d missed out from her time with Aidan, it had become downright tragic.
How many months had she settled with Beau because she didn’t remember how amazing it was with Aidan? All that time, in the back
of her mind, she’d had a nagging worry. It wasn’t ever something she could put her finger on. Just a feeling that things weren’t right. That Beau was the wrong man for her, despite her having no reason to think otherwise.
Now she knew what her subconscious was trying to tell her all this time. Aidan was the man who had been missing from her life. From Knox’s life. One look into those sky-blue eyes and she’d nearly been knocked off her feet by the power of that realization. How could she have forgotten that hard, stubble-covered jaw, those skilled lips and those strong hands? Even now, she could easily bring to mind the feel of the coarse, auburn chest hair that spread across his firm pecs. The beat of his heart beneath her palm.
The days and nights they’d spent together had been about more than just sex. It was not at all what she expected, going home with a bartender after last call, but they had really connected. He’d been right about that. Knowing he was back in her life both thrilled and scared her. They’d come together on a level she’d never felt with a man before. It had been as though they’d always known each other after just a few short hours. Like her heart would break if she had to be away from him.
Violet craved that connection again after the tumultuous relationship with Beau ending and the months of emotional upheaval and loneliness that followed. And yet, it frightened her. No matter what happened between them, she hoped that Aidan would be in Knox’s life. That was as it should be. But the two of them? Could something that intense maintain itself? Would it eventually consume them?
Even if he was still interested in her—and she wasn’t entirely sure that he was—the attraction would eventually die out. They might be drawn to each other just because they’d had their chance taken away. If it ended poorly, she didn’t want it to impact his relationship with her son. And if she were honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if she could bear the intensity, the passion, and then the crippling grief.
In this situation, it might be better if she kept her distance. Polite. Cordial. Businesslike. After all, they were going to be working together on his grant in addition to raising a child together.
One Unforgettable Weekend (Millionaires 0f Manhattan Book 6) Page 2