She knotted the sheet in her fists. “And how in the hell do you propose to be his father? Your life is six hours away at the Lazy L. Our lives are in Dallas. Letters? Emails? Christmas and birthday presents? Fly him down for weekends? Don’t be a total jerk about this, Mitch,” she said on a sigh. “You’ll only confuse him. He’s too young to understand all this. Can’t you wait until he’s older? We can figure out what to do then.”
She tried to sound reasonable, tried to keep her voice from quivering and alerting him to all the fear and anxiety filling her. Not for one minute did she believe he would just walk away from his child. Her only hope was to delay the inevitable, try to prepare Adam for the news…some day in the future when he was older and could handle it. Only when Adam was older could he understand the reasons behind her decision to not tell his father about him.
“I don’t even know his birthday.” Containing all his ire had drained every drop of his energy. He dropped back into the chair, his head drooped as his fingers threaded through his hair. “I don’t even know my own son’s birthday.” He glared at her. “And whose fault is that?”
“August,” she said in a thin voice. “August fifteen.”
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I will get to know my son, Olivia. You can’t keep me from him.”
She said nothing for a moment, just kept clenching and unclenching the sheet in her fist. “I wanted to involve you. You didn’t want me, didn’t love me. You told me in no uncertain terms that you weren’t ready for marriage. You were going home and I should start seeing other guys. You left and never looked back. You found someone else. Loved someone else. Why would I have assumed you’d welcome me with a baby in my arms? I’m sure your wife wouldn’t have appreciated my arrival on your doorstep with your illegitimate son.”
“We’ll never know, will we? You made that decision for me and for Joanna.”
He spun and paced the room, occasionally pausing to slap a doorframe, or throw his head back and take deep breaths.
She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. He was upset. That much was obvious. She tried to put herself in his shoes, to see the situation from his point of view, but it was so uncomfortable she quickly gave up the exercise. Deep inside, she’d known this day would come. She’d hoped she’d be better prepared. Now she didn’t know if that could have been possible.
“Mitch—” she started, but was stopped when he threw a furious look her way.
He flashed his palm toward her like a stop sign. “Don’t, Olivia. Don’t say another word.” His breaths came in heavy huffs and sighs. “I’m almost speechless. You hated me so much that you kept my son from me?” He gave a snort of derision. “I guess I should be thankful you kept him.”
“How dare you,” she shouted, slapping her palms on the bed. “How dare you begin to suggest I wouldn’t keep him? I love Adam. I loved you.”
“Love?” He spoke the word with derision then shook his head. “You don’t know what love is. No woman who loved a man would keep his child from him.”
Straightening into an upright position, her back rigid against the headboard, she pointed her finger at him. “Let me tell you what love is. Love is being pregnant and not telling the man you adore because you don’t want to screw up his life with another woman. Love is making it on your own when all you want to do is crawl in the bed and die. But you can’t because you have a screaming baby with colic at two in the morning and you have to open your business in two hours and you’ve gotten a total of three hours of sleep in the last twenty-four. But all that is okay because you love your baby. You’ll do anything for him, even protect him from a man he doesn’t know. A man who walked away.”
“Damn it, Olivia! I didn’t know!”
He paced the room like a caged lion, stopped to slam his hand against the door. In the dresser mirror she saw herself flinch. Their gazes met in the mirror. She hated that he saw that flinch. It made her look weak, and she couldn’t afford to show any vulnerability right now. She had to remain strong.
Mitch whipped around and stalked to the edge of her bed. In a voice that was so calm it was frightening, he said, “Here’s what’s going to happen. I am taking you and Adam to my ranch for your recovery.”
No! I can’t spend even more time with you. I can’t!
“No. I—”
He placed a work-roughened finger against her lips. She shut her eyes and stopped talking. Drawing in a breath, she forcibly calmed her racing heart.
“I said…”
She opened her eyes when he paused and met his gaze.
“I said,” he repeated, “I’m taking you two to the Lazy L so I can get to know my son. It’s that, or I’ll call my lawyers and start child-custody proceedings. I’ll do all the required tests to prove Adam is mine, but you and I both know that isn’t necessary. So, unlike what you gave me, I’ll give you a choice. We can all go to my ranch and play nice, or we can all meet in a courtroom. Let me warn you.” He leaned in closer. His eyes were dark and his expression deadly serious. “I don’t play fair when there’s something I want, and I want my child. I’ll use every resource I have to get him. Do you understand? My son will know his father.”
She tightened her lips, refusing to be intimidated by his stand or seduced by his presence.
Her head pounded, from her shouting, his shouting, the damn tile floor at Grayson Mansion. Mitch might be rich as Croesus, but financially she could fight him. She had some money in a trust fund her grandparents had bequeathed, but she’d set that aside as a college fund for Adam. Her family had the deep pockets that could be used to fight a custody suit, though a court battle would cost more than money. Adam’s parentage would be splashed across the newspapers. Mitch—or more likely his team of high-priced lawyers—would fight dirty, would accuse her of neglect or worse. No matter how stable and wonderful her son was, the lawyers could mess with Adam’s mind, destroy his self-confidence.
Adam was her first and only priority. He was her life, the only thing that kept her sane. The only thing that had made her want to live after seeing wedding pictures of Mitch with his new wife, Joanna St. Claire Landry, plastered on every prominent Texas newspaper.
“I have a job, a business to run. I can’t run off to south Texas on a whim, especially for weeks at a time. Be reasonable.”
He stood, stared down at her. The ire in his icy blue eyes made her shiver. “You have a small gym and a married couple to help run it. Hell, they want to buy the place. Of course they’ll take care of it. I have a sixty-thousand-acre ranch and run thousands of head of cattle. Which one of us can be away from the business longer?”
His expression, which had been hard and impersonal, softened. He sat beside her on the bed and sighed, his back releasing some of its rigidity. “You be reasonable. I can’t stay here waiting until you decide it’s now acceptable for me to get to know my son. Whether you listed me on his birth certificate or not, I am his father. I have rights.”
A tear leaked from her eye, the first of many she feared. So much for remaining strong. She nodded and drew in a deep breath. “I know, Mitch. I do. But Adam is my life. I’ll do anything to protect him. I thought giving him Drake’s last name was one way to shelter him from being hurt.”
“You thought I would hurt him? Joanna would hurt him?”
“I didn’t know. You were gone. Someone else’s husband. You’d left me behind. Moved on.” She laughed and wiped a tear. “I do believe my brothers would have strung you up if I’d have let them.”
“Must have been a real kick in the ass to them to see how much Adam looks like me.”
She smiled. “Actually, for me it was like having a piece of you with me every day. Some days, it was almost more than I could take.”
“I’d have never married Joanna if you’d told me, Olivia. I’d have come to you.”
She shook her head. “Maybe, but I didn’t want you on those terms. I didn’t want you to want me because I was pregnant. I told myself that if you’d loved me,
you wouldn’t be marrying another woman. I had to make a life without you for my—our—son.”
He uttered a foul cuss under his breath. “My marriage wasn’t what you think.” He shook his head, a dark curl sliding over his brow. She battled the urge to brush it back.
“Well, I’m here now and I’m not going away, not without getting to know my son.”
She rubbed her eyes and acknowledged her defeat with a nod.
“I suggest you make whatever management arrangements you need to for Jim’s Gym. You and Adam are coming home with me.”
She surrendered because not only did he have a valid point, but she couldn’t see that he’d left her any options. A custody fight would hurt everyone. She could make Adam believe this was a vacation, some place fun to go. He loved going to his Uncle Travis’s ranch, so this would be an exciting trip for him.
Now, if only she could convince herself that learning to live without Mitch after being with him all day, every day, for weeks would be a breeze.
“Mitch, I’ll come and bring Adam, but don’t tell him you’re his father. Not yet. I want him to think we are taking a wonderful trip to visit some new horses. Visiting a new friend. He needs to get to know you.”
He nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. In the meantime, it’ll take me a couple of days to get everything in order to be gone for while. I need to pack for both of us and that’ll be slow. Why don’t you go on home and we’ll come down in a week or so.”
He shook his head. “Not happening, babe. I’m not leaving without Adam.”
She noticed that Adam was his priority. Would he even notice if she wasn’t there but his son was?
“You don’t trust I’ll bring Adam to the Lazy L?”
“I don’t know, Olivia. Once I would have trusted you to do what you say, but now I just don’t know. I want Adam to come home with me.”
She sighed, remembering how stubborn he could be. “Unless you’re planning on driving my old car for a couple of days to get home, I’ll have to get plane tickets, arrange for Nancy or Mark to open and close Jim’s Gym every day. There are lots of things I need to do before we can leave.”
He shook his head again. “Remember when I said I wasn’t leaving immediately after the wedding? I’ve bought a new plane for the ranch. A company rep is flying it up today for the test flight tomorrow. If everything checks out, I’ll take possession. Getting you and Adam to the Lazy L isn’t a problem.”
He stood and handed her a telephone. “Call whoever you need to get the ball rolling. I want you and Adam packed and ready to fly home by Tuesday at the latest. Tomorrow would be even better. I need to go out for a little while. Can you manage for an hour or so?”
“I’ve got a bummed up leg, not a broken back. I’ll be fine. As I told you last night, I’m used to doing for myself.”
He left, then popped his head back around the doorframe. “In case you were wondering, I’m not moving to a hotel. I’ll be staying here until we leave.”
The door banged as he stormed from her house. Her life, her perfect life, would never be the same. God only knew what the future held.
The house was so quiet she could have heard a feather land on the carpet. No air conditioner cutting on and off. No refrigerator humming. No laughing squeal of a little boy. The only sound was her heart pounding in her ears like a bass drum.
She’d never meant to hurt Mitch, or her son. Guilt ate at the lining of her stomach. At the time, she’d done what she’d thought best for everyone. Okay, no use crying over spilt milk. Done’s done and all that.
She lifted the receiver from the phone Mitch had set on her mattress and dialed a familiar number. “Hi, Mom,” she said as soon as the phone was answered. “I need a little help here.”
Once she’d finished talking to her mother, she called Drake, and then her lawyer.
As Mitch closed Olivia’s front door the line, “Honey. I’m home,” sprang to mind. With the old Olivia, he’d have yelled that and she’d have thrown herself into his arms. Now he figured she’d throw something at his head. He dropped her car keys on the entry table.
“Hello, Mitchell.”
He turned toward the voice, raising his gaze to the top of the stairs.
“Hello, Jackie.”
Olivia’s mother lifted two suitcases. “Give me hand, will you?”
Mitch met Jackie Montgomery halfway down the stairs and took both luggage pieces. The weight suggested they were packed but neither was very heavy.
“Adam’s clothes,” she explained as they made their way down the stairs.
Mitch glanced at his watch. Four p.m. “Is he home yet?”
Jackie shook her head. “Not yet. Olivia asked Nancy to keep him until I could pick him up. I’m heading over in a couple of minutes.”
Mitch set the luggage by the door. “Where’s Olivia?”
“In her room. She was on the phone a couple of minutes ago. She’s probably avoiding me.”
Mitch lifted an eyebrow. “Now why would your daughter be avoiding you, Jackie?”
Jackie leaned against the entry hall table. “Probably because of what I said. The same thing I’m going to tell you.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Right now, you are not important.” She pointed toward Olivia’s closed bedroom door. “Olivia is not important.” She picked up a framed picture. “The only person who matters right now is my grandson. I will not let the two of you tear him apart.” She held up her hand to stop him from speaking. “I know you feel Olivia was wrong in not telling you about Adam six years ago when she first discovered she was pregnant. It was not a decision she came to lightly. Trust me. She suffered. I suffered with her. She’s my child. I know she’s not perfect, but at the time she felt she was doing the best thing for all concerned.”
Mitch scoffed.
“Mitch, try to put yourself in her place. You had just lost your brother. You’d gotten married and were starting a new life with someone else.”
“That’s bull and you know it.”
Jackie shook her head. “You hurt her, Mitch. No doubt about it. She was crushed when you broke off with her and devastated when she heard about your marriage. But I honestly believe she thought she was doing the right thing. That doesn’t matter now. It’s old news. You two have to find a way to work together, move forward. I’ll tell you both the same thing, park your emotions at the door and do what is best for your child.” She touched his chest again. “Listen with your heart and—” she bopped the side of his head with her fingertips “—not this hard head.”
He smiled for the first time. “Hard head, huh?”
Jackie chuckled. “Between my daughter, three sons and my husband, I know hard heads. Okay, I’ve gotta scoot and pick up Adam. You and Olivia bring the tension level between you down.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m not sorry you found out about Adam. I’m sorry how it happened, but Adam is a great kid. He’ll have you in the palm of his hand in no time.”
Mitch figured she was right…about everything.
As soon as the front door closed behind Jackie, the door to Olivia’s bedroom swung open. She stuck out her head and looked around. “Is she gone?”
“Yep.”
“Whew. Only so much mothering I can take in a compressed time period.” She hobbled out of the bedroom, her crutches firmly planted under her arms, her injured leg not touching the floor. “You get the lecture?”
“The lecture?”
“Yeah. You know, how we—me and you—aren’t the important ones here. How we have to get along for Adam. That lecture.”
“Got it.”
She nodded. “I figured as much.” She swung the crutches forward and moved toward the kitchen. “What time do you want to leave tomorrow?” she tossed over her shoulder. “I see Mom’s got Adam ready to go.”
“Mid-morning would be good.” He followed her to the kitchen. “You packed?”
She shrugged. “Pretty much.” She lifted a carafe of coffee from the warmer.
“Want a cup?”
He nodded. “Sure, but I can get it.” As he neared, scents of soap, minty shampoo and light perfume battled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He inhaled deeply. “Smells good,” he said, not positive if he was talking about the coffee, her, or both. “Why don’t you grab a barstool and I’ll hand you a cup.”
“Sounds good.” She hobbled to the counter and slid onto a stool.
“You still take it with milk?”
She sighed. “I know I shouldn’t…all those extra calories, but yeah. There is creamer in the fridge. Cups are directly above the coffee pot.”
He opened the cabinet door, pulled down two large mugs, then pushed the door shut with his elbow. After pouring two coffees, he sat hers down in front of her, then retrieved the cream. He watched as she gave her cup a liberal dose of milk.
Holding out his cup, he said, “Black. The way coffee is supposed to be drunk.” He took a sip and his eyes opened wide. “Wow. That’s some kind of strong coffee.”
Olivia laughed. “I know. Mom’s used to making coffee for Dad and the ranch hands, and you know how cowboys like their coffee.”
“Hot, black and strong enough to stand without cup support.”
She leaned forward and clinked her cup against his. “Exactly.”
She tilted her head toward her cup. “That’s why I use the cream. Sometimes at their house, I fill my cup with half coffee and half water.”
Mitch slipped onto a stool beside her and gathered his thoughts. After a couple of minutes of quiet, he turned toward her. “Why the sudden change? When I left, I was sure you would call your brothers to bring a rope. When I get back, you’re almost friendly.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to pull?”
She took a sip of coffee. “The next couple of weeks are going to be hard enough without fighting with you the whole time. We’ve agreed we’re not in love. There never will be anything between us again. So, for the sake of my son, I’m doing the best I can to get along with you. That’s all that’s going on. Okay?”
Texas Two Step: Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 1 Page 11