by Joss Wood
“I get it. You were scared. Perfectly understandable,” Beckett taunted him.
“Up yours,” James genially replied.
“I heard you lodged a claim with Mick Shuttle’s estate to recover the money he owes you,” Linc stated as James slid into the empty chair.
“Shuttle bought many pieces from us over the years. I never thought his damned check would bounce,” James muttered.
“Glad he was your client and not ours,” Beckett cheerfully stated.
“I’m sure you are,” James wryly replied. “Ballantyne and Company definitely dodged a bullet. Shuttle’s Colombian honey flew south the night before he was arrested. With, I presume, my diamond choker.”
“Judging by his long list of creditors, you’ll be lucky if you get money back from his estate,” Jaeger commented.
James placed his elbows on the table and tapped his finger against the bloodred tablecloth. “And that’s what I can’t understand. Thirty years ago, my father bought two stones off Shuttle, two exceptional sapphires my father paid top dollar for. Shuttle boasted he had many more and, no matter what happened, the rest of the stones were his backup plan.”
Jaeger felt his heart stop, start and bump against his rib cage.
“My mother sold two stones thirty years ago to give him the capital to start his business.”
Piper’s house, he remembered, was owned by her father through a company, and the reason she had to sell was because it was part of his estate. The cash raised would go toward repaying her father’s debts.
Piper Mills was Mick Shuttle’s daughter.
That was a hell of a secret and raised the question: Why hadn’t she told him?
And what else was she holding back?
Eleven
Piper wasn’t surprised when Jaeger pushed the button to her intercom sometime after midnight. The message she’d left on his phone was intriguing. He’d want to know more, want to know everything.
She stood and placed her hand on her stomach, pulling in a deep breath. Silly of her to think they’d have a little more time before the situation detonated. In Milan, they’d hurtled from dinner to breakfast to dinner to bed in record time, and over the past week she’d reconnected, slept with and fallen in love with Jaeger.
Everything with Jaeger happened at warp speed.
Piper walked to the kitchen to buzz him up. God, she was tired and pissed and so in love with him it hurt.
Ask him about the interview, tell him about Ty and get it done. Throw your cards on the table and stop second-guessing him and yourself.
Honesty is always better than sugar-coated BS.
Honesty was the foundation of trust, and she’d shortchanged Jaeger by not being totally up-front. About everything.
But she had to be prepared for him to be honest back. Maybe he meant every word he’d said to that television presenter; there might be nothing more between them than a bit of great sex. Jaeger might genuinely not be interested in Ty, and she’d have to deal with that.
She was stronger than she felt; she had to be if she was going to survive the worst consequences of this conversation. She’d survived her father’s lack of interest; she could survive Jaeger’s, too.
Straightening her shoulders, she walked to the hallway, unlocked her front door and there he was, his hand raised to knock. Jaeger sent her a cool look and walked past her, shrugging off his thigh-length coat and tossing it over the back of the nearest chair. His tuxedo jacket followed, and he ripped his tie from his neck and snapped open the top button of his shirt.
Piper folded her arms and watched as he rolled back the cuffs of his dress shirt in short, snappy movements. His eyes were ice blue, his shoulders tense, his jaw rock-hard.
Jaeger looked as out of sorts as she was. But she had no idea why.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Jaeger demanded, slapping his hands on his hips.
Piper tipped her head to the side. Her rugby jersey reached to midthigh. Woolen socks covered her feet. She looked ridiculous and wished she was better dressed.
“I needed some time alone,” Piper replied.
“Why?” Jaeger asked, as if talking to him was the beginning and end of her existence. It was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Well, I’d just heard you tell the world there was nobody special enough in your life to take to Moreau’s Ball. Considering you’d spent the last night making love to me, your statement made me feel cheap and inconsequential.” Piper perched on the arm of a chair and crossed her legs. She looked up at him, keeping her face blank. “I was trying to work through my hurt and anger so we could have a rational conversation.”
Jaeger ran an agitated hand across his jaw. “You saw the interview?”
“I did.”
Jaeger’s curse bounced off the walls of her apartment. “I never, for one moment, thought you would see that. You don’t even watch television!”
“And that makes what you said okay?” Piper heard her voice rising and reached for control. She pulled in a calming breath and linked her shaking hands around her knees. It didn’t escape her notice that he’d yet to deny the truth of what she’d said.
She couldn’t help that a little sarcasm leached through her rationality. “Silly me. I’d started to think I might be more than a warm, willing body and a source of some very fine stones.”
“That’s not fair. I’ve never treated you that way.” Jaeger jammed his hands into his pockets and scowled at her. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Piper. I never discuss my love life with the press.”
That wasn’t a denial, either, Piper thought as she moved to sit in the chair. “What are we doing, Jaeger?”
“Right now? Having a fruitless conversation.”
Despite her questions, he hadn’t said anything to make her think there was anything serious between them. She wasn’t going to beg him to be with her. And she couldn’t stay with him, vacillating between love and hope, waiting for him to become bored with her, waking up each day wondering how much time they had together.
It was better to live without him than to live in limbo. She was better, stronger than that.
She was not her mother.
Piper stood up, found her bag and pulled his check from her wallet. She handed it to him, ignoring the fire in his eyes. “I don’t need this anymore. My uncle’s diary will prove that the stones are from Kashmir, mined in the late nineteenth century. I’ll get the diary tomorrow and I’ll drop it off at your office on Monday morning. Ballantyne and Company can cut me a check.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I would be grateful if you’d contact the lawyers administering my father’s estate. With your assurance that I have funds coming in, they might not sell my house from under me.”
Piper opened her mouth to tell him about Ty when he spoke again. “Who is your father?”
Those were the last words she’d expected from his mouth. Why was he asking her that? And why now? Piper felt a prickle of unease dance up her spine. “Why is that important?”
“Is your father Michael Shuttle?”
How had he found out? Piper forced herself to hold Jaeger’s demanding stare.
Jaeger pointed his index finger at her. “Don’t even try to lie to me! I know he’s your father, Piper.”
“How?” Piper asked.
“Because Shuttle sold two Kashmir sapphires to Moreau’s thirty years ago to fund his business and said he had more. Your mother sold two sapphires to kick-start your father’s business. Your father’s estate is in administration and in debt. So is Shuttle’s.” Jaeger paced the area between her living room and hallway.
“Yes. He’s my father.”
Jaeger stopped pacing, and his direct look pinned her to her seat. “Okay, so why is that such a secret?”
“You’re ki
dding me, right?” Piper heard her voice rising and thought, To hell with control and rationality. Jaeger was a big boy. He could handle a little shouting. Oh, damn, she couldn’t shout, she had a baby in the house. “Why would I want to tell anyone about him? Why would I want to invite the attention and the scrutiny?”
“I’m not talking about telling the world. I’m talking about telling me!” Jaeger shot a look at the stairs and kept his voice low as well. “What else aren’t you telling me? What else have you lied to me about?” Jaeger closed the gap between them, and his hands gripped her biceps. “What else, Piper?”
Piper wrenched herself from Jaeger’s grip and wrapped her arms around her waist, feeling cold and hot at the same time. “You and I met in Milan and yes, we did go out a couple of times. What I didn’t tell you is that we slept together.”
She risked a peek at Jaeger’s face. As she expected, he looked confused. “Okay. Why not tell me? It’s not a big deal.”
Piper let out a low, humorless laugh. “Yeah, it is.” Gathering every bit of courage she could find, she looked him in the eye. “Ty is the result.”
Piper watched as her words sank in and the color faded from Jaeger’s face. He spoke through bloodless lips, the words rough. “I always use condoms.”
“You did that night, too,” Piper admitted. “I can’t explain how it happened, but he’s yours.”
“He can’t be!”
“Oh, for God’s sake! He has your eyes, your chin, your face, your build. He has a dimple in his butt, just like you do. He has your body, your hands, your smile. He is a carbon copy of you!” Piper cried.
“He’s not. He can’t be.”
She wasn’t going to try to convince him. “Okay, he’s not. Believe whatever you want to believe, Jaeger.”
Jaeger gripped the back of the couch and looked at her, his eyes bleak. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep this from me?”
“After Milan, I tried to tell you I was pregnant, Jaeger, but I couldn’t reach you! I was kicked out of Ballantyne and Company and put on the kooks and crazies list!” Piper retorted. “We reconnected a week ago. When, exactly, was I supposed to blurt this out? While we were discussing the stones, after sex, before sex?”
“Yes!”
“I started to tell you today, at the park, but you had just told me about your daughter, and then you had a game with your brother, a ball to attend,” Piper said, her voice bitter. “I needed time to explain, but you had better things to do.”
“I would’ve blown off both if you’d said it was important,” Jaeger countered.
“I didn’t want you to reject Ty.” There, she’d said it.
“I freely admit that I have no experience with babies, but I’ve given you no reason to think I would reject him!”
“Jaeger, for years you’ve been telling anyone with a microphone that you’re not cut out to be a husband or a father. I believed that! I believed you!”
“You still should’ve told me,” Jaeger said, his voice hard and stubborn.
“Of course I should’ve, but I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“You rejecting Ty. You rejecting me.” Unaware her face was wet with tears, she forced herself to meet his hard, angry eyes.
Face it, Piper. Demand the truth. Take the hit. You’ll survive it. Maybe.
“Are you going to do that?” she asked.
Jaeger didn’t flinch. His eyes remained steady on her face as he shook his head. “I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. I can’t do that again.”
His words felt like a blow. She managed to nod, and then she forced the next sentence up her constricted throat. “And Ty?”
“I don’t know. I need to think about him.”
Piper lifted her chin and scowled at him. “The fact that you have to think about loving him, accepting him, tells me everything I need to know.” Piper heard her voice break, and she placed one hand over her eyes. She swallowed and blinked back tears. “I really need you to leave.”
“Fine.” Piper heard Jaeger’s footsteps and felt the brush of his coat on her bare legs as he walked past. Then she heard the door close behind him. She dropped to the floor, placed her head between her knees and felt the chopped up pieces of her heart shatter into tiny shards.
* * *
It was Monday morning and Jaeger propped his feet up on the corner of his desk and stared out his rain-streaked office window. Thanksgiving was a week away, and some stores already had their Christmas decorations in place. The creative designer would change the Ballantyne windows at the end of the month, and then the crazy season would start. But all he could think about was...
He had a son.
He had a son with a beautiful, smart, funny woman who’d cheated him out of the first months of his son’s life.
She should’ve tried harder to reach him...
But, as much as this annoyed him to admit, there had been little more she could do. He dimly recalled that he’d been presented with a list of people who’d tried to reach him while he was in hospital but he’d trashed the document, figuring that if the matter was important, they’d reach out to him again.
Piper hadn’t. Not once.
Jaeger dropped his feet to the ground and placed his forearms on his knees, staring at the expensive flooring below his feet. If he and Piper hadn’t fought, would she have told him? Ty was his son, a Ballantyne, his flesh and blood. She had no right to keep Jaeger from his child.
He wanted to rewind time. He wanted to recall how it felt making love to Piper that first time, remember the moment Ty was conceived. He wanted to watch Piper grow round and full, see Ty on the sonar screen, be the one to catch him as he entered the world.
Maybe he was being unfair but he didn’t care... Piper had cheated him out of those moments and the following nine months. He’d never forgive her. Forgiveness wasn’t possible.
He’d lost time he could never recover, and not because of amnesia. Piper had made the decision to keep Ty from him, to keep him in the dark—a state he couldn’t stand—and Jaeger’s anger was a living, breathing entity, crawling under his skin.
But he had to find a way to deal with her, because he had every intention of being in his son’s life. He wasn’t interested in an hour here or a weekend there. Feeling a little more clearheaded than he had on Saturday night, he now knew that he wanted to see Ty every damned day.
Jaeger glanced up as his computer beeped, notifying him of a new message. Jaeger rubbed his jaw, acknowledging that being Ty’s dad would impact his career. It would change how he sourced gems from all over the globe. He couldn’t be a full-time parent if he was crisscrossing the world. Would he have to choose between his career and his son? Could he give up the job he loved to spend more time with Ty?
Yeah. If it came to that, he would. He’d had so little time with his own parents before their deaths, but as an adult reflecting on that period, he clearly remembered how much he was loved. They’d adored being with him and his siblings. He wanted to give Ty that kind of family. He wanted his son to know nothing was more important to Jaeger than him.
Jaeger had thought Piper might be as important, but that just showed him how ridiculous he could be when it came to women. He’d started to fall in love with her... Thank God he’d managed to pull himself back from the ledge.
Oh, who was he kidding? He’d tumbled off that cliff the day she’d walked into his office a little less than two weeks back. He’d probably fallen in love with her back in Milan when they first made love. She’d snuck under his skin, climbed into his head and staged a takeover of his heart.
He loved her, but he couldn’t trust her.
First Andy, now Piper. Why couldn’t he find a woman he could love and trust?
Jaeger stood up and jammed his hands into his suit pockets. Piper wou
ld be here in ten minutes to finalize the purchase of her stones, and he had to pull himself together.
He couldn’t let her know how much she affected him, how seasick he felt. She’d flipped his heart and his world and his life upside down, and he now had to find a new type of normal.
Normal. Jaeger snorted. As if anything could ever be normal again.
* * *
Piper walked into the imposing conference room at Ballantyne and Company, clutching her uncle’s diary against her chest. She placed the old book and her bag on the sleek conference table and refused the offer of a cup of coffee from Linc. Beckett, Jaeger’s younger brother, shook her hand, and Sage gave her a quick hug. Jaeger, standing across the room at the head of the table, lifted his chin to acknowledge her presence and turned his attention back to the phone in his hand.
So, his feelings hadn’t changed between Saturday night and now. That was the price she had to pay for wanting to protect her son. She’d lied to Jaeger, and he wasn’t going to forgive her.
Piper took a seat at the table and admitted to herself that Jaeger had a right to be angry. Despite trying to contact him, many times, she’d still kept him from his son and that, in his eyes, was reprehensible. He’d tossed her a quick, hot question about her motivations but he hadn’t pushed her for an explanation. If he cared for her, even a little, shouldn’t he have, at the very least, tried to understand her choices?
Piper darted a look at Jaeger’s hard face and sighed. Dressed in solid black—dress shirt, tie and suit pants—he looked as accessible as a black hole. And as cuddly. Suddenly she saw the hard-eyed, edgy businessman who confidently walked into dangerous situations to buy gemstones. No matter his clothing, if she were selling him something and she was faced with that granite face, she wouldn’t mess with him either. Hard, silent, dangerous. But, dammit, still so sexy.
Linc cleared his throat, and Piper looked up. Jaeger took a seat as far away from her as possible. Piper sighed at his nonverbal slap.
Yeah, I get it, Ballantyne. You want nothing to do with me.
Linc tapped his pen on the table, and Piper told herself to concentrate. What was about to be discussed would impact her future for a very long time, and she needed to be on her game.