The Paternity Pact (Texas Cattleman's Club: Rags To Riches Book 3)

by Cat Schield

  “And the fact that Grant isn’t interested in having a relationship with you doesn’t affect your decision at all?”

  The burn of his rejection continued to smart. “Do you blame me for being hurt because he won’t give us a chance?”

  “It’s not just you,” Jaymes reminded her. “He said he’s never going to marry again.”

  “So where does that leave me?” she demanded, her heart constricting painfully.

  Denying that she wanted Grant in her life as both the father of her son and her lover had become impossible. The mere touch of his gaze made her entire body leap with joy. She only needed to be in the same room with him for her core to be mobbed by urgent impulses until she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into Grant’s arms and revisit his passionate lovemaking.

  “Am I just supposed to be okay that Grant is perfectly content to have me in his bed whenever he feels like it and for us to act like a family when it’s convenient for him?” Harley grumbled. “All my life I’ve been either ignored or underestimated by my family. Is it so wrong to want the man I love to love me back?”

  Seeing the shock on Jaymes’s face, Harley wished she’d reined in her bitterness. She’d bared her heart and confessed that she’d fallen in love with him five years ago. His response had been to dismiss her feelings, declaring the emotional attachment impossible simply because they’d barely known each other.

  “No, of course not,” Jaymes said, “but you can’t expect him to love you back just because you think he should.”

  “I know. If he would just stop putting up walls,” she complained, “but he won’t.” If he’d been willing to offer her the slightest encouragement, she would’ve compromised her plans and figured out how to run Zest without being in Thailand full-time. Instead, he’d insisted that he’d never feel the same way and her stubborn pride was all that saved her from making an even bigger fool of herself.

  “I’m in love with him and he refuses to even consider giving us a chance,” Harley continued. “How do I just accept that?”

  “I don’t know.” Jaymes reached out a comforting hand and squeezed her friend’s arm. “But if you run back to Thailand, aren’t you just giving up?”

  While Harley knew she was no longer the immature eighteen-year-old who’d run off when life got too complicated, if she repeated her mistake of five years earlier and behaved like one, she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer.

  “I’m afraid that if I don’t give up, I’ll be the one giving in and settling for less.” Harley released a quavering breath. “Maybe it’s all a moot point. The fact that he’s unwilling to budge from his current position leads me to think that he’s right. I would be forever unhappy with what he’s willing to offer.”

  “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind about returning to Thailand. Do you have any idea when you’re going to go?”

  “I told Beth that I would stick around and attend the TCC ball. It seems like a fitting bookend to my relationship with Grant since it was at that same ball five years ago when he and I met. This year’s gala will mark the moment when I abandon all hope that we have a future.”

  “So, you haven’t abandoned all hope yet?” Jaymes asked, her expression suddenly optimistic.

  Struck by a sudden bout of indecision, Harley considered how she should answer her friend. Hadn’t she accepted that Grant would never give their relationship a fighting chance? Why then was she questioning what might happen if she stuck around for one more week? Gave more of herself to him? Maybe she could wear him down like wind and water carved rock.

  Harley sighed as her vacillating mood shifted once more. “Maybe not all hope.”

  * * *

  With everything blowing up in his personal life, Grant was relieved to get back to his practice where stability and discipline reigned. But in order to give his patients the quality of care they came to him for, he had to force down his frustration over Harley’s stubborn insistence on returning to Thailand and taking his son away from him. It went against his beliefs to meet with patients and not give them his full and complete attention. This particular characteristic had driven Paisley crazy because she’d expected to receive the same focused attention he lavished on his patients. No matter how much she complained about his distance, Grant never seemed to be able to give her what she needed.

  How strange that everything about his relationship with Harley was the exact opposite. Since she’d returned to Royal, he found himself constantly distracted. When he wasn’t dwelling on her soft skin and lush mouth, he cataloged her various smiles and how each one messed with his emotions. His ability to focus on matters at hand suffered, thoughts tangling with emotions until he couldn’t separate them.

  After how he’d behaved around her five years earlier, he should’ve done a better job keeping his distance from her. They could’ve co-parented their son in a civil, cordial way and not fallen prey to the chemistry that set fire to his blood. If he’d remained in control, he wouldn’t be plagued by uncertainty. If he hadn’t kept tumbling into bed with her, could he have handled things better? Making love to her had stirred up his emotions, making him reactionary rather than rational.

  His desk phone buzzed, letting him know that his next appointment was waiting. Grant got to his feet with an impatient huff, wishing he could fling his worries aside as easily as a dog shed water. Unfortunately, the anxiety that clung to him was more like spiderwebs and proved difficult to escape.

  “Here’s Gracie Diaz’s chart with her labs,” his nurse declared, handing him a file. “She’s in exam room three.”

  “Thank you.” Grateful for something concrete to focus his attention on, Grant opened the file and began scanning the results as he strode down the hall.

  Yet, despite his best efforts, his emotions continued to churn as he opened the exam room door and strolled inside. Gracie Diaz sat with her hands clasped in her lap, white knuckles betraying her nerves. Seeing the stress in her beautiful dark brown eyes, Grant reined in his own disquiet. Although he rarely knew much about his patients beyond the medical information written in their files, Miss Diaz had become quite a household name in recent months after a lottery win took her from an anonymous personal assistant to a celebrated multimillionaire.

  “Hello, Gracie,” Grant said, softening his expression in the hopes that he would put her at ease. “How are you doing today?”

  During her last visit, she’d been quite loquacious as she’d shared how much her life had changed in the past few weeks and spoken of her dream to be a mother. As was the case with several of his patients who were single, she’d decided to become pregnant through in vitro fertilization. In preparation for that procedure, Grant had initiated a standard barrage of tests to ensure that everything would go smoothly. The results had been less than ideal, but nothing he couldn’t remedy.

  “I’ll be doing better after you tell me the results of my tests. Your nurse said you wanted to see me again before we started the procedure. Does that mean you found something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing serious,” Grant said. “Just a minor hormone imbalance that could affect your chances of getting pregnant if we don’t treat it.”

  This news relaxed her somewhat. Her lips softened into a big smile. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said with an unsteady chuckle. “I was convinced you were going to tell me I wasn’t a good candidate for in vitro.”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Good. I’ve wanted to have a baby for so long now and before the money came along, I didn’t have the resources to make it happen.”

  Never once with all the couples or single women who’d come to him wanting a child had he ever pondered their strong determination to create a family. However, after spending time with Harley and Daniel, he understood the drive. His fierce attachment to the boy wasn’t a decision he’d made. It was a gut-deep response to a primitive yearning. He couldn�
��t will it away any more than he could change the color of his eyes. It was part of him that he accepted without conscious thought.

  Thinking about his son stirred Grant’s concern and frustration that Harley intended to take Daniel back to Thailand. Why couldn’t she see that their son was thriving in Royal where he had immediate access to both his parents?

  “You have no worries about raising a child by yourself?” he asked, stepping past the boundaries of his standard professionalism.

  “Not at all,” she said eagerly, showing no signs of discomfort at his inquisitiveness. “Especially now that I have the financial resources to give my child everything they could ever possibly want or need.”

  Grant cleared his throat. “You don’t think your child needs a father?”

  “I think as long as I have a strong male influence in his or her life, it will be just fine.” Obviously, it was something she’d come to terms with already. Perhaps she’d already had this conversation with more than one individual and had her rationale all sorted out. “And someday if I marry, then obviously I would hope that my husband would want to adopt my child.”

  “So you’re not opposed to having a man in your life?”

  Gracie blinked in surprise, but didn’t appear at all upset by the inappropriateness of his question.

  “I can’t control my love life.” She shrugged her shoulders and sighed wistfully. “However, this I can control. Making a family on my timetable. Maybe that’s selfish on my part, but I will give a child all the love and devotion they could ever need.”

  Grant considered all the men who hadn’t stepped up when they fathered a child and all the women who had no choice but to raise children on their own. There were pros and cons to both sides of the story. He had no doubt that Gracie’s child would be as well-adjusted as Daniel. Harley was an outstanding mother and Daniel lacked for nothing. The boy knew he was loved. But that didn’t mean that Grant intended to back off and let Harley take his child away.

  A bond had formed between father and son. He deserved to have partial custody of his son. But at what cost? He couldn’t help but feel he was in a lose-lose situation. With Grant living in Texas and Harley living in Thailand, Daniel would be the one who truly suffered.

  Yet, the boy wouldn’t be the only one. Each time Grant thought about living without Harley, the ache in his chest grew. He’d ignored her unhappiness, believing that she’d eventually be as content with their little family as he was. Realizing just how eager she was to escape Texas left him feeling empty and raw.

  Five years earlier, he’d rejected her and she’d vanished from his life, taking his son with her. Since learning about Daniel, Grant told himself if he’d known what he’d risked, he would’ve reasoned with Harley instead of letting his emotions get the better of him. Because now, he recognized that the way he’d rejected her had been born of anger at her deceit and shame that he’d been overwhelmed by desire for someone he realized was not just too young for him but too young to be treated like a casual sexual encounter.

  Yet, here he was on the verge of losing his son a second time. Not because he hadn’t used logic to persuade Harley, but because he was still afraid of the emotions she aroused and the discomfort that always seemed to follow when he gave in to them.

  * * *

  In the wake of telling her family that Grant was Daniel’s father, the only person besides her mother who continued to keep her at arm’s length was Piper. Given how close she’d been to her aunt growing up, Piper acting as a combination of big sister and surrogate mother, their estrangement had hit Harley hard. And because they hadn’t had a chance to talk since her aunt found out that Grant was the secret Harley had been keeping, Piper’s disapproval remained an obstacle between them.

  Now, as the situation with Grant had grown even more emotionally fraught, Harley knew she couldn’t go on another week without making peace with Piper. To that end, she called her aunt and invited her to dinner. Since Jaymes and Sean were in Houston for the weekend, celebrating his father’s sixtieth birthday, Harley decided to borrow their kitchen to prepare a few traditional Thai dishes. Daniel was spending the night with Grant so the two women would have the privacy to speak their minds.

  Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as Harley had hoped. Daniel had been feeling off all day, complaining that his stomach hurt. Although he wasn’t running a fever or showing any symptoms, he demanded her full attention. The food preparations she’d intended to make didn’t happen as she snuggled beside her son and read stories to him. Then Grant called and told her he was running late and wouldn’t be able to pick Daniel up until nearly seven o’clock. Given her son’s possible illness, she’d been half tempted to keep Daniel with her, but Grant was a fully licensed medical professional, capable of dealing with a little boy’s stomachache and she didn’t want Grant to think that she was keeping his son away from him.

  By the time Piper arrived at six o’clock, Daniel had rallied enough to watch cartoons in the living room. Harley was mortified that she was in the midst of chopping vegetables and nowhere near ready to serve her guest the delicious meals she’d had planned. But far from being put out, Piper poured herself a glass of wine, rolled up her sleeves and pitched in. Half an hour later, the divine smells emanating from the kitchen filled the entire house.

  For the last few weeks, Harley’s emotions had been bubbling dangerously close to the surface. Now, as she and Piper worked in harmony, without any of the charged atmosphere that had highlighted their relationship lately, Harley found herself close to tears.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you that Grant was Daniel’s father,” she blurted out in a shaky voice, grabbing the kitchen counter to steady herself. “I was just so hurt and mad at him and worried that because you were good friends, you’d tell him I was pregnant.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could trust me,” Piper said, her expression regretful. “And even sorrier that you were right. I probably would’ve been so angry with him that I would’ve marched right over to his house and berated him for acting so recklessly.” Piper shook her head. “Even now I can’t get over that he...”

  “Slept with an eighteen-year-old?” Harley supplied helpfully when her aunt couldn’t bring herself to state the obvious. “And got her pregnant?”

  “What the hell was he thinking?”

  “To be honest,” she began, her lips twisting into a rueful smirk. “I didn’t give his brain much of a chance to function.”

  Piper threw up her hands. “I don’t want to know.” She paused for a second and then asked, “I hear you and Daniel are spending a lot of time with Grant.”

  “We were,” Harley said. “But it’s only Daniel now. Grant and I—”

  “Stinky beans! Stinky beans!” Daniel bounded into the kitchen, lured away from the television by the familiar scents of where he’d grown up. “I love stinky beans.”

  “I know you do,” Harley said. Stink beans, or petai, were strong-flavored beans from a twisted pod that she stir-fried with yellow curry paste and shrimp. “Do you think your tummy is feeling up to trying some when it’s ready?”

  “You bet.”

  In addition to the stink bean dish Daniel loved, Harley was making pad kra pao, a street food made of chicken stir-fried with lots of chilies, garlic and a big handful of basil all served over rice, as well as a shredded green papaya salad dressed in lime juice, palm sugar and fish sauce.

  The doorbell rang as they were shifting the completed recipes to the dining room table. Leaving Piper and Daniel to finish without her, Harley went to answer the door. Grant had finished his business and arrived ahead of schedule to pick Daniel up.

  “Hi,” she said, overwhelmed by a rush of longing as his gaze swept over her, noting her bare feet, stained apron and flushed cheeks. “You’re early.”

  “I hope that’s okay,” he said, looking beyond her as if hoping f
or an invitation. “Wow. Something smells amazing,”

  “Daddy!” Hearing his father’s voice, Daniel raced toward them, displaying none of the sluggishness he’d exhibited earlier in the day. He threw himself at his father and Grant swept him up. “Mommy made stinky beans. Do you want some?”

  Grant raised an eyebrow and glanced at Harley. Unsure if he was questioning the name of the dish or asking if he was welcome, Harley gave a shrug and gestured for him to come in. What else could she do when her son so obviously wanted his father to join them?

  “Are you sure this is okay?” Grant asked after setting Daniel back on his feet so he could lead the way to the dining room.

  “Of course,” she lied. “The more the merrier.”

  For her son’s sake, she would duct tape her broken heart and soldier on.

  Before heading into the dining room, Harley detoured into the kitchen and brought out another place setting.

  “Oh, good, you’re staying for dinner,” Piper murmured. “Harley made enough for six.”

  “It smells delicious,” Grant said as he settled into his place.

  “Dig in,” Harley instructed, pouring him a glass of wine.

  Throughout dinner, her determination to remain civil when they were around Daniel was tested every time Grant attempted to snag her gaze. She refused to give him access to her pain. Grant was not a concerned friend. He was her former lover and as such, he’d lost the right to inquire after her emotional state. He’d torn her heart out and didn’t get to ask her if she was okay about it.

  “We should probably get going,” Grant said to his son, as Daniel scraped every last bit of mango sorbet out of his bowl.

  “Can’t we spend the night here?”

  Harley felt the curious press of Piper’s gaze on her as she raised eyebrows and waited for Grant to extricate himself from the sticky situation. She had no problem relinquishing her parental duties for the moment.