by Natasha Tate
The front screen door squeaked open and he heard Colette step into the home she’d chosen for their child. “Janet?” she called. “You haven’t put Emma down for her nap yet, have you?”
Stephen watched as Colette rounded the corner into the living room. Stumbling in shocked recognition, she froze and the blood drained from her face.
“Welcome home, Colette,” he said grimly, surprised that he sounded so calm when he felt like wringing her beautiful, duplicitous neck. “Or should I say Mummy?”
“Stephen,” she started, her lips trembling within her white face. “What are you doing here?”
He surged to his feet, the urge to shake her tearing through him with seismic fury. “I don’t think you’re in any position to ask questions,” he said, in an ominously quiet voice.
“I—”
“How is it that you have a four-year-old daughter I knew nothing about?”
Her hazel eyes darted frantically toward Emma and then back again. Fear was stamped in every fierce line of her face. “Not here, Stephen. Please not here—”
“Mr. Whitfield held Chrissie while she taked her nap,” interrupted Emma. “An’ he likes princesses, too. He said so.”
“That’s right, Emma,” he said, in a low, conversational voice. “Little blue-eyed princesses are a personal favorite of mine.”
“Don’t …” Colette began again, her arms wrapping about her ribs while a glimmer of tears gathered in her distressed eyes. “She doesn’t …”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“B-because,” she stammered, her gaze ricocheting from Emma’s curious face to his and back again. “I …”
“You?”
“I wanted to keep her safe.”
A rage he hadn’t felt for twenty-five long, long years made his chest burn hot and laced his words with a dangerous, deadly calm. “I suggest you tell Janet she’s on duty for a little while longer,” he said grimly. “You and I have some serious items to discuss.”
She flinched, and then swiftly recovered, her chin lifting while her slim shoulders braced for the worst. Her flashing hazel gaze, limned with a disconcerting blend of righteous indignation and fear, collided with his and held. “Fine, we’ll talk. In private,” she said, smiling down at Emma as if she needed to protect her. “Emma, sweetheart, why don’t you go find Janet while Mr. Whitfield and I have a grownup talk outside?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“START talking,” he said, the moment they were alone in her tiny yard.
“Not here,” Colette replied, striding across the street while she frantically tried to collect her thoughts. “I don’t want Janet or Emma to hear us fighting.”
“Oh, we’re not going to fight,” he said, in a deceptively mild voice that sent a tremor of unease down her spine. “This is no lovers’ squabble.” He gripped her upper arm and escorted her to his car, then loomed over her, his brittle blue eyes daring her to refute him. “This is you telling me exactly what I want to hear, followed by you listening as I tell you how we’re going to handle it.”
“But—”
“No.” He cut her off with a harrowing slice of his hand. “This is my child we’re talking about, and you’ve lost the right to offer input.”
“But I’m her mother!” she protested. “I’ve only done what I thought was best.”
“What you thought? What about what I thought?”
“You were never part of the decision.”
“Exactly,” he growled. “You thought it was best to keep her from knowing her father,” he said, leaning forward to bracket her within the cage of his powerful arms. “You thought it was best to hide her from the man who gave her life, the man who could give her everything.”
“Except what she needed most!” she blurted, her frantic pulse clubbing hard against her chest. “You’d only hurt her, and I couldn’t allow that!”
Ice slammed into his eyes, and his voice assumed a frigid edge. “Hurt her? You think I’d hurt my own daughter? Good God, Colette, what kind of monster do you think I am?”
“The kind that doesn’t know the first thing about commitment. The kind who has no desire to settle down or give up his playboy lifestyle to raise a child!”
“Since when does my desire to not settle down translate into an inability to do the right thing by my child?”
“Are you serious?” She stared at him, wondering how he could even ask. “You’re only interested in temporary flings, and fatherhood is a permanent gig.”
“Who the hell gave you the right to determine what my interests are?” he snapped.
She firmed her jaw, knowing she was right. “You did. You said you didn’t want children. On multiple occasions. You said you’d never bring another Whitfield into the world.”
“Only because I didn’t want to subject a child to the life I’d had,” he ground out. “I certainly didn’t mean I couldn’t accept my responsibilities when our protection failed us.”
“And there’s the difference. I don’t view Emma as a failure or an accident or a plan gone awry. She’s a child. A precious, beautiful child who deserves to be wanted. And I won’t ever allow my daughter to feel otherwise.”
“Your daughter?”
She straightened her spine, pressing against his car and putting as much distance between them as possible. “I’m the only one who wants her.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not. You just think you want her right now. Once you’ve had a few moments to adjust to the shock, you’ll realize I made the right choice for everybody. A child has needs, Stephen, needs that don’t vanish simply because you tire of meeting them.”
“I’m aware of that.” Palpable anger knotted his jaw as he bowed over her. “And I’m perfectly capable of committing to my child and providing her with everything she needs.”
“Are you really?” she pressed. “Because last I heard you were incapable of feeling that tense, messy emotion called love.”
His nostrils flared as he glared at her. “Love doesn’t feed or clothe a child.”
“No,” she agreed, hiking her chin. “But it makes her feel happy and safe and wanted. Emotions you’ll strip from her if you make her feel like an accident that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I would never make her feel that way.” “You say that now.”
“So, what? You’re calling me a liar now?” He laughed, and it was a biting, humorless sound. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“I didn’t lie. I just omitted the truth,” she blurted. “And you can’t blame me for it. We both know what would have happened if I’d told you I was pregnant with your child.”
“No, we don’t know. Because you made sure nothing could happen,” he bit out. “You gave me no chance to react at all.”
“Because I already knew how you’d react.”
“How could you possibly know, when I don’t even know myself?” he asked, frustrated anger sharpening his tone to a razor-thin edge.
“Tell me, then. Tell me what you would have done had I told you. No. Wait,” she scoffed, holding her hand aloft. “I already know. You’d have shouldered the mantle of responsibility like all decent men do. You’d have pushed aside your reservations and your resentment and done the right thing. You’d have forced me to marry you, felt trapped against your will, and then taken out your frustration on both me and my daughter for the rest of your life.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Parenthood, especially when you’re in it out of obligation, isn’t all fun and games. When the newness of having a child wears off, the reality and the permanence of it sets in. I know it, you know it, and I won’t have my daughter go through the pain of your resentment just because a playboy happened to get one of his flings pregnant.”
“What makes you so sure I’d resent it?” he flung back, leaning close enough that she could see the hot flare of rage in his eyes. “When you’re the one who couldn’t handle the intimacy of a real relationship?”
“You want to blame it on me? Fine,” she said, the old pain twisting deep in her bones. “I can handle your hatred. Emma can’t.”
He looked at her in grim silence, the muscles of his forearms flexing as he debated his next words.
Try and deny it, she thought. Try and claim you’re capable of loving a child you never wanted to have.
“I would never hate my own child,” he finally said. “You’re wrong to assume I would.”
“I’m not,” she said, swallowing hard against the knot crowding her throat. “Men with your past do not do well with fatherhood. There are thousands of unwanted children out there who can attest to the fact.”
“I am not one of those men.”
“Well, I can’t take that risk. And neither can Emma.”
“Too bad. It’s no longer your choice.”
His words sent a chill through her veins. “What are you saying?” she breathed.
“You know exactly what I’m saying, Colette,” he said, the flinty anger in his eyes promising the retribution she’d feared since the day she’d watched that first pregnancy test strip turn blue. “Because I am going to do the right thing, five years too late. We’re getting married. Tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Yes. You marry me or I take you to court to establish my parental rights. I use my wealth and my connections to wage a legal war for custody you’re incapable of winning.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she breathed.
“Try me,” he said with an implacable stare.
“But I can’t marry you!” she gasped. “You’re insane to think I’d agree to that!”
He glared at her. “You’re insane to think I’ll settle for anything less.”
Her pulse rioted beneath the surface of her skin while her mind raced with alternatives. She could skip town again. She could hide. Change her name, move to a small Midwestern American town, and live off cash earned waiting tables. He’d never find her.
“And don’t even think about running away again,” he warned, reading her thoughts as if she’d spoken them aloud. “Now that I know about Emma, you won’t be able to pack so much as a toothbrush without me finding out about it.”
“You’d have me followed?”
“Every minute of every day,” he continued, his voice filled with a cold, calculated threat that made her legs go numb. “If you even dream about stealing Emma from me again, I’ll make you pay.”
“You can’t do that!”
“No? Watch me,” he said, as calmly as if he were ordering wine with dinner. “Fight me in this, and I will make your life a living hell.”
“Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because I want my daughter, and no one will stop me from having her.”
“But you have no interest in fatherhood! Why would you change now?”
“You act like I owe you an explanation. I don’t.”
“If you try to be her father just because you think it’s your duty, because you feel compelled to meet your obligations, you’ll only end up hurting her.”
“That’s a chance you’ll have to take, isn’t it?” he said, leaning close enough that she could see his pupils flare with banked rage. “Marry me, grant me unlimited access to my child, and you’ll be on site to protect her from any harm you think I might cause.”
“And what about the rest of the Whitfields? How do I protect her from them?”
“I’ll take care of my family.”
“How? Your family will never accept me or Emma. You know they won’t.”
“I don’t give a damn about who they will or won’t accept. This is my life.”
“It’s not just your life. It’s all of our lives now. Yours. Mine. And Emma’s. And there’s not a single Whitfield who thinks I’m viable wife material. It’s unlikely that they’ll think any better of our child.”
He muttered a quiet oath and then firmed his jaw as he glared at her. “It doesn’t matter what they think. Emma is my child, and nothing they say or do changes that fact.”
“I heard your grandfather and Liam, Stephen. I heard the things they said about me and my class,” she insisted.
His jaw flexed while a vein pulsed visibly in his temple. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Obviously. But I did. I heard that I didn’t belong in your future. I heard that the thought of me having your child would upset everything in your perfect world. So I saved you the hassle of having to deal with us at all.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“And maybe I’d have made a different one had you given me any reason to reconsider. But instead you told me you were leaving for Paris, claiming we both needed space to think. You abandoned me before you even knew about Emma. It was hardly the opportune time for me to let you know I was pregnant with your child.”
“I didn’t abandon you. I left because you wanted me to. I’ve never known a more skittish female, and I was trying to give you what I thought you needed.”
“Don’t you dare put that on me! You were taking what you needed. You’d just told me you didn’t want marriage or the messy emotions of anything more meaningful than a steady bed partner!”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I was saying those things because it was what I thought you wanted to hear?”
“Right. Because every woman is just dying to hear that she’s a good shag and nothing more.”
“You’re not every woman, damn it!”
“So why do you want to marry me, then?”
“Maybe I want that steady bed partner back again,” he said. His mouth tightened while his blue eyes flicked to her mouth, her breasts and then back. “Maybe I’m willing to give up my bachelor status for a consistently good shag.”
She sucked in a breath, her body awakening beneath his heated gaze despite his coarse words. “You’re a bastard.”
“I think that’s been established already.”
“I won’t marry you,” she breathed. “Ever.”
His arctic gaze glittered with brittle, dangerous threat. “Then don’t.” His voice lowered to its most ominous range. “Don’t marry me, and I’ll use every resource I have to take Emma away from you. Permanently.”
Panicked, desperate, and blindingly angry, she shoved against his chest with both hands. “Try it, then. Try to take a child away from her mother when your name isn’t even on the birth certificate,” she challenged. “Try it and see how successful you’ll be.”
He cocked a brow, obviously unimpressed by both her pitiful attempt to move him and her threat. “No father listed on the birth certificate? You realize, don’t you, that omitting the father’s name just makes you look worse. Like a woman who’s so free with her sexual favors that she doesn’t even know who fathered her child.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “No, it doesn’t. It makes it look like I didn’t want her real father to have any sort of claim on her. That I thought she’d be better off with no father than with a father who’d end up breaking her little heart.”
Every muscle in his body went taut while his nostrils pinched white in offense. “I don’t care about your motives, and neither will the courts. I’ll just get a judge to order a DNA test and then the birth certificate won’t matter.”
“It will slow you down, though,” she said. “Enough for me to lobby a defense you can’t overcome. You forget, Stephen. My child loves me. She needs me. And it’s in her best welfare to remain with me. There’s not a judge anywhere who’d see it differently.”
“Oh, I’ll find one,” he said, sneering down at her mutinous expression. “Money talks, and I’ll come after you until you don’t have a cent left to wage this little war of yours. And when you run out of everything, when your accounts are stripped to the bone, I’ll still come after you. I’ll fight for the right to be in my child’s life. And I’ll win.”
“You won’t,” she insisted.
“Oh? And how will you ensure that when you have no job, no
money, and no home to supplement your fight for custody?”
She sucked in a breath, stunned that he’d be so intentionally cruel. “Are you threatening to bankrupt me so fully that it drives your child out her home?” she asked, amazed that she’d once thought herself in love with him.
“I negotiate to win.” His icy smile told her he’d yet to lose. “And I always, always win.”
She softened her tone and changed tactics, hoping to appeal to his logic. “How is making Emma miserable a win for you? Or for anyone, for that matter?”
“She won’t be miserable. I can make my own child happy.”
“By taking her away from her mother? By ripping her away from the only parent and home she’s ever known?”
“Don’t paint me out to be the villain here. You’re the reason she doesn’t know me.”
“Yes, but we can’t change the past. We can only work with Emma’s life now. If you truly wish to be a good father to Emma, you’ll care more about her welfare and happiness than your own. Maintaining her sense of security will take precedence over any feud you and I might have.”
“Whereas if you truly wish to retain your role in Emma’s life, you’ll accept the inevitable and marry me,” he countered. “You’ll save Emma the torture of a long, drawn-out fight and just admit defeat.”
She shook her head, the sick realization that she might never change his mind settling in her stomach like a stone. “Why would you want to marry me, knowing that I would view it as a defeat?” she asked. Distress made her voice crack. “You can’t tell me that’s the kind of marriage you want to model for our daughter?”
His expression hardened and she saw the ruthless businessman who always won, the merciless negotiator who went for the jugular, no matter the cost to his personal fortune. “My child deserves my name and an intact family. She deserves to know I am her father.”
“Then we’ll tell her. Together. And we’ll work something out that doesn’t make her feel like she’s lost her entire world.” Colette placed a tentative hand on his forearm, finding it as hard as carved granite. “Please? I swear, we can find a middle ground that doesn’t make us all miserable.”