by Tasha Taylor
“I’m not playing games.” Her voice was low. “Yes, you’re Pippa’s father, but that’s a biological fact I can do nothing about. That’s as far as it goes as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t know anything about it. You just left.”
“Well, life’s not fair, Nathan. And don’t act as if you’re the one who’s been the injured party in all of this. It’s not as if I disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I looked for you.”
“What, personally, or did you have one of your maids do it?” Leah’s sarcasm was not lost on him, a slight smile on her lips.
“I hired three different detectives to look for you. They scoured the whole country and came up with nothing.” There was honesty in his voice, but the whole thing just struck Leah as immensely funny.
Private detectives looking for her! How tacky could you get? She began to laugh, and annoyance flashed across his face as he continued.
“Of course, they weren’t looking for someone who had changed their name, or someone with a baby.”
Leah was still laughing, but some hysteria was sneaking into the sound, her laughter ringing tinny and false. Nathan stared at her, and she began to sober up. It wasn't because of the anger in his look, but because something he had said, was just beginning to sink in. He had been hurt and worried enough about her to have someone try and find her. Leah blinked and looked at him anew. Had he really been that much in love with her, that he wanted to find her? His cold, hard stare made her doubt it, and she reminded herself of what had been discussed between him and Justin in her hospital room.
“So now you’ve found me, and now you have a daughter. What are you going to do about it, Nathan?”
“What do you expect me to do? It’s shocked the hell out of me. To be all on my own one minute and then to find out I have a child, it’s not an easy step to make.”
“Then don’t make it. I didn’t want you to know. Why do you think I didn’t tell you?” she paused, then asked quietly, “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. All I know is that I enjoy being with Pippa. Perhaps I can spend some time with her?”
“For how long?”
“What?” Nathan put the glass down on the table. “What do you mean for how long?”
“How long are you going to be around? Okay, so you have some free time now, but you have your career to think of.” For the second time that evening, she was telling him that she was not prepared to have him here, to watch her daughter get hurt.
“There are ways.”
“No. I am not going to have Pippa’s hopes built up. I don’t want her to have fleeting visits a couple of times a year. She deserves better than that.” And so do I, she thought silently, not wanting to have to cope with another broken heart.
“So what do you want? Do you want me to give up performing so that I can be a full-time father to her?” Nathan’s tone was biting, and Leah knew then that his career would once again come between them.
“I don’t want anything from you. As far as I’m concerned, you can just go now, and forget all about us. We’ve managed fine without a man around this far. Pippa doesn’t know about you, she doesn’t know that I even knew you before.”
“She doesn’t know about us?’ Nathan’s face softened and Leah felt a peculiar shiver run down her spine.
“What’s to know? It’s nothing to do with her. She doesn’t need to know that her mother made mistakes when she was very young.”
“You think she’s a mistake?”
“That’s not what I said, Nathan, don’t twist my words. Just go, please.”
“No, I won’t. We’re not finished. I want you to tell Pippa about me. I think she’d be quite pleased to have me as her father. She told me earlier that she wished I was her ...”
“I heard what she told you!” Leah snapped, hearing again the wistful tone of her daughter’s sleepy voice. “She doesn’t know any better. She’s just a little girl with a crush on Nathan Llewellyn the rock star. She doesn’t know you the way I do.”
“Was it that bad?” Leah did not want to remember the good times. All she had brought with her from the relationship was Pippa and a broken heart.
“Forget it. I’m not telling her.”
“Then I’ll tell her.”
“You think she’d believe you over her own mother. I’m the one who has looked after her these last six years, not you.”
“And whose fault is that? Not mine, Leah. If I’d have known then I could have taken care of her, of you both.”
“How? With money, expensive gifts? It takes more than that to be a father, Nathan. It takes things like commitment and time, both of which you have none to spare. Everything you do is for your career. It would have been like that, even if I had stayed with you.”
“How do you know?” Nathan spat.
“Because I can see it. Do you think you’d have been as popular with your fans if you were saddled with a wife and baby all those years ago? Do you think you would have found time away from your bloody career to spend time with Pippa? I don’t think so.”
“I want you to tell her.”
“I won’t.”
Leah was adamant. He could stand there and argue with her until he was blue in the face, but she wouldn’t change her mind.
“Either you tell Pippa that I’m her father, or ...” he paused, and anger rushed through Leah’s veins. How dare he make this into a performance? Why the hell was he trying to be so dramatic when she was his only audience?
“Or what?” She took his bait, snapping it around her tongue.
“Or I’ll go to the press.”
Leah felt as if the bottom of her world had just fallen from beneath her, with her heart following suit. She could only stare at him, fear in her eyes, mouthing at him without any sound coming out. He wouldn’t. Wake up, Leah, her inner voice shouted at her. Wake up. This isn’t a dream. He’s serious!
That sinking feeling was back and for a moment, she thought she might pass out. Nathan reached out but she backed away, out of her chair with such speed that she stumbled and caught hold of the counter behind her for support.
How could he even suggest it? Did he not have any clue what it could do to Pippa? She was only a little girl, who wanted for nothing, except a father to love her, and he was about to turn her life into a media circus. Did he love media attention that much that he could not see the harm it did to people’s private lives?
Anything that had happened between Leah’s own mother and father had made front-page news, and Leah had to deal with that at school. At first, all her friends had thought it was cool, but then, when Leah refused to talk about it, they became mean, and teased her, calling her a show-off and a big head. But she had been five years older than Pippa when it had started. A six year old had none of the weapons needed to deal with that kind of attack, and Leah knew that children could be very unkind.
She turned tortured eyes to Nathan, to see if she could find any compassion in him, but all she came across was a brick wall. After what seemed an eternal silence, Leah spoke, her voice quiet, and full of pain.
“All right, I’ll tell her.”
“Good!” Nathan’s smile refueled her anger, if only temporarily.
“But you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone, especially the press,” she barked, her voice cracking up under the stress of all the emotions bombing her heart.
“I won’t. But I warn you, Leah, if you don’t tell her, I will do something about it,” he paused briefly, as though he was giving her time for it to sink in. “I’ll call you tomorrow to make sure you have told her. And I’m going to check with my lawyer first thing to see where I can go from here.”
“Can’t you give me until Monday? It will take her some time to get used to the idea. I don’t want her upset.”
“I don’t really think she’ll be upset that I’m her dad!” Nathan’s tone was light, and Leah could see c
onceit in his eyes, but she did not want to fight with him anymore. All she wanted to do was sleep and hope that it was all a bad dream.
“Would you mind leaving now?”
“Sure.” He sounded deflated.
Opening the door for him, Leah hugged herself against the cold.
“I’m glad we got this sorted out, Lee.”
The use of her old nickname cut her to the quick, and her response was snorted at him.
“Yeah, let’s do it again soon.”
He frowned, and reiterated his warning. “I meant it.”
“I heard you loud and clear the first time,” Leah barked, and stepping inside, she slammed the door in his face.
In the kitchen, Leah proceeded to drink her way through the majority of the bottle of wine. Her angry thoughts began to dissipate, her mind a jumble of pain and memory. In somewhat of a daze, she made her way up to bed, and fell straight asleep, aided by the wine and the fact that she was both physically and mentally exhausted.
She awoke hours later though, to the sound of thunder crashing outside, and rain beating against the bedroom window. She was drenched with sweat and her heart was hammering, having had a nightmare about her father’s funeral, something that she had not remembered for a long time.
Luke Mitchell had been her rock in life. When Leah’s mother had embarked on her writing career and became a household name, Luke had been the one who had always been there for Leah. But then, he had died in a fatal car crash and he was gone
Leah’s mother, Katherine, had been asked to attend an awards ceremony given in her honor by one of the Literary Guilds in London, and Luke had accompanied her. Sweeping the floor at the awards, Katherine had been in a jubilant mood, wanting to stay and celebrate with her fans, but Luke was tired after a long day at work and had wanted to get home. So they left, only to be pursued by the press, who wanted pictures of their darling. Luke took a short cut down a little-used country lane, which would bring them out to the other side of the village. From there, they could slip into their house unnoticed, but Luke was not aware of the storm that had occurred earlier that evening, bringing down an old tree. By the time, the headlights had cut through the gloom enough for him to swerve, the car impacted with the tree, and Luke was thrown through the windscreen, killed instantly. Katherine miraculously escaped with a few cuts and bruises.
In the days that followed, Leah’s world had collapsed. Her father was gone, her mother was too involved in her own grief to offer any comfort to her youngest daughter, and she had to cope with seeing the scene of the accident, the twisted wreckage of the car, plastered over every front page in the country. It had been several years before, she’d read another newspaper, and had shut herself off from her family and the rest of the world.
As a bolt of lightning cracked outside, Leah flinched at the bright light. She was trembling from head to foot, and surprised to taste salty tears on her lips. An empty feeling had settled over her, and it was not just due to remembering the loss of her father. It was a culmination of the demise of her relationship with Nathan, and the threat of losing Pippa to Nathan if she did not heed his warning.
Leah got up, and went downstairs, reluctant to attempt sleep again for fear of having to suffer another nightmare. The memory of her father’s death was still with her, thanks to her mind’s tortured tricks, and she made herself a cup of tea, and settled in front of the television.
She awoke at dawn, having dozed off, and suffering from a headache. She never normally drank that much, but she found herself relieved to have another kind of pain to dwell on, instead of the pain in her heart. Pippa woke a few hours later, in yet another good mood, but Leah was feeling too numb, closed to anything but the thought of Nathan going to the press. Still, she managed to hide her fears and she and Pippa spent a quiet Sunday together, playing games, watching an old film on the television, and speaking on the phone to Joe and Louise.
“I hear you had a dinner guest last night.”
“Yes. Pippa conveniently forgot to tell me that she had invited him. We came home from town to find him sitting on the doorstep.” Leah kept her tone light, as if it had been a nice surprise, instead of one of the worst nights of her life.
“Nathan was in the bar yesterday when I popped in. We had a nice little chat.”
Leah frowned. Fragments of her conversation with Nathan began to filter into her mind.
“What about?”
“About the bar and other things.”
Leah could well imagine what the other things were, but she did not feel inclined to get into another argument. Her nerves were still frazzled from the night before.
“Do me a favor, Lou? If you happen to have another chat with him, leave me out of the conversation, please?”
Leah was trying to summon up enough courage to sit down and tell Pippa about Nathan, but the moment never seemed right, and the next thing she knew, she was tucking Pippa in, and going downstairs for more time alone with her thoughts.
The next day, Leah kept up her pretense with herself. Denying herself a spare moment to even think about Nathan as she busied herself with her work. She had staff meetings, a quick lunch with Louise who, surprisingly, did not mention Nathan at all, and a thousand other little jobs that she would normally have found tedious, but instead was grateful for the distraction from her thoughts.
That was until she glanced at the clock and found it was time to leave to pick Pippa up from school. Where had the day gone? Leah had hoped that by filling her time completely that the day would drag, delaying the moment when she had to tell Pippa, but instead it had raced by, and the moment was approaching like a speeding bullet. Her nerves instantly a mess, Leah managed to spill her cup of coffee all over a stack of papers on her desk, and Joe, walking past the open door, stopped in the office to see a flustered Leah trying to mop up the coffee whilst putting everything away.
“Everything okay?” he asked, with a smile.
“Huh?” Startled, she looked up with wide eyes, and then her features relaxed into a lop-sided smile, as she wiped away the rest of the coffee. Her hair had fallen partially from the neat French pleat she wore for work, and her cheeks were flushed. “Yes, fine, thanks Joe. I’m leaving now to go and get Pip.”
“Doesn’t Louise normally pick her up today?”
“I promised Pip that we would go to see a new film today. We never had time over the weekend, and the last show is at four- thirty.”
“She’ll like that,” Joe said, and Leah replied,
“I hope so. We had a bit of a falling out on Saturday. She wanted to buy up the whole of Newcastle and I wasn’t really in the mood for shopping.” Leah pulled a wry face and was relieved when Joe laughed.
“Have a good time, and have some popcorn for me.”
As Leah pulled up at the school, Pippa was saying goodbye to her friends, and when she looked around for the familiar figure of Louise, she saw instead her mother. With a smile, she ran the short distance between them, and hugged Leah.
“Mum. What’s wrong?”
“Why should anything be wrong?” Leah asked breezily, as she relieved Pippa of her school bag and a painting she had lovingly created that afternoon.
“Nana always gets me.” Pippa skipped happily alongside her mother as they went to the car.
“I thought we could go and see that film at the cinema.” Leah unlocked the doors, and Pippa climbed in.
“With the dog, and the cat?”
Pippa’s excited tone made Leah smile as she took her place behind the steering wheel.
“That’s the one. Do you want to see it?”
“Please!”
It was not until they were seated in the movie theatre, stocked up with bags of popcorn, and sweets, and huge cups of fizzy drinks, and the lights went down ready for the film to begin, that Leah’s thoughts came a full turn to Nathan again. She remembered that he had also mentioned seeing a lawyer and Leah made a mental note to go and see her own lawyer in the morning to see exactly w
hat claims Nathan had on her daughter, if any. Before she knew it, the movie was over, and Pippa was excitedly relaying her favorite parts of the film, as they walked the short distance to the fast food restaurant, where they were soon devouring hamburgers and fries.
Leah had ordered herself some food, but had not been planning on eating it. The churning of her stomach was so intense, she was sure that she would never keep it down. Once they had sat down though, she discovered that she was very hungry, and was soon munching as if she had not eaten for days. She reasoned that she would need some sustenance to see her through the next traumatic hours, to help her cope with Pippa’s reaction. After another trip to the counter to obtain a large ice cream sundae for Pippa, Leah steeled her nerves, and began.
“Did you tell all of your friends about your new clothes today?”
Pippa nodded happily, with her mouth full of chocolate ice cream.
“Melissa wants to come home and see them. She says her mum never buys her nice clothes. She says I’m lucky to have a mum like you.”
Leah smiled wryly at the intended compliment. “I’m sure Melissa’s mother buys her things. Did you tell them about the rest of the weekend?”
“We had to write in our diaries what we done. I wrote about my clothes, and about the game we played.”
“Nothing else? Nothing about Nathan?”
“Nope.” Pippa was trying to lick ice cream from her chin. Leah handed her a paper napkin.
“Why not, Pip? Didn’t you like him coming over?”
“‘Course I did. It’s a secret, that’s all,” she said as if that explained it all.
“Who is it a secret from?”
“It’s my secret. If I tell everyone, they will want to see him. And he’s mine.”
Leah winced at the fierce possessiveness in Pippa’s voice. She hoped it wasn’t going to change her normally happy to share daughter.
“I see.” She looked at her daughter, who turned her grey eyes to her.
“Is Nathan coming over tonight?”
“No. Remember he’s very busy, Pip. He has lots of other things to do.”
“I know, but he says he likes seeing me.”