Unwrapping the Playboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  She grabbed at the first thing that occurred to her. “About how nice it was that Mr. Kullen brought over this game for you.”

  Twisting around to face forward, Jonathan beamed at his idol. “Yeah,” he chimed in. “Super-nice. Thanks again, Mr. Kullen.”

  “You’re more than welcome, champ.”

  Kullen’s eyes met hers over the boy’s head and held for a long moment. She felt as if he could see into her head. Into her heart. That he knew there was more to her statement than what she’d said to the boy.

  Was he doing this because he was kind, or because, perhaps even subconsciously, Kullen was showing her what she’d missed by disappearing eight years ago?

  Don’t torture yourself with questions you can’t answer. Just enjoy this however long it lasts. For once in your life, seize the moment.

  Her smile suddenly looked strained, Kullen thought. And he couldn’t help wondering what was going on in her head.

  He’d told himself more than once not to get pulled into this scenario, not to enjoy these simple pleasures as much as he did, because this whole scene was only temporary. Once he had leverage against Elizabeth Dalton, he could get the widow of the pharmaceutical heir to agree to an out-of-court settlement.

  And once it was settled, that would be that.

  Lilli would go on with her life and he with his. Separately. He had no illusions that any other scenario was in the offing.

  Which was why he wasn’t supposed to allow himself to get so involved in the everyday events of this little family.

  Easier said than done, he upbraided himself as Jonathan’s infectious laughter filled the air. The boy had won again.

  Losing, Kullen thought as he congratulated the boy on a race well run, never felt so good.

  “You wore him out,” Lilli declared walking into the living room later that evening. She’d just finished helping Jonathan get ready for bed. The boy had fallen asleep the minute his head hit the pillow even as he was protesting that he wasn’t the least bit sleepy.

  Kullen laughed as he glanced up from his laptop. “That works two ways.”

  Lilli sat down on the edge of what would be his bed in a matter of hours. “You don’t look worn out,” she commented.

  “Practice,” he told her, looking back at the screen he’d been reading.

  She knew she should go and leave Kullen to his work but somehow, she couldn’t seem to make herself get up just yet. She liked watching him. She could remember him looking that intense when they were in law school, studying together for an exam. He was so focused it seemed as if even the roots of his hair were studying.

  “Find something to help us?” she asked, trying not to sound as if her whole world depended on his answer.

  “Not sure yet,” he answered thoughtfully. “So far these are just pieces of the puzzle that Jewel’s sending to me.”

  “Jewel?” A foreign emotion stirred within her. Jealousy? Jewel wasn’t his sister’s name. A girlfriend, maybe?

  And what if she is? The man has a right to a girl friend, a life. You cut him loose, remember?

  Kullen nodded as he continued reading. “The investigator I’ve got digging into Erik and his mother’s past.” He looked at Lilli. “Jewel found out that you definitely weren’t the first woman Erik sexually assaulted—or the last,” he added. “Seems Dalton had the morals of a rutting pig. Kept his mother’s most trusted attorney, a Howard Cooper, very busy cutting deals as he cut checks in exchange for the women’s silence.” Kullen paused. “Did you ever take any money—”

  “Not a dime,” she declared, angry at the very thought.

  “Are you sure?” he pressed, his eyes on hers. He told himself that if she was lying, he’d know. Yeah, like you figured out what was going on eight years ago, right?

  “Of course I’m sure,” Lilli cried. “Don’t you think that I’d remember something like that? No one ever offered me money in exchange for my silence or my baby. I would have made him eat it if he had. Why would I lie about that to you?” she asked.

  He took an intelligent guess. “Because you’re afraid. Because you want to keep your son and you think this might jeopardize that, paint you in a bad light as someone who could be bought off.”

  He was just doing his job, she told herself. There was no reason for her to feel as if she was suddenly alone again.

  “I’m only going to say this once so listen carefully,” she told Kullen. “I never asked for any money, and no lawyer named Cooper or anyone else ever approached me with any money.” Her eyes narrowed, fixing him with a glare. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

  He was honest with her, playing devil’s advocate. “The part where all the other victims were given money but not you. Why not?” he asked. He didn’t like riddles unless he had the answers, and he didn’t in this case. He knew Elizabeth Dalton’s lawyers would try to trip him up with this. If Lilli was hiding something from him, he needed to know now. “Why were all these other women paid off and not you?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried, fisting her hands at her sides. Rising to her feet, she began to pace around the room restlessly. She was struggling not to shout, afraid of waking up Jonathan. Because she knew he was only trying to help—even though his question made her angry—she searched for an answer.

  She gave him the only one she could come up with. “Maybe because I never went to him, and all the other women did,” she guessed. “I wrote him a note only after Jonathan was born and that took a lot for me to do. I didn’t tell Erik where I was, didn’t ask him for anything. I never wanted to see him again, ever. I had a friend who was a flight attendant mail the note from another state. I did it for Jonathan so I could tell him that his father knew about him if he asked me someday.”

  “And you never gave Erik an address, or told him how to get in touch with you?”

  “No!” she retorted. “Don’t you understand? I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want anything from him,” she said fiercely, then struggled to control her voice. She realized that she was all but shouting at Kullen. Getting control over herself, she nodded at the laptop. “How many half brothers and sisters does my son have?”

  He looked at the screen although he didn’t have to. What he’d read was pretty conclusive. “From what I can tell, none.”

  “None?” she echoed. How was that possible? The law of averages didn’t bear that out. “But you said that he’d forced himself on other women. It sounded like a lot of other women—”

  “According to what Jewel found, the ones who did get pregnant terminated their pregnancies the minute they were paid off.”

  She stared at him. “All of them?”

  He nodded, scrolling through Jewel’s notes. “Looks like all of them,” he confirmed. He glanced up at her. “This is probably why Elizabeth Dalton is so obsessed with getting custody of your son. Unless I missed something or Jewel hasn’t found it yet, from the looks of it, Jonathan is her only living grandchild. Her only family, now that Erik’s dead.”

  Lilli sank back down on the sofa as the weight of what he was telling her penetrated. She really was in for the fight of her life.

  Kullen took out his cell phone and pressed a number in his directory. A moment later, he heard the phone on the other end ringing.

  “Hi, it’s Kullen. Got a minute? I just had a chance to go over the preliminary report you emailed. Great work, by the way. Did you get anything on Mrs. Dalton yet?”

  Lilli watched his face and surmised the negative answer. She suppressed a sigh.

  “Okay, keep me posted and call me the minute you find anything,” Kullen requested, terminating the call.

  As he put his phone away, he slanted a glance toward Lilli. She had an odd expression on her face he couldn’t read.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kullen waited, expecting her to ask a question. When she didn’t, he decided that Lilli needed a little prodding. The look on her face had aroused his curiosity—as well as, he had to silently admit, other th
ings.

  “What?”

  She supposed that constantly internalizing her concern wasn’t the healthiest way. Remaining silent left her thinking the worst.

  “Your investigator didn’t find any skeletons in Mrs. Dalton’s closet, did she?” she asked.

  He saw the disappointment in her eyes. And the deep concern. In general, he wasn’t a glass-half-full or half-empty kind of guy. The glass was what it was.

  But in this case, once again he felt that Lilli needed some hope. “No, not yet, but give her a little more time.”

  Lilli wanted so much to believe that it was going to be all right. She looked up into his eyes, silently pleading. “Tell me it’s not hopeless.”

  He knew that Elizabeth Dalton was a force to be reckoned with, but he also believed that the justice system did prevail for the most part. “It’s not hopeless.”

  Lilli nodded, but it was clear that she was vacillating between feeling hopeful and consumed with worry. “Because if it is,” she continued, “then I’d better start packing.”

  “Packing?”

  Again she nodded. “I’m not letting Elizabeth Dalton get her hands on Jonathan. She’ll wind up turning my son into another Erik, I know she will.”

  “I doubt that. He’s your son. He has your values. Even at this age, you can see that he’s not a weakling, not easily bent.”

  “I really hope you’re right,” she told him with heartfelt sincerity. “But I’m not taking any chances. I was willing to let Mrs. Dalton see Jonathan, let her be part of his life like any normal grandmother. But that wasn’t enough for her.” She vividly remembered the moment when the woman seemed to turn on her. “She told me that she wouldn’t take a backseat to anyone. And that I wasn’t fit to raise a Dalton. I told her that Jonathan wasn’t a Dalton, he was a McCall. She laughed at me and said that just proved her point, that I was more of a lightweight than she thought.”

  There was anger in her eyes, Kullen noted, as she continued. Damn, but she was magnificent, he couldn’t help thinking.

  “Any doubts I had that keeping Jonathan would ultimately result in depriving him of the finer things in life died right then and there. I’d rather have him poor, but well-adjusted and happy than a rich and self-centered bastard like…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. “Well, you know….”

  “His father?” Kullen supplied.

  He hadn’t expected to see the very real flash of anger that crossed her face. “Erik wasn’t his father,” she insisted. “He doesn’t deserve that title. He was just a sperm donor under the worst possible conditions.”

  Every time he thought of what she’d gone through at that sick bastard’s hands, he wanted to find some way to make it all up to her, to make the incident disappear from her memory. He wanted to hold her, but he remembered how she initially froze when he hugged her. He had no doubt that he would have to start at square one, and he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their professional relationship. The best thing he could do for her was to be her lawyer.

  “Leave your suitcases where they are,” he instructed. “As I told you, the courts tend to side with the mother in these kinds of cases.”

  Lilli was not nearly as confident as he was. Before coming to him she’d done her research on Elizabeth Dalton. Some organizations had all but canonized the woman.

  “Unless the person seeking custody is a well-known philanthropist who has half the city fawning over her and thinking she’s some kind of saint. Do you know how much money she’s donated to Blair Memorial Hospital alone? How do I win against someone like that? The family court judge will be falling all over himself or her self to give Mrs. Dalton what she wants.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that?” he suggested. “We might come up with some pretty persuasive arguments yet. As Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’” He smiled at the ironically worded statement. “A lot of truth in that.”

  God, but she hoped he and Yogi were right. “Sorry, I’m predisposed to worrying.” She lifted her shoulders in a helpless gesture, then let them drop. “I think it’s congenital.”

  “You know what you need?” he asked. “You need to get out, to have a little fun. To forget about all this for a few hours.”

  She doubted if she could put this out of her mind for even five minutes. Retaining custody was all she thought about, waking and sleeping.

  “After we win.”

  He was thinking about before the court date. Otherwise, she would be so tightly wound that by the time they won, she’d be a basket case, unable to enjoy her son. “Unless Jewel can come up with something very soon, winning might take us a while. You’ve got to make an effort to wind down. I need you relaxed and in control when we walk into the courtroom.”

  “I can be in control,” she told him confidently. As for the other, she doubted if that was possible, given her present state of mind. “But relaxed…” Her voice trailed off. There was a skeptical look on her face.

  “I’ve got a wedding I need to attend this Saturday,” he began.

  Her eyes met his. “All right.”

  Why was he telling her this? she asked silently. Was he saying that he would not be here with her and Jonathan this weekend? Or was there something else coming? She missed the optimistic, happy person she’d once been, the person who Erik had killed that night he’d forced himself on her.

  “Come with me,” Kullen urged. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was the right thing to do. He wanted her with him and what better, safer setting than a wedding, where there would be scores of other people around.

  “What?”

  “The invitation is for me and a guest,” Kullen explained, liking the idea more and more. “You can be my guest.”

  The thought of being with him on what would ordinarily be seen as a date warmed her. Tempted her. But even as she toyed with the thought, she knew she had to remember what was important here. She shook her head, turning him down. “I don’t want to leave Jonathan.”

  “You don’t have to,” he assured her. “He can be half a guest,” he teased.

  She’d forgotten how endearing Kullen could be. “Really?” She felt amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Is that how your invitation reads? Kullen Manetti and one and a half guests?”

  “Not quite,” he conceded. “But it can be arranged. Jonathan is small, he won’t take up much room.” It was an outdoor wedding. Another chair could be pulled up. “You’ve got to learn not to fight me on everything,” he told Lilli. He gave her a quick summary of the situation. “One of Kate’s best friends, Nikki, is getting married. Kate and her other best friend, Jewel, are the maids of honor.”

  “Jewel,” Lilli repeated, alert. “Is she the same one you just—”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “I’ve known the bride—and Jewel—ever since Kate started bringing them over to the house when she was in third grade.”

  What was it like to have friendships that went back that far? After she had learned she was pregnant, she had distanced herself from everyone who had ever meant anything to her. Lilli supposed she couldn’t blame it all on Erik. She was the one who was responsible for that.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she told Kullen. “I understand.”

  “I’m not explaining,” he corrected. “I’m just giving you some background.” He looked at her pointedly. “I think it’ll do you good to come, Lilli. To unwind a little. Being uptight isn’t going to help you any at the trial,” he repeated.

  What would Jonathan do all that time? “I can’t just drag Jonathan to a wedding.”

  “No dragging involved,” Kullen promised. “And there’ll be other kids there around his age. My mother and her cronies will be there, too. I guarantee they’ll be fighting each other for the right to watch Jonathan for us.”

  Us. He’d said us, not you. Was that just a slip of the tongue, or did he see himself that way? As part of a couple?

  Y
ou know the answer to that. You had your chance and you let it slip through your fingers.

  She cleared her throat and asked, “Why would they need to watch him?”

  He did his best to keep a straight face as he answered, “So you won’t worry about him being alone at the table when we dance.”

  “Dance?” she echoed. And then, despite her apprehension, her lips curved in a real smile.

  “Yeah. Dance,” he repeated. “It’s what people do to music when they can’t sing to it. You must have heard of it. I hear it’s catching on all over the country.”

  She laughed, tickled despite the oppressive gravity that was never far from her mind. “Yes, I think I remember hearing about it somewhere.”

  “Good, then I won’t have to draw any diagrams for you.” The idea of dancing with her warmed him as he thought about it now.

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Lilli warned. “The only one I’ve danced with in a very long time is Jonathan. When he was a baby,” she added, then explained. “It would soothe him and he’d go right to sleep.” She smiled fondly, remembering. “If I dance with you, I might put you to sleep.”

  That was the last thing that dancing with her would do. “I sincerely doubt that,” he told her. “Although,” he proposed, “if you’re game, we can put your theory to the test.”

  Her immediate reaction was to draw back. It was ingrained in her. Another reason to hate Erik and to keep her son from falling into his mother’s clutches. “No, that’s all right—”

  “Afraid?” he challenged loftily, playing a hunch.

  The single-word question had the desired effect. He saw Lilli’s chin lift, saw the stubborn look that entered her eyes. The Lilli he remembered had been soft-spoken and meek. The one who had walked into his office to ask for his help had more spirit than her younger counterpart. He was fairly certain that being a mother, being solely responsible for a child, had created this newer, braver Lilli 2.0.