A Baby for the Billionaire(61)
“Let’s be a family, Clara. For real. Forever.”
It took her two tries before she could choke out the words. “Are you asking me—”
A knock interrupted her.
With a groan, Walker dropped her hand. “Who the hell is knocking at this hour?”
“Probably your assistant coming to drag you back to the office whether you want to go or not,” she said. “I told you not to keep ignoring him.”
He glanced at the door before shaking his head. “He’d call if he needed me.”
She arched a brow. “Walker Beckett, are you going to give up playing with some fancy piece of code for me?”
“Do you believe I’m serious now?”
“Oh deadly,” she purred, leaning toward him as he lowered his head.
The knock sounded again.
With a sigh, she pushed to her feet. “Screw it. Let’s let him in, he can drop off whatever he’s working on, and then we can send him on his way.”
“You are a far kinder person than I am,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she replied with a grin. Climbing over him, she skipped over to the door with a smile on her face.
He draped himself over the back of the couch as he watched her go.
Clara tossed him a smile as her fingers wrapped around the door handle, as if she couldn’t look away from him any more than he could from her.
Then she jerked the door open and horror washed through his body.
“Hello,” the beautiful blonde standing in the entrance said. “I’m looking for my son.”
Chapter Nineteen
Clara stood frozen as she faced the woman on the doorstep. Sluggishly, her brain tried to assimilate what her eyes were seeing. The woman was gorgeous but more disturbing was this person she’d never seen before was hauntingly familiar, and her slow brain was finally figuring out why.
She’d been staring at a miniature version of the woman for weeks.
Every time she looked at Hunter.
“Or Walker? Is he here?” the woman asked, a frown crossing her perfectly made up face. “If this is a bad time I can come back.”
“Bad time?” Clara said, shock receding in the face of the pain she knew was coming. Was it a bad time for the mother of the child she wanted to claim to show up? A bad time for this Amazonian model to come back into Walker’s life right when he’d been about to ask her…
What had he been about to say?
“I—”
“Clara, let her in.”
The woman brightened at the sound of Walker’s voice. There was nothing she could do as Hunter’s mother shouldered by her and stepped into her home.
“Veronica,” he said, rising.
“Hi,” she said. “I know I must be the last person you want to see right now, but I had to come.”
Clara drifted into the room, watching the scene unfold like a viewer watching a TV show. Nothing seemed like it was quite right.
Or real.
“Did you do this?” Walker said, obviously putting the pieces of the puzzle together that she had. “Did you leave our child on my doorstep like a cast-off pet you had gotten bored of?”
Veronica wrung her hands. “I didn’t know what to do. I never wanted to get pregnant. Once I discovered I was, I was on the other side of the world working.”
“They didn’t have phones in this distant, remote location?”
She hung her head. “I get it. I know I screwed all this up in the worst way possible, but I need to see my son. I thought I could give him up and be happy knowing how good a father you’d be to him, but I can’t.”
Ice washed through Clara’s veins. She opened her mouth to protest, but Walker beat her to it.
“If you try to take Hunter back, I will fight you with every resource I have available to me. You abandoned him and I gave him a stable, loving home. Any judge in their right mind would grant me custody.”
“You misunderstand,” she said, holding out a hand. “I’m not threatening you. I won’t try to take him back. I just want to be a part of my child’s life.” A slow smile crossed her lips. “Did you call him Hunter? I like it.”
“I don’t care what you like.”
Clara blinked. She’d never seen him that icy cold. His eyes were artic as they looked at the mother of his child.
Veronica took a step back. “Of course. I made all the wrong moves, here. I get that. Really, I do. But put yourself in my shoes. I’d had a brief affair with a man I knew didn’t want me or a child. Not long term, at least. I thought I was all alone. When I reached the end of my rope, I thought you’d refuse to help if I gave you the choice.”