She walked through the kitchen again and waved good night to the staff. She so desperately wanted to escape instead of confronting the new reality that would include Max’s father. Her heart crumpled. This quiet, lovely life had ended tonight when she saw Justin. Regardless of her reasons, whether sound or flawed, she’d taken the memories of Max’s childhood from Justin. Now her baby boy was ready to enter high school, and Justin was here to claim his son.
She walked out the back door and down the side path, directly to Justin’s suite. She’d confront her past and defend her decisions. Today Justin might be a man who wanted to be a father, but he must remember who he’d been then, before Max was born, when she’d discovered she was pregnant. His life and desires had been much different. He’d been a man enraptured by his glorious playboy lifestyle. Her knuckles rapped against the wooden door.
The door flew open. He stood before her, still in his suit jacket but his tie now gone and his collar unbuttoned. “I wasn’t certain you’d be brave enough to come by tonight.”
He turned from the doorway, and she followed him inside his suite. Conflicting emotions bounded through her. Uncapped sexual attraction dizzied her and collided with fear and anguish and confusion. How could she keep a calm and cool demeanor in the presence of the only man who had made her swoon?
He walked toward the kitchen, lifted a glass of pinot noir, and turned to her. She took the glass.
“I suppose I should offer a toast.” He lifted his wineglass and anger thundered over his face and then passed, quickly concealed. “To our son, the boy I’ve yet to meet and the man I want to know.” He reached out his glass and clinked it to hers.
She couldn’t drink to those words. Couldn’t sip the wine as though Justin’s presence hadn’t sent her carefully constructed world reeling.
Justin took a long drink and set the wineglass on the kitchen island. “You can’t drink to that or you won’t?”
Her gaze captured his. There were so many things to discuss. A part of her wanted his forgiveness, a part of her wanted him to leave, and a part of her she was scared to acknowledge wanted him. Heat grew in her chest, and as if sensing her desire, he stepped closer. His masculine, musky scent mixed with wine overwhelmed her. His voice was low. “Where is my son? Where is Max?”
“How do you … why do you think he’s your son?” She stepped back, but her hand clutched the counter. Let him stew on the possibility that another man might have claim to Max. An impossibility that made her want to laugh out loud. There’d been no men, none since Justin.
She glanced at his hands. One clasped the wineglass stem and looked as though he might snap the crystal into shards. The other hand was planted on the kitchen island, his palm flat and his fingers tapered and smooth and beautiful. The pleasure those fingertips could give. She licked her lips with the memory of Justin’s hands on her body, of him deep inside her, pulsing and throbbing and causing her to scream his name. “I mean, who knows the number of men I was sleeping with when I was in New York?” She pressed her lips into a tight line. “You can’t possibly think you were the only one?”
A giant laugh burst from Justin’s lips. A huge smile split his face. A smile that made her feel very small.
Chapter 6
“Oh, Aubrey, these delicious games you still play.” He took another sip of wine. She was close and energy crackled between them. “Where is my son?”
“Again I ask you, why do you think Max is your son?” Aubrey lifted an eyebrow. An attempt at nonchalance … she wasn’t very good at nonchalance. Anxiety, worry, OCD, she could do all of those, but nonchalance she’d never mastered.
“How do I know?” He pressed his fingers into the front pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the picture he carried next to his heart. He placed the photo on the counter between them. “Are you truly telling me Max isn’t my son?”
A mother’s love flashed over her face as her gaze lingered on the picture that lay on the counter between them. Her fingertips crept to the edge of the photo as though to shield Max, or maybe even herself, from the truth that was finally coming to light after her horrible lie. She glanced up from the picture. “He has your eyes,” she whispered.
A knife sliced through his heart. How different that statement might feel if she’d stayed in New York and had his son with him or even if she’d reached out and told him he was a father. But now hearing those words only twisted the pain, the loss, the time that he’d never get back, deeper into the gash in his soul.