So he'd come here mainly to see the baby for himself before arranging for the paternity test his lawyer wanted. Because Simon had half convinced himself that there was no way this baby was his.
But one look at the boy changed all that. He was stubborn, Simon admitted silently, but he wasn't blind. The baby looked enough like him that no paternity test should be required-though he'd get one anyway. He'd been a businessman too long to do anything but follow the rules and do things in a logical, reasonable manner.
"Nathan," Tula said, glancing from the baby on her hip to Simon, "this is your daddy. Simon, meet your son."
She started toward him and Simon quickly held up one hand to keep her where she was. Tula stopped dead, gave him a quizzical look and tipped her head to one side to watch him. "What's wrong?"
What wasn't? His heart was racing, his stomach was churning. How the hell had this happened? he wondered. How had he made a child and been unaware of the boy's existence? Why had the baby's mother kept him a secret? Damn it, he had had the right to know. To be there for his son's birth. To see him draw his first breath. To watch him as he woke up to the world.
And it had all been stolen from him.
"Just … give me a minute, all right?" Simon stared at the tiny boy, trying to ignore the less-than-pleased expression on Tula Barrons's face. Didn't matter what she thought of him, did it? The important thing here was that Simon's entire world had just taken a sharp right turn.
A father.
He was a father.
Pride and something not unlike sheer panic roared through him at a matching pace. His gaze locked on the boy, he noticed the dark brown hair, the brown eyes-exact same shade as Simon's own-and, finally, he noticed the baby's lower lip beginning to pout.
"You're making him cry." Tula jiggled the baby while patting him on the back gently.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You look angry and babies are very sensitive to moods around them," she said and soothed the boy by swaying in place and whispering softly. Keeping her voice quiet and singsongy, she snapped, "Honestly, is that scowl a permanent fixture on your face?"
"I'm not-"
"Would it physically kill you to smile at him?"
Frustrated and just a little pissed because he had to admit that she was at least partially right, Simon assumed what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
She rolled her eyes and laughed. "That's the best you've got?"
He kept his voice low, but didn't bother to hide his irritation. "You might want to back off now."
"I don't see why I should," she countered, her voice pleasant despite her words. "Sherry left me as guardian for Nathan and I don't like how you're treating him."
"I haven't done anything."
"Exactly," she said with a sharp nod. "You won't even let him get near you. Honestly, haven't you ever seen a child before?"
"Of course I have, I'm just-"
"Shocked? Confused? Worried?" she asked, then continued on before he could speak. "Well, imagine how Nathan must feel. His mother's gone. His home is gone. He's in a strange place with strangers taking care of him and now there's a big mean bully glaring at him."
He stiffened. "Now just a damn min-"
"Don't swear in front of the baby."
Simon inhaled sharply and shot her a glare he usually reserved for employees he wanted to terrify into improving their work skills, fully expecting her to have the sense to back off. Naturally, she paid no attention to him.
"If you can't be nice and at least pretend to smile, you'll just have to go away," she said. Then she spoke to the baby. "Don't you worry, sweetie, Tula won't let the mean man get you."
"I'm not a mean-oh, for God's sake." Simon had had enough of this. He wasn't going to be chastised by anybody, least of all the short, curvy woman giving him a disgusted look.
He stalked across the small kitchen, plucked the baby from her grasp and held Nathan up to eye level. The baby's pout disappeared as if it had never been and the two of them simply stared at each other.
The baby was a solid, warm weight in his hands. Little legs pumped, arms waved and a thin line of drool dripped from his mouth when he gave his father a toothless grin. His chest tight, Simon felt the baby's heartbeat racing beneath his hands and there was a … connection that he'd never felt before. It was basic. Complete. Staggering.
In that instant-that heart-stopping, mind-numbing second-Simon was lost.
He knew it even as he stood there, beneath Tula Barrons's less than approving stare, that this was his son and he would do whatever he had to to keep him.
If this woman stood in his way, he'd roll right over her without a moment's pause. Something in his gaze must have given away his thoughts because the small blonde lifted her chin, met his eyes in a bold stare and told him silently that she wouldn't give an inch.
Fine.
She'd learn soon enough that when Simon Bradley entered a contest-he never lost.
Three
"You're holding him like he's a hand grenade about to explode," the woman said, ending their silent battle.
Despite that swift, sure connection he felt to the child in his arms, Simon wasn't certain at all that the baby wouldn't explode. Or cry. Or expel some gross fluid. "I'm being careful."
"Okay," she said and pulled out a chair to sit down.
He glanced at her, then looked back to the baby. Carefully, Simon eased down onto the other chair pulled up to the postage-stamp-sized table. It looked so narrow and fragile, he almost expected it to shatter under his weight, but it held. He felt clumsy and oversize. As if he were the only grown-up at a little girl's tea party. He had to wonder if the woman had arranged for him to feel out of place. If she was subtly trying to sabotage this first meeting.
Gently, he balanced the baby on his knee and kept one hand on the small boy's back to hold him in place. Only then did he look up at the woman sitting opposite him.
Her big eyes were fixed on him and a half smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, causing that one dimple to flash at him. She'd gone from looking at him as if he were the devil himself to an expression of amused benevolence that he didn't like any better.
"Enjoying yourself?" he asked tightly.
"Actually," she admitted, "I am."
"So happy to entertain you."
"Oh, you're really not happy," she said, her smile quickening briefly again. "But that's okay. You had me worried, I can tell you."
"Worried about what?"
"Well, how you were going to be with Nathan," she told him, leaning against the ladder back of the chair. She crossed her arms over her chest, unconsciously lifting her nicely rounded breasts. "When you first saw him, you looked … "
"Yes?" Simon glanced down when Nathan slapped both chubby fists onto the tabletop.
" … terrified," she finished.
Well, that was humiliating. And untrue, he assured himself. "I wasn't scared."
"Sure you were." She shrugged and apparently was dialing back her mistrust. "And who could blame you? You should have seen me the first time I picked him up. I was so worried about dropping him I had him in a stranglehold."
Nothing in Simon's life had terrified him like that first moment holding a son he didn't know he had. But he wasn't about to admit to that. Not to Tula Barrons at any rate.
He shifted around uncomfortably on the narrow chair. How did an adult sit on one of these things?
"Plus," she added, "you don't look like you want to bite through a brick or something anymore."
Simon sighed. "Are you always so brutally honest?"
"Usually," she said. "Saves a lot of time later, don't you think? Besides, if you lie, then you have to remember what lie you told to who and that just sounds exhausting."
Intriguing woman, he thought while his body was noticing other things about her. Like the way her dark green sweater clung to her breasts. Or how tight her faded jeans were. And the fact that she was barefoot, her toenails were a deep, sexy red and she was wearing a silver toe ring that was somehow incredibly sexy. She was nothing like the kind of woman Simon was used to. The kind Simon preferred, he told himself sternly. Yet, there was something magnetic about her. Something-
"Are you just going to stare at me all night or were you going to speak?"