Tess concentrated on the furious crashing of Carmine’s spoon against the plastic table top and waited for the tug of shame at the way she’d behaved as a teenager to pass. Her current problem had nothing to do with her dad, and the causes of that long-ago dismissal—and everything to do with Nate Graystone.
‘Thanks, Eva, but you don’t have to be sorry. I got over what happened back then years ago.’ Maybe blaming the estrangement entirely on her father seemed a little immature now, but it was how she’d got through it at the time; there was no point in revisiting her actions now. ‘The point is, Nate Graystone didn’t want to know when I first told him about the pregnancy and I’m not convinced that has changed.’
‘But surely the fact that he’s called this meeting at all has to be a positive step. A sign that he wants to be involved?’ Eva murmured. ‘Doesn’t he deserve a second chance?’
‘But I don’t want him to be involved,’ she said forcefully, and tried to make herself believe it. Wasn’t that why she’d lied to him six days ago? But why didn’t she feel quite so sure about that decision now? And why couldn’t she forget the tender touch of his fingertip on her cheek?
Eva drew in a weighty breath. ‘You should go to this meeting tomorrow, and tell him the truth about the pregnancy. Quite apart from anything else, you could use some financial help.’
‘Yes, but...’ Tess trailed off, her blood pressure plummeting as the real reason Nate had called this meeting suddenly became blindingly obvious. ‘I don’t think I’ll have to tell him. I think he already knows.’
‘Tess, you’ve gone white. What’s the matter?’
‘That’s why he’s got his lawyers involved. He’s planning to force me to have an abortion.’
Eva gasped. ‘That’s hideous. Don’t say that.’ But the shock and outrage in her voice did nothing to dislodge Tess’s suspicions.
Unless you were as sweet and optimistic as Eva, what other explanation could there be? She had to be a realist if she was going to survive.
The way she’d survived once before when her father had driven her to live with her mother’s sister and told her she could only come back when she learned to behave herself.
She’d cried and pleaded with him all the way, but he’d refused to budge on the matter, his voice weary but firm.
It had taken months of tears and tantrums, but eventually she’d got her act together and turned her life around, enrolling in a new school and making a fresh start. And the loss of her mother had finally become an old scar instead of a constantly festering wound. But her relationship with her father had remained strained and distant for the rest of his life. She’d never gone back to live with him. And she’d never been able to forgive him for casting her aside.
Funny to think that she’d thought Nate Graystone was as bad as her father—only to discover it was quite possible he was a great deal worse.
Unfortunately, the irony didn’t make the bitter disappointment or the grim reality of what she would have to face tomorrow feel any less daunting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘AS YOU can see, the compensation offered...’ the elderly lawyer paused to flick through several pages of the weighty document, a copy of which he’d handed to Tess when she’d arrived ten minutes ago ‘...which is detailed on the third page of the contract, is more than generous and should meet your needs for the foreseeable future.’
Tess’s hands tightened on the papers as Walter Jensen removed his spectacles, and fixed her with a steely-eyed stare. She stared back, refusing to relinquish eye contact as the document stayed firmly closed in her lap, the funereal atmosphere in the downtown office of Jensen & Partners almost as intimidating as the feel of Nate Graystone’s eyes boring into her skull from across the room.
Jensen’s bushy eyebrows rose up his forehead. ‘Would you like me to outline the details of the compensation?’
‘No, thank you,’ she replied, as firmly as she could manage while her fingers were trembling on the heavy paper. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
She had absolutely no intention of accepting, or even discussing, Nate Graystone’s blood money. Compensated for what exactly? Why didn’t they even have the guts to come out and say it?
She launched the document onto the desk. It landed with a loud slap of paper against polished wood. ‘I don’t need Graystone’s money. I happen to be perfectly capable of taking care of my own needs.’
The announcement echoed into silence in the wood-panelled office, which smelled of old books and lemon-scented polish. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room boring into her skull now—the clerk who had been busy typing notes on a tablet computer, a young male assistant attorney sharply dressed in a pinstriped suit, whom Jensen had introduced as Grant something, and of course the bane of her existence, Nathaniel Graystone CEO, who had given her a curt nod then sat in an alcove observing the proceedings from a distance, like a tiger waiting to pounce on its prey.