‘No problem, but first you tell me whether you’re pregnant or not.’
She shifted away, the guilty blush warming her cheeks.
He stiffened and then swore softly, running his hand through his hair. ‘I knew it.’
He snagged her wrist and held on. ‘Is it mine?’ he asked, his voice frigid.
She shook her head, but the denial refused to come out of her mouth. One lie was enough.
His fingers tightened. ‘Tell the truth for once.’
She wrestled her hand out of his grip. ‘What do you mean, for once? I told you the truth weeks ago. And you didn’t believe me. Remember?’
‘So it is mine. You’re sure?’
She ducked her head, rubbed her wrist where his fingers had dug in.
If only she could lie again. It would be the easy way out. But she couldn’t, because it would be another betrayal of the life growing inside her, and the baby didn’t deserve that.
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she murmured, the sudden wave of hopelessness washing over her.
Nathaniel Graystone was her child’s father. She would always have a connection to this cynical, controlled stranger, because her child would share his DNA.
‘And you’re going to keep it?’
She met his gaze, determined to weather the storm she knew was coming. ‘Yes. And nothing you can say or do is going to make me get rid of it.’
His brows flattened, the line across his forehead deepening, but he looked stunned, not angry. ‘What?’
‘Oh, come on, how dumb do you think I am?’ she countered, scepticism dripping from every syllable. ‘What was the settlement supposed to pay for?’
‘Not that.’ The expletive came out on a low murmur of fury. ‘What kind of a jerk do you think I am?’
She flinched, but didn’t back down, the tiny slither of uncertainty, Eva’s words of caution, quickly quashed by the memory of how he’d humiliated her when she’d come to see him. ‘The kind of jerk who refused to admit this child might be his when I first told him I was pregnant. That kind.’
‘My reaction that day has nothing to do with this.’
‘What does it have to do with, then? Because if I recall correctly that man didn’t seem too keen on even acknowledging his responsibilities, let alone paying for them.’
He lurched out of his chair, paced across the silk carpet. When he finally turned back to her, she saw frustration instead of fury. ‘I didn’t ask you here to pay you to have an abortion. I realise I didn’t react too well when you first told me. But I thought...’ He trailed off, the rigid set of his shoulders matching the granite set of his features.
‘You thought what?’ she prompted. When he didn’t reply she answered for him. ‘That I was lying about the pregnancy, or your paternity, or both? Isn’t that what you thought? And then you have the cheek to be surprised that I would lie to you about being pregnant. Of course I lied. Why wouldn’t I?’
She could hear the strain in his voice when he replied. ‘What I said that day had nothing to do with the child. I got you confused with someone else.’
The churning sensation in her stomach finally settled a little. He hadn’t been planning to bully her into an abortion. ‘Who?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘It is to me.’
* * *
The muscles in Nate’s neck and shoulders stretched taut and started to throb. He didn’t want to talk about Marlena. But seeing Tess’s expression, ripe with suspicion, he realised he didn’t have much of a choice.
He’d made a mistake when she’d told him about the baby, doubting her because of another woman’s dishonesty. And now he was going to have to pay the penalty. Or have her believe the worst of him.
He rolled his shoulders, but they continued to ache as he forced the words out. ‘I dated a woman a long time ago. It wasn’t working out, so I broke it off...’ At least he’d had the good sense to do that much to protect himself. ‘They did a profile piece about my business a few months later in the Chronicle—named it one of the top ten start-ups in the Bay Area—and Marlena turned up the night after at my condo in nothing but a fur coat and heels.’ How stupid had he been not to realise the sequence of events at the time? ‘A month later she turned up again and told me I was going to be a father and I believed her. Even though I was mad as hell about it.’
‘You were mad at her for getting pregnant?’
The loaded question took him by surprise. He’d been so deep in the memory of that kick-in-the-gut moment, he’d almost forgotten Tess was listening to every word.
‘I was mad at myself.’ He’d been twenty, obsessed with making the business work, and proving he could undo some of the damage his father had done. Having a child because he’d been careless and hadn’t been able to control his own lust would have proved exactly the opposite. ‘But I figured I’d made a mistake, so it was up to me to fix it. I offered to support her, and the child, give it my name on the condition that I didn’t have to be involved.’