"Look," she said, taking a few tentative steps in his direction. "Me writing that article has nothing to do with you."
He looked at her as if she was crazy. "You wrote an exposé about my family. You all but crucified my brother with the vicious lies of a source you won't stop protecting. It doesn't get any more 'about me' than that."
"They weren't lies."
He snorted. "Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. For a journalist, you sure don't seem to give a shit about truth."
Anger flashed through her, replacing the guilt. "You don't know anything about me!"
"Because you won't talk to me. Jesus, you're halfway done with your pregnancy and you didn't even tell me about it."
"I told you-"
"In a voice mail? In one lousy voice mail? Who does that?" He turned on her then, stalking toward her like the predator she was sure he was.
"I was pregnant with a stranger's baby! What else was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to answer my texts!" he roared. "You were supposed to talk to me about that bastard's accusations against Bijoux. You were supposed to get in my face about this pregnancy and make me hear you."
"That's not how I do things." She didn't beg for attention, not now, not anymore. And certainly not from a man who meant nothing to her.
"How? Reasonably? Honestly? Like an adult? Yeah, believe me, I'm getting that's not your way."
"Screw you!" Her own anger roared back to life. "You exploit children and consumers. You get rich off blood diamonds. You lie every day of your life. Who the hell are you to judge me?" She'd been so disappointed when the allegations had proved to be true, had been so hurt even though she'd known it was a ridiculous response. But he'd seemed like such a good guy that night at his house. Had seemed so perfect. To find out that he actually dealt with monsters just to turn a profit, just to go from a billionaire to a bigger billionaire … it had wounded her way more than it should have.
"You don't listen to anybody, do you?" he demanded incredulously. "You believe what you want and do your own thing and to hell with the consequences. To hell with the truth. How do you plan on being a news reporter with an attitude like that?"
His words were a slap across the face, a hit at the deepest, most sensitive part of her soul. "I am a news reporter."
"You're a child playing at being a grown-up." He shook his head, shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he took a steadying breath. "You know what? We're not getting anywhere with this. Why don't you go upstairs, read the file I gave you and talk to your managing editor, who's got a copy of it by now. Then figure out what you want to do and call me. We'll talk then."
"Yeah, right, I'll be sure to do that. Maybe I'll even leave a voice mail."
His face darkened and for a second it looked as if he was going to tell her off, once and for all. But in the end, he swallowed whatever obnoxious thing he'd thought of saying and simply told her, "Call me when you want to talk."
"I'm never going to want to talk to you."
"Well, that's too bad, isn't it? Because that's my baby you're carrying and I will be a part of his life. In fact, the only question from where I'm standing is, will you?"
The words were his parting shot and then he turned, walking away from her. Leaving her staring after him with her mouth open and fear clawing at her throat. She'd been around the block enough times to recognize a threat when she heard one.
For a second, she couldn't quite figure out how she'd gotten to this point. That morning, she'd woken up a soon-to-be single mother and she'd been okay with that. No, she'd been more than okay. She'd been happy with it. Fast-forward six hours, and the man who had fathered her child, a man she didn't even know, had just threatened to take that baby from her. And he was rich enough to do it.
"Hey!" she called, but he didn't turn around. Didn't so much as flinch to acknowledge that he heard her. "Nic!" She started after him, but before she could take more than two steps, her phone buzzed with a text. She glanced down at it, then froze when she saw Malcolm's words. "Bijoux article canceled. Source a hoax. See me ASAP."
Nine
Nic climbed into his car and roared out of the parking lot with no intention of stopping until he was several miles away from Desi Maddox and the Los Angeles Times. Running might be a juvenile reaction, but if he'd stood there arguing with her for much longer he would have said something he regretted. And since she was the mother of his child-his child-that didn't seem like the best course of action. For any of their sakes.
For once, LA traffic cooperated with him and as he sped through the streets he tried to calm down, tried to wrap his head around the fact that not only had he found Desi after all these months, but that he was also about to become a father. A father. The word reverberated in his head, the weight of it pressing in on him from all sides.
In a little less than five months, he would be a father. To a bouncing baby boy. And then what? He didn't know the first thing about parenting. How could he, when his own father had set such a shiningly bad example?
Then again, maybe Nic knew more than he thought. If he just did the opposite of everything his own father had done, he could probably win a father-of-the-year award.
He kept driving, sliding his Porsche in and out of traffic as he tried not to panic. It wasn't that he didn't want to parent his son, wasn't that he was afraid of the responsibility of it. Because he wasn't-no matter what Desi had concocted in her head about him being a soulless monster with a Peter Pan complex. That wasn't the case. He was more than willing to step up to the plate here, more than willing to take care of his child.
He was just terrified of screwing it up. Of making mistakes that hurt his kid the way his father had hurt him and Marc. He didn't want to do that. Didn't want to be the guy who let his family down over and over and over again.
Lost in thought, he cruised through a yellow light as it turned red. Horns blared at him from both sides of the cross-traffic, and he waved a hand in silent apology even as he decided he should probably pull over before he caused an accident.
Griffith Park and Observatory was only a couple of blocks ahead of him, so he angled his way through traffic, moving to the right lane so he could make the turn into the parking lot. But once there, he couldn't just sit. His thoughts were too momentous, too overwhelming. He needed to be doing something or he would be crushed under the weight of them.
He climbed out of the car and headed for the park. If nothing else, he could walk. Nothing like a shot of nature in the middle of a crowded city to help a guy clear his head.
But as he walked, things only got more muddled. Oh, not the fact that he was going to be a father to this baby. That part he was crystal clear about. His kid, his responsibility.
But the rest of it … yeah, the rest of it was a hell of a lot murkier.
What kind of father would he be?
How would he avoid hurting his own child the way his dad had hurt him?
How would he get past the wall Desi had built around herself and get her to talk to him-and listen to him?
How were the two of them going to build some kind of secure family unit for their child when she seemed to hate him? When she believed the worst of him? When she wanted nothing to do with him?
He'd lived that life, caught between two parents who hated each other and used their children as weapons. There was no way he would let that happen to his kid. No way he would let his son grow up the same way he and Marc had.
But how was Nic going to stop it? How was he going to convince Desi that she could trust him not to hurt her or the baby? And speaking of trust, how the hell was he ever going to trust her again after everything she'd done?
He was willing to accept that she'd believed the wrong source, that she'd bought whatever ridiculous bill of goods had been sold to her. But she was an investigative journalist-albeit a green one judging from the lack of bylines he'd found when researching her. It was her job to dig for facts. Her job to talk to people on both sides of the issue as she tried to figure out who was telling the truth.
She hadn't done that. Despite the fact that they'd spent what he'd thought was a fairly spectacular night together, despite the fact that she was carrying the baby who in time would be heir to Bijoux, she'd had no problem writing an article that would have brought his family's company to its knees. And she hadn't even had the decency to give him a heads-up, let alone contact him to get his side of the story.