I don’t know how to deal with any of this. Not a bloody clue. That child—oh God, my child— is sleeping upstairs right this minute, unaware of the chaos that her arrival is causing.
It sounds horrible, but I sort of resent the timing. Why now, when I’ve just managed to get things the way I want them, when Ash has finally stopped giving me vacant smiles and is looking at me the way she used to?
One more week, four days max, and I would have had my baby eating out of my hand and telling me she loves me. Now, she’s looking at me with a mix of dark suspicion and a contempt so thick I can almost taste it.
“I didn’t know.”
It’s not a lie, not fully at least. It’s why I’d dropped everything seven years ago and rushed to the airport instead of staying and confronting Ashley the way I’d wanted to.
One phone call had totally changed the entire course of my life. And now it’s come back to fuck up what little progress I’ve made with my woman.
I hear her blow out a breath and risk a glance at her from beneath my lashes, feeling like the world’s worst when she sighs tiredly and falls into the chair across from mine, her soft shoulders slumping.
“Well, there’s no doubt: that kid is definitely yours,” she says slowly, chewing at her lips.
“Yes, I can see that. The question is—”
“And I can’t fucking believe some piece of shit just dropped her off and sent her through the woods! It’s dark and cold out there. Jesus, she wasn’t even wearing shoes. And she’s skinny, Luc, like really skinny, like she doesn’t eat enough, and…who leaves a defenseless little girl to meet her dad for the first time after making her walk through that jungle out there!” she hisses, getting really worked up.
“And do not get me started on the way she attacked a crummy ham and cheese sandwich! You will find the crummy asshole who didn’t feed her so I can beat them to death!”
This moment, right here, is when I fight a smile and blow out the breath I’ve been holding since my love called me into the study and introduced me to my daughter.
This moment is one that I will never forget, because in her indignation and maternal glory I know that I haven’t lost her yet, that I’m not doomed to spend the rest of my life without her, only seeing her when she allows me to visit the kids.
“Love, not to get ahead of myself here or anything, but does this mean you’re not preparing to rip my balls off tonight?” I ask, raising a brow.
“Well, I mean…you really didn’t know you had a kid floating around out there being neglected?”
“No.”
She’s chewing her lips, something that drives me crazy with lust, the current dilemma taking a back seat as my cock goes stiff and starts sniffing at his territory.
“But, how? And when?” she asks, giving me a suspicious look. “When exactly did you knock up that girl? Madeline says she’s six and a half, so if that’s correct…”
Ah, I understand the look now. She’s jealous.
This is going to be really uncomfortable, really, really difficult to explain to her, because obviously my love has done the math here and knows that I’d done something that I’m in no way proud of.
“It happened. Just… It happened.”
I’d been a normal teenage boy, drinking and sleeping my way through the last year of school before buckling under and following in the footsteps of generations before me, as was to be expected from the heir to the family’s throne.
That attitude and my selfish, disillusioned ways had all fallen away after I’d met her, though, so imagine my shock when Courtney Barker, a one-night stand I’d had months before, had called me to tell me she was pregnant.
I’d dropped everything, Ashley included, and gone back home, intending to do the right thing and provide for my child. It hadn’t happened that way, though, because instead of becoming a father I’d gotten a call just as I’d gotten into the taxi and learned that she’d had to be rushed to hospital and that… I’d wept when she’d told me there was no baby anymore.
Wept because, despite my age and the hard work ahead, I have always been one of those men who wants a family. Sure, the woman I’d imagined bearing my offspring had not been Courtney. No, that woman has always been and will forever be Ashley, but I’d cried for what I’d lost and sworn to myself that next time the child would be mine and Ashley’s.
“Before you met me I was…” My mouth twists, and she smirks, raising a lofty brow. “Yeah, anyway, we had a one-night thing, and then… She called me the day that—well, she called and told me that she was pregnant, and I hopped a plane to get to her. When I got home I learned that something went wrong.”