And yet…if she had her son, she had everything that mattered. “So you’re not going to try and take Nathan from me?”
“No.” He allowed a silence. “Of course, if you don’t marry me I’ll fight for custody. A child should have both parents.”
She quickly pulled herself together. To live with the man she’d once loved, knowing he believed she’d cheated on him—wouldn’t her life be a living hell? How would that affect Nathan? Perhaps if she pointed this out…
“Even if we don’t love each other?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you consider me a liar?”
“Yes.”
“That won’t be a marriage, Tate. That’ll be a nightmare, not only for us but for Nathan.”
His mouth tightened. “If you care about your son, you’ll make it work.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it?”
“Perhaps part-time custody,” she began, knowing she was in a losing battle now, not even sure why she didn’t simply give in. Tate always won.
“No.”
“Hear me out. I—”
Just then, the infant babbled something. When she looked, Nathan had pulled himself up by the side of the bed and was hanging on to the quilt, the cheesiest of grins telling them how clever he thought he was. Gemma’s heart overflowed with love.
Then something about Tate made her look at him. In his eyes was twelve months’ worth of longing for a son he’d never known. “Tate, I—”
“Don’t, Gemma,” he said tersely. “Don’t say another word.” He twisted on his heels and left the room.
Tate stood at the living room window, a hard knot in the center of his chest. He still felt shell-shocked by today’s events, like he was in a war zone with everything raining down on him.
And then his infant son had smiled and lit up the room, and Tate knew there was a reason he had run into Gemma today. His son might have a mother, but Nathan needed his father. Tate had never felt more certain of anything in his life.
God, how could Gemma have kept Nathan from him? And how could she let him believe—even briefly—that she’d had another man’s child? He’d felt physically ill in that hospital corridor. The reminder of her with other men, the shock of thinking she’d had another man’s baby, had knocked the breath from his body.#p#分页标题#e#
There had only been two times in his life when he’d been this winded. Once when he’d caught Gemma kissing Drake, and the other when he was twelve and his mother had left his father for another man.
Darlene Chandler had supposedly gone away on a trip to visit a sick cousin, but Tate had overheard his father talking to her on the phone. Never would Tate have thought he’d hear his tall, strong father pleading for his wife to come back to him. Nothing had worked, and Jonathan Chandler had seemed to shrink in size, as if he’d lost a part of himself. Not even Tate’s young sister, Bree, who’d been too young to know and who was the apple of her father’s eye, could get through to him.
A week later, his mother had walked back in the door.
Tate had always felt protective of his father after that. He loved his mother, and somehow his parents’ marriage had been better than before, but Tate couldn’t forget how loving a woman could tear a man down. He was determined never to let that happen to him.
Certainly not with Gemma.
It had been all about sex with them, nothing more. He’d never wanted a woman like he’d wanted her. From the moment he’d set eyes on Gemma, he’d needed her with an ache that had gone right through him. He’d spent every spare second of the next month trying to ease that ache. She hadn’t moved into his penthouse, exactly, but they’d spent so much time there, she might as well have.
He’d been confident their affair would eventually run its course. He wasn’t fool enough to believe it had been about love. He’d known he’d never give his heart to any woman. Sure, one day he’d marry, and he’d have kids, but that was in the future. Until then, he thought, he had plenty of time to tire of Gemma and then go back to playing the field.
He just hadn’t expected Gemma to be the one playing games, and definitely not with his best friend. She may not have slept with Drake, but it hadn’t been for want of trying.
Memories flooded back. It had been Drake’s birthday, and Tate had asked Gemma if she’d host the party. No wonder she’d agreed so enthusiastically. He’d thought it was because she was finally meeting more of his friends. In reality it was because she’d planned on seducing Drake.