A thumb planted in her rosebud mouth, Bella studied Jax fixedly, her green eyes full of curiosity.
Jax bent down and lifted a toy that broke straight into a catchy tune as soon as he pressed the right button. Bella grinned and came closer, steadying herself on one powerful thigh with a clutching little hand.
‘She’s not scared,’ Jax remarked, marvelling that he could still speak normally after being plunged without warning into some of his darkest memories. The remnants of that guilt, anger and pain still resonated powerfully with him.
‘No, she’s quite confident and she likes men. My father makes a fuss of her and spoils her. I suppose we all spoil her a bit,’ Lucy conceded, staring at the little tableau of Jax and his daughter as they each assessed the other. ‘She looks very like you—’
Jax skated a teasing forefinger off Bella’s determined little chin and swallowed thickly, struggling to master his almost overwhelming emotions. He should not cloud his first meeting with his daughter with such tragic memories, he censured himself fiercely. The past was the past and it would be wiser to leave the sad little ghost of Tina safely buried there.
‘What is it?’ Lucy prompted, troubled by the feverish glitter of Jax’s stunning eyes, their brilliance enhanced by the surround of spiky black lashes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Jax insisted, his wide sensual mouth slashing into a sudden forced smile, for he had shared far too much private stuff with Lucy in the past and he had no plans to make himself vulnerable in that way again ‘But when she was born you should have moved heaven and earth to ensure that I knew I was a father.’
Unprepared for that criticism when she had tried every way she knew how to contact him, Lucy stiffened. ‘That’s not fair—’
‘What isn’t fair,’ Jax fielded as he accepted the little plastic doll that Bella brought him, ‘is that this little girl and I weren’t able to be in each other’s lives from the start.’
Lucy’s bright blue eyes hardened. ‘As you said though, when you dumped me, you didn’t want me making a nuisance of myself,’ she reminded him thinly. ‘If you didn’t want to hear from me ever again, how was I supposed to tell you?’
Not trusting himself to speak in the mood he was in, Jax shrugged a muscular shoulder in brooding silence.
‘Didn’t think you’d have an answer for that,’ Lucy sniped, leaning down to clasp Bella’s hand and guide her into the kitchen where she set about filling a toddler cup with milk.
Bella pushed against the back door, keen to get out onto the patio and play. Lucy opened it and watched her daughter toddle out into the sunlight to retrieve the little plastic pram she loved.
His child, his daughter, a new generation in the Antonakos family, Jax acknowledged, watching Bella swig her milk and then set down the cup with exaggerated care before pushing the little pram out onto the small lawn. Somehow, he didn’t know how, he didn’t care, Lucy should have contacted him, he thought angrily.
‘I have missed out on over a year of my daughter’s life,’ Jax intoned grimly. ‘That is not acceptable—’
Under sudden attack, Lucy spun. ‘No, what was unacceptable back then was the way you treated me!’ she condemned with spirit.
Jax thought about the contents of the investigative file he had been given. He saw no point in throwing the contents of that file in Lucy’s face now. Likewise her little session in that alleyway. His reaction had been all too human. He had let his anger and aggression take over and dictate his moves. ‘I’m afraid it never occurred to me that you could be pregnant,’ he admitted in a harsh undertone. ‘I should’ve acknowledged that possibility and made provision for it but I didn’t. That was a serious oversight on my part.’
A little of the tension in Lucy’s slender shoulders eased. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘Then let us not waste time stating the obvious and rehashing a past we both prefer to forget,’ Jax countered impatiently.
‘We can’t forget it when Bella was born from it,’ Lucy argued helplessly. ‘We may not like each other but we’ll just have to live with that. I’ll make coffee, and not because this is a social occasion but because we need to learn how to act civilised.’
As Lucy left the doorway to switch on the kettle Jax strode out onto the patio, unable to let his newly discovered daughter out of his sight and reach. It crossed his mind that he had no intention of living with his distaste of Lucy and forging a civilised alliance with her as a co-parent. With what he knew about her past, he didn’t, couldn’t possibly trust her to be a caring decent mother. Bella’s well-being came first and nobody would ever persuade him that his child could be safe with a mother who had once dealt in drugs and sold her body. It didn’t matter that to all intents and purposes Lucy appeared to have turned over a new leaf.
Jax, after all, was the son of a drug addict. He had heard too many promises, seen all too many fresh starts and witnessed the subsequent falls from grace. Bella would always be at risk of harm if she remained with her mother, he decided cynically. He would have to fight Lucy through the courts for custody of their daughter. He was sure that she loved Bella to the best of her ability but with her fatal weakness for substance abuse he couldn’t trust her to always put their daughter’s needs first.
‘Are we capable of behaving like friends?’ Lucy asked Jax hopefully as she hovered in the doorway.
Jax glanced at her in astonishment, questioning how she contrived to still look so young and innocent in spite of her misspent past. Friends? Never, he conceded wryly. And once Lucy received the first official communication from the Antonakos legal team and realised what he planned to do friendship would be the last thing on her mind. But what other choice did he have?
‘You have to stop blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong,’ Lucy told him squarely. ‘In any relationship it takes two people to screw up. Remember that...’
As she spoke Bella fell flat on her face on the lawn and let out a yell, followed by frantic sobbing. Jax strode across a flower bed and snatched the little girl up into his arms, speaking softly to her, smoothing a lean brown hand gently over her shaking back to soothe her before getting down on his knees to show her something on the ground in the clear hope of distracting her from the fright she had sustained. Lucy stared at that seemingly effortless display of child management in sheer amazement, involuntarily impressed.
‘Jax...’ she muttered in a daze.
Once Bella was restored to calm again, Jax set her down. His lean, strong face taut, he glanced at Lucy, noting how the sunshine lit up the shades of red in her hair and illuminated her perfect skin. Lucy bent to pick up the pram and the shapely curve of her heart-shaped derriere pulled tight below the cropped jeans she wore. Jax remembered ripping her jeans off her, desperate to sink into the damp, welcoming heat of her, and fierce tension gripped him as he suppressed the hunger flaring through him like a dangerous burning brand. ‘In a couple of days I’d like to take Bella out. I’ll bring a nanny with me if that keeps you happy.’
‘I assumed you would be waiting for the DNA results before you did anything official,’ Lucy parried, thoroughly disconcerted by his request as she walked back to him.
‘The DNA tests will only confirm what I already know,’ Jax murmured. ‘Are you going to make me fight for access to her?’
Lucy winced and set her teeth together. If in doubt, weigh in with the threats. That was Jax. He could afford the very best lawyers. Ultimately he would be entitled to time with his daughter whatever she did or said and trying to ignore that reality would be foolish. In any case, didn’t she want Bella to have a father? Yes, she did, but she hadn’t expected to have to share her time with her daughter quite so immediately.
‘No, but I wouldn’t want her away from me for more than a couple of hours at a time,’ she admitted. ‘She’s still very young.’
‘I can agree to that,’ Jax traded. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll be in touch.’
Bella cuddled to her, Lucy watched Jax swing back onto the motorbike, the lithe powerful lines of his big muscular body moulded by his designer jeans and leather jacket. Across the road a car started up and pulled out to follow him, his security team, she assumed.
When her father and stepmother returned from the funeral, Lucy sat them down and finally told them the truth.
Straight away her father erupted like a raging volcano. ‘Jax Antonakos? Are you serious?’
‘Please don’t get mad,’ Lucy pleaded. ‘It will only make this situation worse.’
‘You were only nineteen, Lucy,’ her father protested with pained condemnation. ‘He must be nearly ten years older than you!’
‘Well, he can’t be blamed for that. When he said I had to be over twenty-one to spend time with him I lied,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I said I was twenty-three—’
‘You lied to him?’ Kreon repeated censoriously.
‘Calm down, Kreon,’ Iola interposed gently. ‘She was a typical teenager and when a handsome young man approached her, she pretended to be older and more sophisticated than she was. A lot of girls that age would have done the same thing.’