He wheeled the stroller to the cashier inside the café, greeted her by name and asked her to call a cab. Without question she reached for the phone. Nick smiled and waved to the manager on the opposite side of the coffee shop, and pushed Jennie back out into the sunshine.
“Wait.”
A hand came down on his arm. Nick brushed her off and kept walking, stroller trundling in front of him. About twenty yards down the path, Candace rushed in front of him, blocking his way, and this time she grabbed his arm with enough force to ensure he wouldn’t easily shake her off.
Her eyes were intense and angry, spitting smoke. “You’re firing me? For being Jennie’s mother?”
Nick glared back at her. “I might not have been there at Jennie’s birth, but I sure as hell saw that Jilly was pregnant! I’m firing you for being a charlatan…a liar…a fraud. Take your pick. Just count yourself lucky you hadn’t raised the issue of money yet or we could’ve added blackmailer to the list.”
He glanced pointedly down at feminine fingers spread on his arm, but what she said brought his eyes back to her face in shock.
“DNA tests don’t lie.”
Five
“You have a DNA test proving you are Jennie’s mother?”
“Not anymore,” Candace said, and felt Nick’s forearm tense beneath her fingertips.
“So you are lying!”
“I don’t have them—they’ll be in the doctor’s file. One thing I’m not is a liar.” Then she tacked on, “Or a fraud.”
Candace could feel the heat in her cheeks as she belatedly snatched her hand off the fine wool of Nick’s suit jacket. Even through the fabric she’d been uncomfortably conscious of the warmth of his body.
She drew a second deep breath, desperately trying to calm herself down. She couldn’t let him keep Jennie. He wasn’t worthy of being Jennie’s—any baby’s—father. But it wouldn’t help to get his back up.
“Okay, maybe I handled this badly,” she said slowly. “You made me mad.”
“I made you mad?” He was frowning down at her. “Lady, I’m not the crazy one around here.”
Crazy? Candace squinted up at him. “I’m not crazy.”
Nick didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he wheeled the stroller—with her baby—away. Candace rushed after him. “Where are you taking Jennie?”
“Home!”
“Home? That glossy mansion that’s as cold as an icicle isn’t a home.” Nick kept walking away from her. In desperation she said, “You’re not fit to be Jennie’s father!”
At that his shoulders stiffened and he slowed.
Oh, no! So much for trying not to antagonize him. Well, she had no choice now but to soldier on. “Nick, you’ve been away for the past month, you didn’t even return home when Jennie was desperately ill and you know nothing about caring for her. What else could I think?”
He turned. There was a white line around his mouth, and his face was leached of all color. “I’ve had enough of this. You will never get the chance to take her away—and even if I accepted a word of your insane claim, my first question would be where the hell were you when Jennie needed a mother?”
He’d homed in on the heart of her pain—her guilt. “That’s not fair—I had no choice.”
Nick glared. “I still don’t believe a word of this.”
Candace hesitated. She’d known from that first heart-in-her-throat moment when she’d met him that her name had meant nothing to Nick. Candace wasn’t a common name, yet he hadn’t even done a double take when he’d said, “You must be Candace.”
For one wild instant she’d thought he was pretending. Yet even when she’d revealed her surname, his expression hadn’t changed. And finally she realized that Nick Valentine had never bothered to find out the identity of his baby’s egg donor and surrogate mother. And now he was making out as though he knew nothing about it all…
Jilly had made it clear that he was a busy man, and Candace had slowly pieced together the image of a driven, workaholic husband who cared more for his multimillion-dollar company than his wife. Jilly had assured her that was all going to change when the baby was born.
Yet Nick Valentine had shown no interest in Candace’s pregnancy—unlike Jilly, who’d traveled all the way to the exclusive Namkhet Island clinic to be there while the IVF took place, who’d kept every prenatal appointment once they’d gotten back home to New Zealand, who’d visited Candace every week and bought her treats, and loved showing her photos of the nursery she was preparing for Jennie.