“But you had Jennie…”
Was that why Jilly had been so desperate to have a baby? To secure for the husband she’d trapped into a marriage he’d never wanted some degree of freedom? Candace wanted to believe Jilly had regretted the way events had played out.
Nick was shaking his head. “That is no help because, remember, I was sure Jennie wasn’t mine—and now I’ve discovered Jennie is not Jilly’s biological baby. She’s yours.”
“But Jilly adopted her,” Candace argued. “Jennie is very much Jilly’s baby. That stock is yours.”
Nick shrugged. “I have a team of lawyers looking into that right now.”
“What did you do after you accepted the deal?”
“I started to work like a dog so that I could repay Desmond.”
“And you employed Bertha?”
“At first I tried to get her and Henry to stay in the house on the property. She’s a proud old woman, and she wouldn’t accept what she regarded as charity. Now I owned the garden center that had been hers and Henry’s. So I offered Bertha a job and in return she and Henry got to stay in the house while working for me for four mornings a week. The rest of the time she spends with Henry.”
“No wonder Bertha adores you.”
“She doesn’t know the half of it—” he gave her a warning glance “—and I trust she never will.”
“I won’t say a word.”
It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t trust love. It was clear that he’d never loved poor, needy Jilly. In her desperation, Jilly had driven him away before any relationship between them had gotten off the ground.
“Given the state of your relationship, why the decision to start a family?”
“Jilly had always wanted a baby.” Nick looked away. “She’d made that clear from the moment I placed a wedding band on her finger. I wasn’t spending a lot of time home…I think she was lonely.”
At the mention of their wedding Candace felt an unexpected stab of jealousy. Yet their union hadn’t yielded a child. Maybe that was never meant to be. But the flip side of that coin was equally hard to accept: she and Nick couldn’t possibly be meant to be, either.
Or could they?
“But something changed.” Nick interrupted her thoughts. “When Jilly stopped talking about our baby, I became convinced she had a lover, someone she preferred to father her baby.”
“Maybe she stopped thinking of the baby as hers,” said Candace slowly. “After all, the eggs and womb were mine. It had nothing to do with your role at all.”
“That would make sense.” Nick shook his head. “God, what a mess. I drew the wrong conclusion. But I didn’t care enough to confront her. I was relieved—all I could think about was paying Desmond back. In the back of my mind I knew I would eventually divorce Jilly. It suited me that her child wasn’t mine. It was an easy way out for me.”
She touched his hand where it lay on the table. “I’m sorry, Nick.”
He held her gaze. “It’s not a very nice story.”
“No. But you must’ve felt terribly trapped.”
“Like my back was against the wall,” he admitted.
“Yet you never took it out on Jennie.”
“I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t confess that I did resent her a little—I believed she was another man’s baby. But it didn’t take me long to figure out she’s the innocent in all this—and it’s not hard to love her. She’s very special.”
Her fingers were still resting on his hand. It was a masculine hand with scrapes and calluses. A strong, capable hand. His fingers closed around hers. Her gaze flicked to his, only to be snared in the blazing heat.
After that, Candace couldn’t have said what she ate when the main course arrived. The intensity of Nick’s gaze, the way her stomach bottomed out every time their eyes met—all left her with an edgy feeling of expectation that grew as the evening wore on. She couldn’t help thinking that Nick had depths she’d never expected. He’d suffered so much, worked so hard…and proven himself to be a man of honor.
A man worthy of being a father to Jennie.
Once back home, Nick followed Candace up the marble stairway.
She paused on the landing where it widened into a sitting area. “Thank you for dinner—it was lovely to get out.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, then Nick muttered, “The hell with it.” He stepped closer, gave her a brief chance to escape.
Candace murmured huskily, “I’ll go to my room now.”
Yet she didn’t move.