Gage had a significant number of zeroes padding his bank account, which wouldn't be hard to figure out, even for a casual observer. This could still be an elaborate ploy for a seven-or eight-figure check. But he didn't think so.
She nodded once. "Can it be in the next couple of days? Briana didn't have much, but her estate needs to be settled. Robbie's future being the most critical part, of course."
Settled. Yeah, all of this needed to be settled, but unfortunately, this was the least settled he'd ever been. What an impossible situation. And he didn't have the luxury of shrugging it off like he normally did.
Grimly, Gage showed Lauren out and sat on the couch, head in his hands. And he didn't even think twice about his next move. He pulled out his phone and dialed Cass.
When he'd left her in Dallas, it was with a terse goodbye and a promise to call her, but he'd never imagined he actually would, at least not for personal reasons. It should have been a good place for them to break things off and only focus on the business of Fyra's formula. He'd planned for it to be the end, but nothing with Cass felt finished.
Besides, he needed someone with a level head who knew him personally to stand by his side as he met his son for the first time. Someone who wouldn't let emotions get the best of her. Someone he hoped cared enough about him to help him make the right decision. Someone like Cass.
Too late, he realized none of that actually mattered. He wanted Cass because she mattered. Yeah, it scared him, but he couldn't deny the truth. The formula had ceased to be the most important thing between him and Cass.
Cass answered on the first ring and he didn't even bother to try and interpret that. Too much had shifted since they'd last talked for petty mind games like guessing whether she'd missed him like he'd missed her. Or whether she'd realize the fact that he'd called her had earth-shattering significance. It did. She could do what she wanted with that.
"I need you," he said shortly. "It's important. Can you come to Austin?"
Eleven
Cass went to Austin.
There really wasn't a choice. Gage had said he needed her and that was enough. For now. Later, she'd examine the real reason she'd hopped in the car ten minutes after ending his call. Much later. Because there was so much wrapped up inside it, she could hardly make sense of it all.
When his name had come up on her caller ID, she'd answered out of sheer curiosity. You didn't drop something on a woman like a surprise baby and then jet off. Of course, she'd also been prepared for some elaborate plot designed to see her again so he could coerce her into either giving him the formula or getting naked, at least until he got tired of her again. She'd planned to say no and spend the weekend crossing the finish line on the leak's name.
She had to be close. The list of potentials wasn't that long.
But instead she'd found herself saying yes to the surprising request to accompany Gage as he met his son for the first time. He wanted her to be by his side as he navigated this unprecedented situation. The sheer emotion in his voice had decided it. What if Gage wasn't involved in the leak and she missed her chance to find out what might happen between them?
Cass held Gage's hand as they mounted Lauren Miles's front steps and wondered not for the first time if he'd literally come apart under her grip. The new, hard lines around his mouth scared her, but the fragility-that was ten times worse. As if the news he'd fathered a child had replaced his bones with dust. One wrong move and he'd blow away in a strong wind if she didn't hold on tight enough.
Just this morning, they'd been drinking coffee on her back porch and she'd been desperate to work him out of her system. So she could let him go and move on. Clearly that wasn't happening. But what was?
Less than four hours had passed since she received Gage's troubling and cryptic phone call and their arrival on this quiet suburban street. The slam of a car door down the way cracked the silence. It felt as if there should be something more momentous to mark the occasion of entering the next phase of your life. Because no matter what, Gage would never be the same. His rigid spine and disturbed aura announced that far better than any words ever could.
"I admire what you're doing," she told him quietly before he rang the doorbell. "This is a tough thing, meeting your son for the first time. I think you'd regret signing the papers if you didn't do this first."
The fact that he'd asked her to come with him still hadn't fully registered. Because she didn't know what it meant.
"Thanks." Gage's eyelids closed and he swallowed. "I had to do it even though I feel like I'm standing on quicksand. All the time. I needed something to hold on to."
He accompanied the frank admission by tightening his grip on her hand. He meant her. She was the one holding him up and it settled quietly in her soul. In his time of need, he'd reached out to her. She wished she could say why that meant so much to her. Or why the fact that he was meeting this challenge head-on had softened her in ways she hadn't anticipated. Ways that couldn't be good in the long run.
But what if there was the slightest possibility that they might both put down their agendas now that something so life altering had happened? That hadn't felt conceivable in Dallas, but here...well, she was keeping her eyes open.
He rang the doorbell and a frazzled woman answered the door with a baby on her hip.
"Right on time," the woman said inanely, and she cleared her throat.
Gage's gaze cut to the baby magnetically and his hazel eyes shone as he drank in the chubby little darling clad in one of those suits that seemed to be the universal baby uniform.
"I'm Lauren," she said to Cass. "We haven't met."
"Cassandra Claremont." Since she wasn't clear what her role here was, she left it at that. She and Lauren didn't shake hands as there wasn't any sort of protocol for this situation, and besides, they were both focused on Gage. Who was still focused on the baby.
"Is this him?" he whispered. "Robbie?"
"None other." Lauren stepped back to let Gage and Cass into the house, apologizing for the state of it as she led them to the living room.
A square playpen sat off to one side of the old couch surrounded by other baby paraphernalia that Cass couldn't have identified at gunpoint. All of it was tiny, pastel and utterly frightening.
That was when Cass realized she knew nothing about babies. She'd always known they existed and murmured appropriately over them when other women who had them entered Cass's orbit. But this was a baby's home, where the process of living and eating and growing up happened.
Gage had told her in the car on the way over that the baby's aunt was seeking to adopt Robbie. Really Cass was floored Gage hadn't signed the papers to give up his rights on the spot. Why hadn't he? The solution was tailor-made for a billionaire CEO who thought commitment was the name of a town in Massachusetts. Give up your kid and go on living life as though it was one big basket of fun with nothing to hold you back.
Sounded like Gage's idea of heaven to her.
The fact that he was here meeting his son instead...well, she wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world.
Crossing to the mat on the floor, Lauren set the baby upright in the center of one bright square and motioned Gage over. "Come sit with him. I can't honestly say he doesn't bite, but when he does, it doesn't really hurt." She laughed without much humor. "Sorry, that was a lame joke."
Then Gage knelt on the mat and held out a hand to his son. The baby glanced at the stranger quizzically but then reached out and grasped his father's finger with a small baby sound.
Cass forgot to breathe as a wave of tenderness and awe and a million other emotions she couldn't begin to name broke over Gage's expression, transforming it into something that tugged at her soul. She almost couldn't watch as the moment bled through her, blasting away the last of her barriers against a man whom she could never call heartless again. It would be a lie.
His heart was all over his face, in his touch as he ruffled his son's fuzzy head. In the telltale drop of moisture in the corner of his eye.
She couldn't watch and she couldn't look away as her own heart cried along with Gage. That's what love looked like on him and she wanted more of it.
Thirty minutes passed in a blur as Gage held his son in his strong arms and laughed as the baby pulled at his father's too-long hair. He pumped Lauren for information, demanding details like what Robbie ate, whether he'd taken his first step, what he did when he rolled over. Robbie's aunt answered the questions to the best of her ability but it soon became clear she hadn't spent every waking minute with the boy like his own mother had.