Hooked

by C. C. Piper

  I’d missed too much time with Callie and refused to miss more.

  I’d done my best to seal off the part of my heart that Roxy owned. I couldn’t allow my feelings for her to interfere with what I had to press forward with now. There was no room for sentimentality, animosity or even hurt feelings. She’d betrayed me, which sucked more than I could say, but I couldn’t let that rattle me. I had to stay clear-headed today. I had to do what was best for my little girl.

  “How you holding up, Jaxson?” my attorney asked me.

  Since I’d commenced these proceedings, we’d held long one-on-one sessions outlining how I expected all of this to go. When we’d gone out to lunch, he’d spoken about his family with undeniable affection, and I could tell that his wife and two teenage kids were more important in his life than anything else.

  How refreshing.

  Even Trevor had sung his praises, calling him competent, efficient and the nicest guy he knew. I didn’t know the details beyond Peter helping my friend out of a tough spot, but I’d never heard Trevor describe anyone that way. I had to agree with his assessment. Peter had prepared me for this process with a patient expertise I appreciated.

  “I’m fine, Pete. I’m just ready to have this over and done with so my time with Callie will never be in question again.”

  “The law is on your side.”

  A man with salt and pepper hair entered then, offering his hand in a firm shake. “Blake Corden, counsel for Ms. Miller.” As he finished his introduction, Roxy came in and settled beside him, her eyes meeting mine fleetingly before flitting away again.

  She looked sensational, as always. She’d twisted her chestnut hair up and dressed in a professional suit I’d never seen on her before. Her face had a drawn quality to it, though. It almost appeared gaunt. I felt an impulse to reach out and touch her which I instantly squashed. Those days were finished. I’d always love her, but never again could I extend her my trust.

  Turned out the price of being with Roxy was too damn high.

  I ripped my gaze away.

  “Mr. Liddell would like to keep this short and to the point,” Peter addressed Roxy and her attorney. “First, thank you for submitting a DNA sample for the paternity test. I have the lab results here stating that Jaxson Beauregard Liddell is indeed the biological father of Calliope Jacqueline Miller. I have a motion here requesting that Mr. Liddell be given permission to formally adopt Callie so that she can bear her rightful name of Liddell. Here is the petition.”

  Roxy’s lawyer accepted the paper and offered it to her. They had a rapid-fire session in whispers.

  “Is Mr. Liddell looking to replace the name Miller or add Liddell with a hyphen?” her attorney asked.

  “Either is acceptable,” Peter responded.

  “We’d like some time to consider the petition and discuss it at a later date.”

  Peter nodded. “Of course. On to child support.”

  The issue of child support had been my attorney’s largest area of concern. He’d advised me to steer clear of the topic other than to offer the percentage due based on my income starting from the date I’d officially met Callie. But that’d be a dick thing to do. Even though I had no knowledge of my daughter’s existence for years, Callie was more than entitled to my financial resources. I’d never deny her anything she might need.

  Not ever.

  “My client would like to offer these terms.”

  Corden took the sheet from Peter, maintaining a poker face. Roxy, on the other hand, widened her eyes and whispered to her lawyer.

  “Ms. Miller would like to know the reason behind this lump sum listed on line four.”

  Peter slipped on his reading glasses. “That refers to period of time between Calliope’s birth to the day Mr. Liddell was introduced to her. He wishes that amount to reflect what he would have contributed had he been aware of her.”

  Roxy’s seafoam green gaze jumped to mine. “That’s over five million dollars.”

  “Yes,” my lawyer said. “To be tagged for your daughter’s care only.”

  I cleared my throat, not comfortable with the intense scrutiny Roxy and her lawyer were giving me. I wanted the best for Callie. Period. Full stop. That was all this was.

  So why did Roxy suddenly look so downtrodden? Stricken, even? I honestly didn’t know.

  “The next item on the agenda addresses custody arrangements. Mr. Liddell would like weekend visitation with every other holiday included. Starting with Christmas and alternating throughout the coming new year.”

  “Christmas?” Roxy blurted in a strangled voice.

  “Mr. Liddell has never spent that particular holiday with his child. He doesn’t wish for that to continue.”

  I heard my attorney’s words, words I’d specifically sanctioned, but they weren’t what I focused on. Roxy’s eyebrows had crinkled in distress, her lip trembling. And even though I knew she’d purposely misled me, my heart still ached to see such misery on her face.

  Christmas was only two weeks away, and I’d fight to spent it with Callie. Still, when tears started to cascade down Roxy’s cheeks, I couldn’t ignore her reaction. I leaned over and spoke in Peter’s ear.

  “I’m willing to divvy up Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As long as I have her for the proceeding twenty-four hours, I won’t quibble about the day itself.”

  Pete passed this along, and I thought it’d pacify her, instead, she burst into full-on weeping. The more vengeful and jaded part of me wanted to say this was a ploy to play on my sympathies and the fact that we had a past together. I wanted to blow off her sadness as an act, but in all my time with her, I’d never seen Roxy break down like this.

  “We’re going to need a minute,” Corden said, offering her an old-fashioned handkerchief from his pocket.

  I stood, knowing I had to get out of there. “Accept what we’ve received so far and reschedule for the rest,” I told Peter loud enough for Roxy and her attorney to hear, then I double-timed it out of the conference room.

  Two days passed, and when I asked Peter if they’d arranged another date to meet, he informed me that her side had yet to respond. I told him if they didn’t make contact with him that day, to reach out to them himself. I didn’t want this mess dragging out for longer than necessary.

  Whatever might have been going on in Roxy’s head, I yearned to see my daughter. Since we hadn’t hammered out enough of the details to make the visitations official, I decided to do what I’d been doing over the past couple of weeks and stop by when I knew Roxy would be absent.

  As I anticipated, Raina answered but since the door was within Callie’s line of sight, my daughter rushed me before I could step in, almost knocking me over. And though my world might have been a shitshow at the moment, I felt everything inside of me brighten.

  “Hey there, glamour girl. What have you been up to?”

  Callie took me by the hand and led me to the fridge where a sizable poster took up most of the front. It looked to be a finger painting. “I did this all by myself,” she told me, her brilliant eyes lifting my spirits.

  I couldn’t tell what all the different blobs of paint were supposed to represent, so I handled this diplomatically. “Tell me about your picture, why don’t you?”

  “Well, this is you, Daddy…”

  Awww, she painted me? My throat closed halfway up on that one.

  “And this is Mommy holding your hand.”

  Now it closed up all the way.

  “And that’s me on your back holding Mommy’s other hand. We’re making a circle.”

  My eyes became stingy and wet. Shit. Luckily, Callie’s back was to me.

  “Why don’t you go grab all your dolls out of your toy chest and put them on your bed. Then we can play dress up,” I told her, surreptitiously wiping at my now runny nose. “I’ll be in there in just a minute.”

  Sucking in a quivering breath, I covered my face for a second, doing my damnedest to regain my composure. This clusterfuck was hard enough without l
etting Callie see me fall to pieces. All my attention was on tying up the loose threads of my sanity, so that may have been why Raina found it so easy to enter the kitchen unheard.

  “You’re a moron,” she said.

  What a kind sentiment.

  I got up, planning to sidestep her, but she blocked my path.

  “I need to spend some time with my daughter,” I said, not interested in trading insults with her.

  “No, you need to pull your head out of your ass.”

  Jesus Christ, what is up with this woman? Every interaction I’d had with her landed somewhere on the spectrum between indifferent and antagonistic, and I so didn’t need this right now.

  “Look, Raina…”

  “No, you look.” She pointed at me accusingly. “I haven’t said much up ‘til now because I’ve been trying not to be a gossip, but this is too much. You’re behaving like Roxy did you wrong or something, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried not to blow up at her. “What happens between Roxy and I is our business.”

  “I agree. But it seems like you’re under the impression that she did something she didn’t, so I’m going to set the record straight. Roxy loves you.”

  If only.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “She does,” Raina insisted. “And you suing her for custody of Callie is killing her.”

  It wasn’t exactly doing me any favors, either. I would’ve moved Heaven and Earth so we could have been a family, but my priorities and Roxy’s were far from the same.

  “I’m only filing for joint custody. I only want what’s fair.”

  “Let me tell you what’s unfair. Roxy having to deal with her deadbeat mother is unfair. Her having to foot the bill for her mother’s mortgage is unfair.”

  “What does Leona have to do with anything?”

  “Roxy knew what your opinion of her being an escort was, so she quit doing it. She focused all her efforts on her other jobs and on being a student so you wouldn’t think less of her. But then her mother called her up in a tizzy about losing her home. Roxy feels responsible for her, so even though she’s had some financial setbacks herself recently, she agreed to help her mom. The only way she could do that was to go back to the Wish Maker.”

  The fucking Wish Maker again. I despised that woman.

  And I didn’t think much of Leona, either. But Roxy did. The woman was her mother and I could see her going above and beyond for her, even though she didn’t deserve it. Roxy had always been the most mature member in that relationship. Still, whatever the deal was with her mom, it had nothing to do with us.

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me all this.”

  “Because you need to think about it. Has Roxy ever asked you for anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?” she challenged me, but as I wracked my brain to come up with something other than time and space, I fell short.

  Damn.

  “Roxy had to increase all her hours with the Wish Maker to make ends meet,” Raina went on, tossing me a tight look I could only refer to as a stink eye. “She had to agree to see a new client as well as going back to some of her old ones. She hammered out this deal with one of her regulars, so she’d spent twice the amount of time with him for three times the pay. But the deal is temporary, not permanent. She only did it to pay off her mom’s debt and to catch up on her own. Now she’s not only working all these hours, she had to go back to that woman and make a deal for decent legal counsel against you. Talk about kicking a girl when she’s down.”

  The words I’d heard Roxy speak over the phone came back to me.

  That night, it’d sounded like she planned to try to get some giant financial payout from me, though I never knew for what. She’d mentioned how she’d asked me for additional time, and I’d granted it, despite that time making no difference in the long run. But the clincher had been how casual she’d been about getting into a relationship with me, only to plan to abandon me in the not so distant future.

  What if it wasn’t me she was referring to, but this client of hers?

  Son of a bitch!

  Raina studied me, then spouted off. “Finally. Had to spell everything out for you before you got it, though.”

  “Daddy, where are you?” Callie poked her head out of her room.

  “I’m on my way, glamour girl.”

  “How long you gonna be here?” she asked, her eyes going back and forth between me and Raina.

  “About an hour or so.”

  “Wish you would stay longer.”

  Me too. I’d believed things had gone too far for all that, but Roxy’s roommate had me rethinking my position. Might it still be possible to attempt a better outcome?

  All I could do was try.

  21

  Roxanne

  The past seven days had been more difficult than I ever could’ve imagined. Only one other time in my life had been worse; when Callie was in the NICU right after she’d been born. This felt more horrible than every time Mom ran off with yet another hookup. It felt more horrible than when I had to face being a teenage mother mostly alone.

  This even felt more horrible than when Jax left me the first time.

  Because I now knew he’d been forced to go to London against his will all those years ago. I knew he’d loved me then and now. I knew he wanted the three of us to be together and happy. And I knew I was the only reason that hadn’t happened.

  The guilt I felt over this threatened to unmoor me, to set me on deadly tides I could never swim away from. If I’d only told him I loved him when he’d needed me to, none of this discord and mistrust between us would’ve developed. He wouldn’t have thought I only wanted him for his money. He wouldn’t have felt the need to pursue legal action to take my daughter from me, even for partial custody.

  My reticence had cost me so much. While our first separation had been due to our meddling parents, this current nightmare was unequivocally my fault.

  And I didn’t think Jax would ever forgive me.

  “Why’re you sad, Mommy?”

  I wiped my face, straightening up from a prone position on the couch. “Mommy’s okay.”

  Callie’s cherubic face twisted into a frown, and it matched Jax’s so precisely that another wave of sorrow engulfed me. I’d attempted to hide my anguish from my daughter, but Raina was at work, and I’d officially topped out on gut-wrenching emotions. I hoped I wasn’t scarring her youthful psyche in some deep, irrevocable way.

  My class had concluded, and I’d called in sick to both the bar and the restaurant. I’d cancelled my remaining escort jobs, too, even though I knew it would hack off the Wish Maker. I couldn’t face the public in my current state; I wanted to bury myself under a blanket fort with Callie and never come out again.

  My mother was uber pissed at me, too. Because I’d reneged on my escort dates, I hadn’t had quite enough to bail her out of her mortgage disaster. She’d lose Aunt Beverly’s house and wind up crowding into this apartment. I’d have to put up with her flippant carelessness and have to fight her on things like smoking around my daughter and bringing in men that shouldn’t be here.

  The whole prospect of it made me tired.

  Christmas was upon us, too, and I’d done no shopping. I decided to take the formal dresses I’d been able to procure to one of the local consignment shops to sell. With any luck, getting rid of those would provide me with enough money to get Callie something special.

  My heart still ached for what we were about to miss. From her second Christmas on, my daughter and I had created a tradition. On Christmas Eve we’d make cookies and decorate our three-foot artificial tree with popcorn strings and homemade garlands made from rings of construction paper. Then, we’d walk around the nearby neighborhoods looking at the lights and decorations on other people’s homes.

  The next morning, we’d open presents, eat and watch Christmas movies all day in our pajamas. Ever since Callie
had been born, Christmas was my all-time favorite holiday. Now, though, we’d be apart for either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The tradition would be ruined.

  Yes, I could do the Christmas Eve stuff early, but at some point, Jax would want her for the day. I’d spend that time either with my mother – who rarely deigned to show up for it – or alone, since Raina always spent hers with her family. December would be a reminder of how I’d failed Jax, my daughter and myself.

  So much for donning jingle bells.

  That evening I received a text from Blake, my attorney.

  Liddell is requesting a second meeting for tomorrow morning at ten. Will that work for you or should I counteroffer with another date?

  Might as well get this over with.

  That’s fine, I sent back.

  Wait, just received an addendum to that. He wants your daughter present.

  What?

  Why?

  He doesn’t say. I could refuse on your behalf.

  I thought it over. What possible reason could he want Callie there? Tomorrow was Friday. Did he plan to take her for the weekend already? Probably. I’d never been apart from her for that long, especially not overnight. I didn’t doubt that he’d take good care of her, but I would miss her the entire time.

  Still, it wasn’t like I could deny him his legal rights to his daughter.

  No, that’s okay. Tell him we’ll be there.

  Even though I knew it might be tacky of me to do this, I didn’t bring anything extra for Callie to the conference. No suitcase with clothing, her toothbrush or comb. I dreaded going to this meeting even more than I had the last one, but there was no getting around it. Still, if he insisted on taking our daughter from the conference table to his home, at least it’d give me the excuse to see her again that evening. I’d have to pack some things and bring them over.

  The conference room where we’d met before was on the fifth level of one of the tallest buildings in New Orleans. If I hadn’t been a wreck, I might’ve enjoyed the unique view. Sleet fell in fits and starts as I drove there, and I glanced anxiously back at Callie in her car seat.