I pause at the door, keeping my back turned, and smile down at Madeline, squeezing her hand reassuringly.
“Later. We’ll talk later,” I say, pulling her out and closing the door with a soft snick.
I need time, or a large shot of something strong, before I can safely beard that lion’s den and get the answers my stunned brain hasn’t yet been capable of asking.
I’m still stuck on that smile and the completely serious expression I’d seen on her face, the very same one that’s been staring at me for all these months.
The one that’s been driving me crazy because I can’t tell what he’s thinking, no matter how hard I look. This kid is his carbon copy…
“How old are you, honey?” I ask after seating her at the counter and getting to work on a ham and cheese sandwich and a cup of milky tea.
“Six and a half, Mum.”
“Oh, call me Ash, I’m not…well, anyway, how did you get here, honey? It’s awfully dark and cold out. You must have been pretty creeped out if you had to come through the trees in the dark.”
I know I would have been terrified and screaming hysterical. I’ve been there. But the little cutie just smiles around a huge bite of sandwich and shakes her head.
“I’m not afraid of the dark M—Ash. I prefer it.”
I nod and keep my mouth shut as she attacks the sandwich like a starving animal, her little throat bulging when she swallows half-chewed bread and glugs it all down with the luke warm tea I made.
The kid is literally starving. She’s eating so fast, and I feel the first stirrings of unholy anger unfurling in me, replacing the shock with the need to hurt whoever had let her go without food and proper clothing.
“Thank you, Ash.”
I just smile and push another sandwich her way, slowing her down when she tries to lay into it with the same veracity as before.
“You’re most welcome, honey. Um, can you tell me how you got here? Who brought you? And…”
“Aunt Carrie. She said my daddy would take care of me now that mummy’s gone.”
“Uh, gone?”
Please don’t tell me your mom’s dead, kid, please just do not say it. It’s downright pathetic for me to think, but I’m not sure what’ll happen if this kid’s mother is out of the picture.
That would mean one thing and one thing only. I’ll be mother to two kids and pregnant and…it’s damn near killing me to think of her age, and doing the math on that is making my stomach lurch in a way that hurts. If she’s six and a half, that means—
“They’ve gone. I told them you were unwell.”
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I look up at him and take in the closed down expression he’s managed to wrestle back into place. He’s not as cool as he’d like to pretend, though, because his knuckles are white where they’re wrapped around the chair he’s standing behind, almost as if he’s using it to keep himself up.
Goddammit, I want to go over there and soothe whatever it is he’s feeling, an emotion I do not welcome right now, not with all these unanswered questions and the sinking feeling that’s taken up residence in my chest.
“Um, are you done, honey? I think we should get you bathed and into bed. You look beat.”
The kid nods once and gets up to put her dishes in the sink before taking my hand back in hers and letting me lead her past Luc and up the stairs.
I take twenty minutes to bathe her, wash the leaves and dirt from her silky hair, and dress her in some of Ben’s smaller clothes. She’s out as soon as her head hits the pillow, with a trust possessed only by the young and envied by most adults the world over.
I sure wish I felt that trusting or calm, I think, leaving the door open a crack and making my way downstairs on wooden legs. When I get to the kitchen Luc’s hunched at the table, staring sightlessly down into a tumbler of amber whiskey, his shoulders tense and signaling the turmoil his face won’t show.
“Tell me you didn’t know.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Luc
I don’t know how to deal with any of this. Not a bloody clue. That child—oh God, my child— is sleeping upstairs right this minute, unaware of the chaos that her arrival is causing.
It sounds horrible, but I sort of resent the timing. Why now, when I’ve just managed to get things the way I want them, when Ash has finally stopped giving me vacant smiles and is looking at me the way she used to?
One more week, four days max, and I would have had my baby eating out of my hand and telling me she loves me. Now, she’s looking at me with a mix of dark suspicion and a contempt so thick I can almost taste it.
“I didn’t know.”
It’s not a lie, not fully at least. It’s why I’d dropped everything seven years ago and rushed to the airport instead of staying and confronting Ashley the way I’d wanted to.
One phone call had totally changed the entire course of my life. And now it’s come back to fuck up what little progress I’ve made with my woman.
I hear her blow out a breath and risk a glance at her from beneath my lashes, feeling like the world’s worst when she sighs tiredly and falls into the chair across from mine, her soft shoulders slumping.
“Well, there’s no doubt: that kid is definitely yours,” she says slowly, chewing at her lips.
“Yes, I can see that. The question is—”
“And I can’t fucking believe some piece of shit just dropped her off and sent her through the woods! It’s dark and cold out there. Jesus, she wasn’t even wearing shoes. And she’s skinny, Luc, like really skinny, like she doesn’t eat enough, and…who leaves a defenseless little girl to meet her dad for the first time after making her walk through that jungle out there!” she hisses, getting really worked up.
“And do not get me started on the way she attacked a crummy ham and cheese sandwich! You will find the crummy asshole who didn’t feed her so I can beat them to death!”
This moment, right here, is when I fight a smile and blow out the breath I’ve been holding since my love called me into the study and introduced me to my daughter.
This moment is one that I will never forget, because in her indignation and maternal glory I know that I haven’t lost her yet, that I’m not doomed to spend the rest of my life without her, only seeing her when she allows me to visit the kids.
“Love, not to get ahead of myself here or anything, but does this mean you’re not preparing to rip my balls off tonight?” I ask, raising a brow.
“Well, I mean…you really didn’t know you had a kid floating around out there being neglected?”
“No.”
She’s chewing her lips, something that drives me crazy with lust, the current dilemma taking a back seat as my cock goes stiff and starts sniffing at his territory.
“But, how? And when?” she asks, giving me a suspicious look. “When exactly did you knock up that girl? Madeline says she’s six and a half, so if that’s correct…”
Ah, I understand the look now. She’s jealous.
This is going to be really uncomfortable, really, really difficult to explain to her, because obviously my love has done the math here and knows that I’d done something that I’m in no way proud of.
“It happened. Just… It happened.”
I’d been a normal teenage boy, drinking and sleeping my way through the last year of school before buckling under and following in the footsteps of generations before me, as was to be expected from the heir to the family’s throne.
That attitude and my selfish, disillusioned ways had all fallen away after I’d met her, though, so imagine my shock when Courtney Barker, a one-night stand I’d had months before, had called me to tell me she was pregnant.
I’d dropped everything, Ashley included, and gone back home, intending to do the right thing and provide for my child. It hadn’t happened that way, though, because instead of becoming a father I’d gotten a call just as I’d gotten into the taxi and learned that she’d had to be rushed to hospital and that… I’d wept when she
’d told me there was no baby anymore.
Wept because, despite my age and the hard work ahead, I have always been one of those men who wants a family. Sure, the woman I’d imagined bearing my offspring had not been Courtney. No, that woman has always been and will forever be Ashley, but I’d cried for what I’d lost and sworn to myself that next time the child would be mine and Ashley’s.
“Before you met me I was…” My mouth twists, and she smirks, raising a lofty brow. “Yeah, anyway, we had a one-night thing, and then… She called me the day that—well, she called and told me that she was pregnant, and I hopped a plane to get to her. When I got home I learned that something went wrong.”
“Wait, do you mean to tell me she told you the baby died?”
“Yes. Which was obviously a lie, and something I fully intend to get to the bottom of,” I say darkly, feeling and reveling in the familiar coldness that had deserted me before.
I have every intention of finding the truth, and then I will make everyone involved in this mess suffer. They’d not only neglected my child—she’s bloody half-starved and undernourished—but she’d been left to find her way to me, something I have no intention of overlooking.
“Well, she spoke about someone called Aunt Carrie, if you need somewhere to start,” she says equally darkly, turning me on even more with that cold bloody glint in her eye. “That bitch is mine when you find her. Got me?”
Oh yes, I bloody well do, my little mama bear. I’ve got you, and I bloody intend to keep you.
“I know this must be difficult for you, what with Ben and the baby and, well, the plain fact that Madeline is mine—”
“Do yourself a favor, Jasper, and do not finish that sentence, unless you want to sleep on the sofa for the next three years of your life. The kid stays, and that’s final. Now come on, we have a lot of shit to do tomorrow and two kids to introduce. Christ, I really do not envy you that task. Ben can be a real little bastard when he feels threatened.”
She’s trying to joke around, bless her heart. The woman does not deal well with awkward situations.
“Ash—”
“No. Please, let’s just go to bed and face all of it in the morning. I can’t deal with everything right now without freaking out, and I really don’t want to freak out right now.”
I sigh and take her hand, flinching when she pulls away and walks up the stairs, her back stiff, her body sending out danger signals. She doesn’t want me touching her. Not yet, anyway.
Well, fuck that.
I wait till she’s changed and under the covers before dropping my clothes and crawling in behind her, pulling her in to my body.
“You can be angry and hurt, I understand, but you will never turn away from me. Not now, not ever. You’re mine.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Breakfast went…not as well as my misplaced sense of hope had fooled me into believing it would. Luc, while he’s trying, is as awkward and uncomfortable as all get out.
And my little darling brother is being his usually bratty self, thanks to the suspicion that Maddy might steal his precious Luc’s attention from his royal highness.
“You stop being such a snot-nosed punk and be nice, or I’ll kick your scrawny butt, Benjamin Munro!” I hiss, plonking down a glass of juice with his breakfast. “Maddy is here to stay, so you might as well get used to it and try being a big brother instead of a douche.”
That earns me a glare and a giggle from our newest recruit. Luc, I notice, is struggling not to laugh when Ben sticks his tongue out at me and rolls his eyes dramatically.
“She don’t understand that big brothers tease little sisters.”
That catches our attention pretty darn quick; even Luc manages to crack a smile and give him a look of paternal pride. I, on the other hand, am no dummy. Benjamin is most definitely up to something. I recognize the signs.
Too bad for him my pregnancy hormones have turned me into a hard ass, and I am so on him if he so much as sniffs at little Maddy.
“I’ve never had a brother. What should I do?”
Gosh, this kid and her accent. It’s nothing like Luc’s, in no way smarmy or stuck up, but it’s not exactly normal English as far as I’m concerned.
“Nothin’ yet, just don’t be a baby when I tease ya or this one’ll scalp me. So, what did you do if you didn’t have no one to play with?”
“Okay. And I like reading. I’m up to seven-year-old books now.”
Ben scowls, totally unimpressed, and shakes his head, muttering about boring girls and men needing to be patient with their women.
“Seriously, kid, don’t let him lead you around by the nose. We girls have to stick together.”
*********************************
Really? Two weeks ago I was a sane, normal, albeit quirky young woman, and now, thanks to the terrible trio, I can’t get a word in edgewise without being overruled and outvoted.
I’d tried glaring my husband into submission every time the gang got another of their cuckoo ideas into their thick gourds, but the man obviously never wants sex again in this lifetime.
“No, absolutely not.”
“But love—”
“No. You know how I feel about this.”
After he’d set Frank and some Ivan guy on the job, we’d discovered that Maddy’s mom is still alive and safe back home in some tiny village in England.
The woman, if I can be so magnanimous as to call her that, seeing as I think she’s a monster, had given her kid up right after birth and spent the last years living a quiet but good life thanks to a shit load of money she’d gotten out of nowhere.
Huh! She’d sold her kid, it seems, and that shit has officially signed her death warrant with me.
“Look.” He sighs, watching me go through my nightly routine with an indulgent smile. “We need to get to the bottom of this, and I don’t want to leave you here. I’m still not convinced that fuck skipped over the Mexican border. Anyway, didn’t you want to go see The Tower and The Eye?”
Okay, that is true…
“Fine, but if your bitch mother so much as sneezes my way, I can’t be responsible for my actions,” I warn, putting my hair up in a loose bun.
That makes him laugh, something he’s been doing a lot of lately despite my refusal to have sex—hey, it’s hurting me too, but I don’t feel comfortable going there as yet, not when I haven’t got the answers to everything.
For all I know he’s up to his eyeballs in this stuff and is just spinning me a really long story to keep me in check.
Time will tell, I guess, but that’s also something that’s working against me, since my hormones have done things to my vagina I’m having trouble controlling.
I’m cool now, but only because talking about his mother always gives me the crabs. He’d finally opened up some and told me about his stepmother and his father, and boy am I glad I’ve never met those bastards.
According to him and a very scathing Cammy, two colder human beings were never born. They’d spent eighteen years trying to push my husband into the mold they’d made for him, and when that didn’t work they’d all but disowned him, leaving him to fend for himself.
Not that they’d taken much satisfaction out of it, because he’s richer than they are six times over and can buy and sell those creeps any day of the week.
Now I have to meet them, thanks to his brilliant idea that we all need to go over there and get some answers. And all because I can’t keep my big mouth shut about who I’d suspected had given that Barker bitch all that money in the first place.
I hope for their sakes I’m wrong and that he doesn’t connect any of them to it, because if he does, those two are dead freaking meat.
“If she says anything I’ll hold your coat while you play footie with her head. Now come on and get into bed.”
His eyes have taken on that weird, sexy, hooded look that I recognize as his sex face, something my libido is picking up on with bells and whistles ringing strong.
“Lucian,
I’m not in the mood to argue with you about sex tonight.”
I say it because I know if I get on that bed and he turns my way, there won’t be much arguing. I’ll probably fold like a freaking concertina under his hands.
God, why did all of this have to happen when things were going so well?
Uh, because things were going so well, my inner harpy snarks, letting me know how cynical and unimpressed she is with me at the moment.
Yeah, yeah, I know you want to do the tango with your guy, but I need to get a grip before I give in here. Trust is not a given, ya know.
Jesus, I really need to call Mary or the girls before I get on that jet, or I can tell ya, my mind may not survive whatever the heck else happens.
Chapter Twenty Nine
London, England
Luc
The moment the huge wrought iron gates squeak open to admit the car filled with those I cherish most, I have an instant regret for thinking this is at all a good idea.
Why have I brought my family here?
What possible good do I think could come from subjecting these innocents to my parents and their icy brand of disapproval?
Well, for one, I want them to see what I have and know that nothing they did or will ever try to do will ever have the power to harm me. I want them to see the love my family has for me—hopefully Ashley will buckle soon and tell me—and covet what their black hearts can never have.
Mostly I want to see the look on Mother’s face when she sees Maddy.
It’s a shot in the bloody dark, I know, since the woman has no emotions and so rarely gives up her secrets, but if there’s even the smallest chance that she’ll react, I want to see it with my own eyes.
“It looks like a castle.”
“Yes, Benjamin, but there are most definitely no fairytales here.”
Ashley rolls her eyes at my tone and kicks my leg none too gently, her gaze telling me she doesn’t appreciate my attempt at disillusioning her little ones.
“What? Best they know that their grandparents are bloodsucking—ow! Dammit, woman, that bleeding hurt!”
LAWSON (A Standalone Billionaire Romance Novel) Page 69
