“Not intentionally. I know that,” she said quickly. “But she’s a little girl. She doesn’t know how to guard her heart or to keep from becoming attached. If she gets used to having you around, having you be a part of her world, and then you back off, it will hurt her.”
He was used to responsibility, but suddenly that feeling inched up several notches. Wes couldn’t have a child and ignore her. But at the same time, he was about to break every rule he’d ever had about getting involved with someone. There was danger inherent in caring about anyone, and he knew it. But she was his daughter, and that single fact trumped everything else.
“I’m here because I want to be,” he said, then tipped his head to one side and stared at her. “I’m not dropping in to get a look at her before I disappear. Yes, I have an important product launch coming up and I’ll have to return to Texas, but I plan on being a permanent part of Caroline’s life, which you don’t seem to understand. It’s interesting to me, though, that suddenly I’m the one defending myself when it’s you who has all the explaining to do.”
“I didn’t mean that as an attack on your motives,” she said quietly. “I just want to make sure you understand exactly what’s going to happen here. Once Caroline gives her heart, it’s gone forever. You’ll hold it and you could crush it without meaning to.”
“You’re still assuming I’m just passing through.”
“No, I’m not.” She laughed shortly, but it was a painful sound. “I know you well enough to know that arguing with you is like trying to talk a wall into falling down on its own. Pointless.”
He nodded, though the analogy, correct or not, bothered him more than a little. Was he really so implacable all the damn time? “Then we understand each other.”
“We do.”
“So,” he said, with another sip of coffee he really didn’t want. “Tell me.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“How about the beginning?” Wes set the coffee down and folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back in his chair. “If you have family money, why the hell did you come to work for me?”
“Rich people can’t have jobs?” Offended, she narrowed her eyes on him. “You have money, but you go into the office four days a week. Even when you’re at home in Royal, you spend most of your free time on the phone with PR or marketing or whatever. That’s okay?”
He squirmed a little in his chair. Maybe she had a point, but he wouldn’t concede that easily. “It’s my company.”
She shook her head. “That’s not the only reason. You’re rich. You could hire someone to run the company and you know it. But you enjoy your job. Well, so did I.”
Hard to argue with the truth. “Okay, I give you that.”
“Thank you so much,” she muttered.
“But why did you lie to get the job? Why use a fake name?” He cupped his hands around the steaming mug of coffee and watched her.
“Because I wanted to make it on my own.” She sighed and sat back, idly spinning the cup in front of her in slow circles. “Being a Graystone always meant that I had roads paved for me. My parents liked to help my brothers and I along the way until finally, I wanted to get out from under my own name. Prove myself, I guess.”
“To who?”
She looked at him. “Me.”
He could understand and even admire that, Wes realized. Too many people in her position enjoyed using the power of their names to get what they wanted whenever they wanted it. Hell, he saw it all the time in business—even in Royal, where the town’s matriarchs ruled on the strength of tradition and their family’s legacies. The admiration he felt for her irritated hell out of him, because he didn’t want to like anything about her.
She’d lied to him for years. Hidden his child from him deliberately. So he preferred to hold onto the anger simmering quietly in the pit of his stomach. Though he was willing to cut her a break on how she’d gotten a job at his company, there was no excuse for not telling him she was pregnant.
Holding onto the outrage, he demanded, “When you quit your job and left Texas, you didn’t bother to tell me you were pregnant. Why?”
“You know why, Wes,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “We had that what if conversation a few weeks before I found out. Remember?”
“Vaguely.” He seemed to recall that one night she’d talked about the future—what they each wanted. She’d talked about kids. Family.
“You do remember,” she said softly, gaze on his face. “We were in bed, talking, and you told me that I shouldn’t start getting any idea about there being anything permanent between us.”
He scowled as that night and the conversation drifted back into his mind.
“You said you weren’t interested in getting married,” she said, “had no intention of ever being a father, and if that’s what I was looking for, I should just leave.”
It wasn’t easy hearing his own words thrown back at him, especially when they sounded so damn cold. Now that she’d brought it all up again, he remembered lying in the dark, Belle curled against his side, her breath brushing his skin as she wove fantasies he hadn’t wanted to hear about.
He scraped one hand across his face but couldn’t argue with the past. Couldn’t pretend now that he hadn’t meant every word of it. But still, she should have said something.
“So you’re saying it’s my fault you said nothing.”
“No, but you can see why I didn’t rush to confess my pregnancy to a man who’d already told me he had no interest in being a father.” She rubbed the spot between her eyes and sighed a little. “You didn’t want a child. I did.”
“I didn’t want a hypothetical child. You didn’t give me a choice about Caroline.”
“And here we go,” she murmured with a shake of her head, “back on the carousel of never-ending accusations. I say something, you say something and we never really talk, so nothing gets settled. Perfect.”
She had a point. Rehashing old hurts wasn’t going to get him the answers he was most interested in. He wanted to know all about his little girl. “Fine. You want settled? Start talking, I’ll listen. Tell me about Caroline. Was she born deaf?”
“No.” Taking a sip of coffee, she cradled the mug between her palms. “She had normal hearing until the summer she was two.”
Outside, the wind blew snow against the window and it hit the glass with a whispering tap. Wes watched her and saw the play of emotions on her face in the soft glow of the overhead lights. He felt a tightness in his own chest in response as he waited for her to speak.
“We spent a lot of time at the lake that summer, and she eventually got an ear infection.” Her fingers continued to turn the mug in front of her. “Apparently, it was a bad one, but she was so good, hardly cried ever, and I didn’t know anything was wrong with her until she started running a fever.
“I should have known,” she muttered, and he could see just how angry she still was at herself for not realizing her child was sick. “Maybe if I’d taken her to the doctor sooner...” She shook her head again and he felt the sense of helplessness that was wrapped around her like a thick blanket.
Wes felt the same way. The story she told had taken place nearly three years ago. He couldn’t change it. Couldn’t go back in time to be there to help. All he could do now was listen and not say anything to interrupt the flow of words.
She took a breath and blew it out. “Anyway. Her fever suddenly spiked so high one night, I was terrified. We took her to the emergency room—”
“We?” Was she dating some guy? Some strange man had been there for his child when Wes wasn’t?
She lifted her gaze to his. “My brother Chance drove us there, stayed with us. The doctors brought her temperature down, gave her antibiotics, and she seemed fine after.”
“What happened?”
She sighed and sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest as if comforting herself. “When she healed, she had hearing loss. We didn’t even notice at first. If there were hints or signs, we didn’t see them. It wasn’t until the following summer that I realized she couldn’t hear the ice cream truck.” She smiled sadly. “Silly way to discover something so elemental about your own child, but oh, she used to light up at the sound of those bells.”
She took a breath and sighed a little. “The doctors weren’t sure exactly what caused it. Could have been the infection itself, the buildup of water in her ears or the effects of the antibiotics. There was just no way to know for sure.”
“Wasn’t your fault.” He met her gaze squarely.
“What?”
“It sounds to me like you couldn’t have done anything differently, so it wasn’t your fault.”
Horrified, he watched her eyes fill with tears. “Hey, hey.”
“Sorry.” She laughed a little, wiped her eyes and said, “That was just...unexpected. Thank you.”
Wes nodded, relieved to see she wasn’t going to burst into tears on him. “Will her hearing get worse?”
“Yes.” A single word that hit like a blow to the chest. “It’s progressive hearing loss. She can still hear now, and will probably for a few more years thanks to the hearing aids, but eventually...”
“What can we do?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “As much as I appreciate you being kind before, there is no we, Wes. I am doing everything I can. She wears hearing aids. She’s using sign language to expand her conversational skills, and get familiar with it before she actually has to count on it. And I’m considering a cochlear implant.”
“I read about those.” He leaned his forearms on the table. He’d been doing a lot of reading over the last several hours. There were dozens of different theories and outlooks, but it seemed to him that the cochlear implants were the way to go. Best for everyone. “They’re supposed to be amazing. And she’s old enough to get one now.”
“Yes, I know she is.” Belle looked at him and said, “You know, her doctor and I do discuss all of this. He’s given me all of the information I need, but it’s not critical to arrange surgery for Caro right this minute. It’s something I have to think about. To talk about with Caro herself.”
Astonished, he blurted, “She’s only four.”
“I didn’t say she’d be making the decision, only that I owe it to her to at least discuss it with her. She’s very smart, and whatever decision I make she’ll have to live with.” She pushed up from the table and carried her unfinished coffee to the sink to pour out. “I’m not foolish enough to let a little girl decide on her own. But she should have a say in it.”
“Seriously?” He stood up, too, and walked over to dump his own coffee. He hadn’t really wanted it in the first place. “You want to wait when this could help her now? You want to give a four-year-old a vote in what happens to her medically?” Shaking his head, he reached for his cell phone. “I know the best doctors in Texas. They can give me the name of the top guy in this field. We can have Caro in to see the guy by next week, latest.”
She snatched the phone right out of his hand and set it down on the counter. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What you’re too cautious to do,” he said shortly. “Seeing to it that Caro has the best doctor and the best treatment.”
Both hands on her hips, she tipped her head back to glare up into his eyes. “You have known about her existence for two days and you really think you have the right to come in here and start giving orders?”
Those green-blue eyes of hers were flashing with indignation and the kind of protective gleam he’d once seen in the eyes of a mother black bear he’d come across in the woods. He’d known then that it wasn’t smart to appear threatening to that bear’s cubs. And he realized now that maybe trying to jump in and take over was obviously the wrong move. But how the hell could he be blamed for wanting to do something for the kid he hadn’t even known he had?
“All right.” Wes deliberately kept his voice cool, using the reasonable tone he wielded like a finely honed blade in board meetings. “We can talk about it first—”
“Very generous,” she said as barely repressed fury seemed to shimmer around her in waves. “You’re not listening to me, Wes. You don’t have a say here. My daughter’s name is Caroline Graystone. Not Jackson. I make the decisions where she’s concerned.”
His temper spiked, but he choked it back down. What the hell good would it do for the two of them to keep butting heads? “Do I really have to get a DNA test done to prove I’m now a part of this?”
Her mouth worked as if she were biting back a sharp comeback. And she really looked as if she were trying to find a way to cut him out of the whole thing. But after a few seconds, she took a breath and said, “No. Not necessary.”
“Good.” Something occurred to him then. “Am I named as her father on the birth certificate?”
“Yes, of course you are.” She rinsed out her coffee cup, then turned the water off again. “I want Caro to know who you are—I’d just rather have been the one to pick the time she found out.”
“Yeah, well.” He leaned against the counter. At least the instant burst of anger had drained away as quickly as it came. “Neither of us got a vote on that one.”
The problem of Maverick rose up in his mind again, and he made a mental note to call home again. Find out how the search for the mystery man was going. And it seriously bugged him that he had no idea who it might be. Briefly, he even wondered again if Cecelia and her friends were behind it, in spite of Cecelia’s claim of innocence. But for now, he had other things to think about.
“Why does anyone care if you have a child or not? Why is this trending on Twitter?” She sounded as exasperated as he felt, and somehow that eased some of the tension inside him.
“Hell if I know,” he muttered and shoved one hand though his hair. “But we live in a celebrity culture now. People are more interested in what some rock star had for dinner than who their damn congressman is.”
She laughed a little, surprising him. “I missed that. Who knew?”
“Missed what?” Wes watched the slightest curve of her mouth, and it tugged at something inside him.
“Those mini rants of yours. They last like ten seconds, then you’re done and you’ve moved on. Of course, people around you are shell-shocked for a lot longer...”
“I don’t rant.” He prided himself on being calm and controlled in nearly all aspects of his life.
“Yeah, you do,” she said. “I’ve seen a few really spectacular ones. But in your defense, you don’t do it often.”
He frowned as his mind tripped back, looking for other instances of what she called rants. And surprisingly enough, he found a couple. His frown deepened.
“You’ve got your answers, Wes,” she said quietly. “What else do you want here?”
“Some answers,” he corrected. “As for what I want, I’ve already told you. I can’t just walk away from my own kid.”
“And what do you expect from fatherhood? Specifically.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know I have to be here. Have to be a part of her life.”
She looked into his eyes for a long second or two before nodding. “Okay. We’ll try this. But you have to dial it back a little, too. You’re the one trying to fit yourself into our lives—not the other way around.”
He hated that she had a point. Hated more that as confident as he was in every damn thing, he had no clue how to get to know a kid. And he really didn’t like the fact that he was standing this close to Belle and could be moved just by her scent—vanilla, which made him think of cozying up in front of the fire with her on his lap and his hands on her—damn it, this was not the way he wanted this to go.
“If you can’t agree to that,” she said, when he was silent for too long, “then you’ll just have to go, Wes.”
Fighting his way past his hormones, Wes narrowed his eyes, took a step closer and was silently pleased when she backed up so fast she hit the granite counter. Bracing one hand on either side of her on that cold, black surface, he leaned in, enjoying the fact that he’d effectively caged her, giving her no room to evade him.
“No,” he said, his gaze fixed with hers. “You don’t want to take orders from me? Well, I sure as hell don’t take them from you. I’ll stay as long as I want to, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
She took a breath, and something flashed in her eyes. Anger, he was guessing, and could only think join the club. But it wasn’t temper alone sparking in her eyes—there was something more. Something that held far more heat than anger.
“You lied to me for years, Belle. Now I know the truth and until I’m satisfied, until I have everything I want out of this situation, I’m sticking.”
She planted both hands flat on his chest and pushed. He let her move him back a step.
“And what is it you want, Wes? What do you expect to find here?”
“Whatever I need.”
Four
Whatever I need.
Wes’s words echoed in her mind all night long. Even when she finally fell asleep, he was there, in her dreams, taunting her. It was as if the last five years had disappeared. All of the old feelings she’d had for him and had tried so desperately to bury had come rushing back at her the moment she saw him again.
She had three older brothers, so she was used to dealing with overbearing men and knew how to handle them. Isabelle wasn’t easily intimidated, and she wasn’t afraid to show her own temper or to stand up for herself, either. But what she wasn’t prepared for was the rush of desire she felt just being around Wes again.
He was the same force of nature she remembered him being, and when his focus was directed solely at her, he wasn’t an easy man to ignore. Old feelings stirred inside her even though she didn’t want them and the only thing that was keeping her sane at the moment was the fact that it wasn’t just her own heart in danger, it was Caroline’s. And that Isabelle just couldn’t risk. She had to find a way to appease Wes, avoid acting on what she was feeling for him and protect Caroline at the same time. She just didn’t know yet how she would pull it off.
The Tycoon's Secret Child Page 6
