Well, either Harper would sue him back into the Stone Age or Byron would be locked up for involuntary manslaughter. Possibly both.
But it might be worth it, he decided, if it kept his family free from the clutches of this vindictive old rat.
Harper waited for a moment. His eyes hardened in displeasure at Byron’s lack of engagement, but then he smiled widely again. He nodded to the thin man, who moved toward Byron and held out a thick envelope.
“Since my daughter has sought to further blemish the proud Harper name by continuing her association with the likes of you,” the old rat went on as Byron refused to take the envelope from the thin man, “I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that she must not be operating in her right mind. I’m having her declared unfit to be a mother and petitioning the state for custody.”
“You’re insane,” Byron sputtered before he could keep his mouth shut.
The response was exactly what Harper was looking for. “Me?” He tried to look innocent, but he clearly didn’t know how to do that. He probably hadn’t been innocent in a good eighty years. “I’m just a concerned father worried about his daughter and the environment in which she’s raising my grandchildren.”
“You can’t claim custody of Percy. I’m his father. And I only have one child with Leona.”
Harper clucked. “Do you, now? An absentee father who shows up only long enough to impregnate her again? That doesn’t give you a particularly strong leg to stand upon, you realize.” He buffed his fingernails on his suit jacket and looked at them as if they were by far the most interesting things in the room.
“She’s not pregnant.”
“Isn’t she?” Harper smiled, revealing graying teeth that matched his graying hair. Byron’s gut clenched. She had said babies last night. “Or maybe she’s just not telling you about it. Because she is most certainly pregnant. And I give you my word—you’ll never see that child. Never.” He motioned toward the lawyer. “My counsel has prepared an airtight case.”
The thin man held out the envelope again and this time, Byron snatched it irritably. “You won’t win.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” Harper intoned in all seriousness. “I always win, boy.”
He shouldn’t—but he couldn’t help himself. He knew there was one chink in Harper’s self-righteous armor, and a huge, gaping chink at that. If the old rat was going to make Byron suffer, the least he could do was return the favor. “I’ll be sure to pass that along to your first wife.”
Harper stiffened, murder in his eyes. One of the bruisers took a step forward, but Harper whipped his cane up and held the man back. “Flippant, boy.” Hate dripped off his every word. “Very flippant.”
It felt good to score a hit against the old man. Leon Harper had once taken everything Byron held dear. No way Byron would let the old man win a second time. No way in hell.
“Trying to take my son away from me won’t even the score, Harper. And when you lose, you’ll never see the boy again.”
Harper’s thin lips twitched in satisfaction. “I might say the same to you. You’re holding a petition to sever your paternal rights.” Byron’s glare bounced uselessly off the old man. “Unless you sign,” Harper went on, clearly enjoying himself, “your flippant little tale of impregnating my daughter and then abandoning her will be front-page news. Doctors testifying to her mental state will give lengthy interviews and as for you?” His grin sharpened. “By the time I’m done with you, boy, I’ll have run you, the entire Beaumont clan and this godforsaken beer company into the ground. You have a week. Good day.” He turned, the bruisers parting for the old man to pass.
“I won’t let you anywhere near her or my son, old man.” Byron put as much into those words as he could because, as far as he was concerned, that’s all Leon Harper was. An impotent old man with too much free time and too many lawyers kowtowing to him.
Harper paused and then slowly turned around, a smug smile distorting the features of his bitter face. “Is that so? And just who do you think called me in the first place?” He chuckled to himself and damn it all, Byron was too stunned to even come up with a stinging parting shot.
All he could do was stand there and watch as Harper and his various lackeys shuffled out.
No. He couldn’t believe it—he wouldn’t. Even if she’d decided that she was better off as a single parent living with her sister, she wouldn’t have gone crawling back to Leon Harper. She might hate him, but she cared too much for Percy to let her father do her dirty work. Especially if she were pregnant again.
He stumbled back into the kitchen and leaned against a counter, trying to breathe. She couldn’t be pregnant again, could she? No, that wasn’t the right question. The condom had failed. She could be pregnant.
The question was, how could she be pregnant again and not have told him?
It didn’t matter how much he apologized. It didn’t matter what he did to take care of her. It didn’t matter one damn bit how much he loved her—her and only her.
None of it mattered.
He was done. This was just like the last time, he realized. She would always withhold the truth and she would always hide behind her father so she didn’t have to do the dirty work herself. She would always hurt him.
He had to stop letting her—them—win. He was a Beaumont, for God’s sake. He would protect his son—his children—from the Harpers. Always and forever. And if that meant he had to take Leona to court, then so be it.
If the Harpers expected him to turn tail and run again, they’d soon find out—no one messed with a Beaumont.
Sixteen
Talking to Byron wasn’t working, so Leona decided to take a different approach—when Percy fell asleep for a nap, she started writing him a letter.
“Dear Byron,” she started, “I’m pregnant and I don’t want to fight about raising our children. I want us to be a family and I want us to be as happy as we can be.”
Okay, she thought, good start. She had to get that pregnant part out there first. She’d tried to tell him last night, but he’d cut her off and done everything in his power to make her feel two feet tall.
She put the pen back to the paper and wrote...nothing. What else was she supposed to say? She was tired of being made to feel like a bad person because she hadn’t disclosed her father’s identity on the first date? She was sorry she hadn’t contacted Byron when she had Percy, and she was sorry she’d assumed he’d rejected her again—like it felt he was doing right now.
No matter what, she wasn’t going to leave her children—and what she really wanted was the reassurance that he wouldn’t take them from her and he wouldn’t abandon her again but it was hard to see how he wasn’t going to do just that when she couldn’t even have a face-to-face conversation with him without it going off the rails.
Dang it. Writing it down—without having to say it to Byron’s face or being interrupted—was supposed to make this easier, not harder.
The doorbell rang and she glared at the clock. If this were May, back again without calling, Leona was going to be pissed. It was Percy’s nap time—she should know that.
Leona opened the door and was stunned to see that, instead of the slight form of her sister, a weaselly-looking man in a suit was standing there. A familiar weaselly-looking man. “Leona Harper?”
Lights began to pop in front of Leona’s eyes and for a second, she was afraid she was going to faint on the feet of her father’s favorite lawyer. All of the emotions coursing through her—worry for Percy, exhilaration about the pregnancy—all of them smacked headlong into the wall that was Leon Harper.
“Mr. York?”
The lawyer stepped to the side and there her father was. His face was twisted into something that made a mockery of joy. Leona’s stomach lurched again.
One thought bubbled up through the misery of the
moment—she should have married Byron already. She’d told him that this was the very thing she’d lived in fear of for a year—her father deciding to make her life his business again.
She clung to the door for support. It was tempting to slam it in their faces and throw the bolt, but damn it all, she couldn’t overcome years of subservience to this man.
“Father,” she said, her voice a shaky whisper.
“My dear,” he replied in his most acid tone. She was not now, nor had she probably ever been, his dear and they both knew it. “I must say, I’m disappointed in you.”
What else was new? She’d always been a disappointment to him. Her name said it all. If she’d been Leon Harper, Jr., things would have been different. But no. She was Leona. A disappointment with an a.
“I gave you a chance,” her father went on, mocking condescension in his voice. “Your mother convinced me that I should let you move out—as long as you didn’t cause any more trouble than you already had.”
Oh, God—she could not believe this. This was not happening. He was still talking at her—not to her—as if she were a messy girl of six again.
No. She couldn’t stand here and take whatever he felt like dishing out. Things had changed. She was a mother, soon to be twice over. She owed it to her son, to Byron—and to herself—to be well and truly free of the blight that was Leon Harper.
“As I recall, Father, you didn’t ‘let’ me do anything. I left without your permission.”
Anger flared in the old man’s eyes—dangerous anger, as she knew from too many years of experience. But she wasn’t afraid of him, not anymore. Not much, anyway. So to make herself feel brave, she added, “And I’d do it all over again. What do you want?”
Any pretense of happiness at seeing her vanished off her father’s face. He’d never been good at pretending he cared, anyway.
“I must admit,” her father said in a calm, level voice that only amplified his rage, “that I was surprised when he called me.”
“He who—Byron?”
Her father shrugged in what, on any other human on the planet, would have been an innocent gesture. “He made his intentions clear—he’d won and I had lost. He said he was going to take the child and that—and I’m quoting here—‘No Harper would ever see it again.’”
“You’re lying,” she gasped. So what if Byron had said almost that exact thing last night? She couldn’t believe that he’d call her father. “You always lie.”
“You can, of course, believe what you want. You always did. You’re the one who convinced yourself that he could love you—that any Beaumont was capable of love—when we both know that’s not really possible, is it?” He managed a pitying smile.
“No,” she said again, but she didn’t sound convinced, even to her own ears. Her mind flitted back to the positive test still safely hidden in her bedroom. What would her father say—what would he do—if he knew that she was expecting again?
Her knees began to shake and she knew that if she didn’t sit down, she really would pass out. But she couldn’t show him weakness. She couldn’t let him think he’d won.
“He’s going to take the child,” Father went on. “Both of them.”
Leona gasped. How did he know about that? Not even Byron knew. Then it hit her—May. May was the only other person who could possibly know. She’d been in the bathroom while the test had still been in the trash. Leona had thought May hadn’t seen it—but she’d thought wrong.
“Sadly,” her father continued, “I can’t help you—that is, unless you help me, my dear.”
If there was one thing in this world that Leon Harper did not need, it was help. “How?”
“It’s easy,” he said. “Turn legal guardianship of the child over to me. Come back home. Let me protect you from them.”
Mr. York handed her a thick envelope. “Just sign these,” he said in an oily voice, “and it’ll all be taken care of.”
She stared at the envelope that was suddenly in her hands. She’d always thought that when—not if—her father came after her, he’d do it the hard way and try to destroy her credibility, her job—destroy her.
But this? This offer of protection...
Was he serious?
No. Leona knew she could not trust a single word that came out of Leon Harper’s mouth. He never did anything that wasn’t completely self-serving.
If Byron had decided that marriage wasn’t truly in the cards, he would have told her himself.
But then her father said, “I do hope you’ll sign the papers before he disappears—again,” and all of her doubt came crushing back.
Byron wouldn’t take her babies and melt off into the night, only to turn up in some foreign country with byzantine custody laws, leaving her no hope of ever seeing her baby again. Would he?
No. No. Byron loved Percy and he would not treat her like his own mother had been treated—discarded and destroyed. They might not be able to live together, but he wanted what was best for Percy.
She’d fought too hard for her independence to crumple just because Byron didn’t want her and her father lied. She was stronger than that, by God.
So she took a deep breath and stood straighter. True, she was holding on tight to the door, but it was the best she could do. “I could invite you in, but I won’t. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you’re forgetting one simple thing. I know you too well to trust a single word that comes out of your mouth.”
Her father’s face hardened in rage, but she wasn’t done with him. With each word she spoke, she pushed back against the terror this man had inspired in her for the past twenty-five years.
“If you ever come near me or my son again, I’ll call the cops and file a restraining order against you,” she promised. “If you’re still on my property within five minutes, I’ll make the call now. I left home for a reason, and nothing you can say or do will convince me that I have to come back for your ‘protection.’ I don’t need it. I don’t want it. The only person I need protection from is you.” She tried to give him a dismissive look. “And I’ll protect myself from you, thank you very much.”
With that, she slammed the door in his face. Then she realized she was still holding the envelope. She threw the door back open and launched the envelope at his head before slamming the door shut again. Then she threw the bolt and sagged against the wood.
Except the sagging continued until she had to struggle to her feet and rush to the bathroom.
It was only after her system had cleared itself out and she’d brushed her teeth that she realized she didn’t know if her father had been to see Byron or not.
Seventeen
The front door banged open so hard that Leona jumped and dropped her phone milliseconds after hitting Send to Byron.
The figure in the door shouted, “Leona?” at the same moment she heard the chime that Byron had picked out for her.
“Byron?” Yes, it looked like him, but at this point in her day, she wasn’t sure she could trust her eyes. “Did you call my father?” she demanded angrily. “Did you tell him you were leaving me?”
Byron gaped at her. “God, no. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.” His brow furrowed. “I guess that answers the question of whether or not you’ve seen him. He must have come straight here.” He looked like he wanted to hold her, but didn’t. “Are you pregnant?”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I tried. Last night. And you cut me off.” She walked to the kitchen island and grabbed the notebook. “So I was writing you a letter. When my father showed up—and cut me off,” she said.
Byron grabbed the notebook and read the few lines she’d written down. “How do I know you didn’t write this confession after he left? How do I know you didn’t call him
and tell him you were done with me? How do I know you’re not still lying to me?”
Her mouth dropped open. “You don’t, Byron. You can’t independently verify every single thing I do and say as being one hundred percent truthful at all times. You have to take it on faith when I tell you that I’m sorry for the mistakes I made in the past, that I was in the process of writing you a letter because every time we talk it turns into a fight, that I wanted you to know I was pregnant.”
“So who told your father?”
She picked up her phone and dialed May—then she put it on speaker. “Hey, Leona. How’s Percy?”
Leona took a deep breath and tried to project calm. “May, did you call our father?”
She could sense May’s hesitancy. “Well...”
“Did you tell him I was pregnant?”
There was a long pause on May’s end. Finally, she said, “The pregnancy test was right there in the trash.” Her voice was accusatory, as if Leona had hidden it there just so May could find it.
The curse was right on Leona’s lips. But this was still her little sister. So instead she said, “What did he give you?”
“I got an allowance.” May sniffed again. “And a new car.”
This time, Leona couldn’t keep her anger in. “Damn it, May!”
“But Byron’s going to leave you—you know he will!” May all but shouted. “He’s going to abandon you again, and I can’t stand to see you hurt like that—not a second time. We were happy, weren’t we? We didn’t need him. We could take care of the new baby like we did Percy! I thought it’d be nice to have some better things, not the junk we’ve had to make do with.”
Byron looked at Leona in surprise, but he didn’t say anything.
Leona closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “May, I am a grown woman. I know you meant well, but even if I’m going to screw up, I’ll do it on my terms. I’ll thank you from now on to stay out of my business.”
May was crying now and it made a part of Leona hurt. She’d spent years trying to protect May from her father. She never would have guessed that May wouldn’t return the favor.
His Son, Her Secret Page 17
