Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set

by Amber Leigh Williams

  She moved away from him, distrust clear in her eyes. “How can we? Deidre chose you to be the custodial parent for Emma, even though she didn’t discuss it with you beforehand. But Emma represents your lies and the way you broke your vows. Aidan, there are two of us in this marriage. We are not supposed to have secrets, hidden lives.”

  “We don’t!”

  “That’s what you want me to believe,” she said, and Aidan couldn’t miss the harsh tone in her voice, so unlike his wife.

  Feeling at a complete loss as to what to say or do, he slumped in the chair. “How can I convince you that I had nothing to do with Deidre these past five years?”

  She sighed as she stared around the room as if looking for a way out. “I—I wish there was a way you could convince me.”

  He wanted to reach out to her, to take her in his arms, but the look on her face told him his touch would not be welcome. “Grace, I wish there was, too. But there are other considerations. There is a child who will be here soon, who has no idea why you and I are in her home. Don’t you think we need to concentrate on her and what she’ll need?”

  “I’m not responsible for what happened here, and I’m not responsible for your daughter. You are, and you have to do whatever you need to do,” Grace said, her voice low and controlled, her eyes dark pools in stark contrast to her pale skin.

  Despite his sorrow over Grace’s behavior, Aidan wanted to soothe his wife but had no idea how to do it. She’d always been his mainstay, the one person he could rely upon. “Grace, I don’t want to do this without you. You’re my wife and I love you. I have to figure out how to handle this. I have to find a way to be a father to Emma when I don’t even know her. I will have to decide how we should live, whether she comes home with us right now or I stay here for a while to see what arrangements need to be made about Deidre’s estate, the dissolution of assets and what I’m expected to do.”

  He scrubbed his hands together as his mind worked through the possible issues surrounding Deidre’s death and estate. Interspersed were thoughts of Emma, of what the next few hours and days would be like for his daughter. “I’ve never been a parent. It was always just an idea to me, not something with a practical application.”

  “Said like a true computer engineer,” Grace said, her tone furious.

  Shocked he turned to her. “Grace, what’s the matter? We’re in an emergency situation and have a lot to think about in a very short time. I need your help.”

  Grace stood, her hands clenched at her sides as she stared at him. “Did you hear yourself? Did you hear how selfish you sound?”

  “What? I’m trying to figure out what to do. I can’t do that without your help. I need you, Grace.”

  She glared at him. “You never once talked about me, about how I feel, about what this will do to our lives together. All you can think about is doing what Deidre wants. She’s dead. She’s not coming back. And yet you didn’t, for one minute, stop and consider what I’m going through, did you? All you want from me is my help. You want me to make this better for you.”

  She scraped her hair off her face and blotted her cheeks with her fingers, her voice shaking. “I’m just as important in this situation as you are, as Emma is. You need to consider my feelings, talk things out with me. But instead of that, you go on and on about what you’re going to do.”

  He stared at her face, at the anger in her eyes. How had he gotten this so wrong? “Grace, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m so used to assessing a situation and deciding the best course of action to solve the problem. It’s how I think.”

  Grace picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “This is not a situation, Aidan. This is real life, where people you claim to love are in pain. Emma is going to miss her mother for a very long time. You are not going to have your lovely well-ordered life where every problem has a solution anymore. You will have to face each issue with your daughter with your heart not your head. But most of all, I will not have you making decisions without me having a say in how we do things. This is my life, my marriage, and I will no longer be told what decision you’ve made and simply go along with it.”

  Shocked and suddenly terrified, by her words, her accusations of his selfishness ringing in his ears, Aidan jumped up. “What have I done? I’m as upset about all this as you are. I deal with it differently, mostly by focusing on what can be done, but that in no way means I don’t want your input on this.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?” he asked, confused and really, really scared in a way he hadn’t experienced since he got the news that Deidre had passed away.

  “You and I need to go home and talk this over between the two of us before we make a decision that will change our lives forever. Lisa is clearly concerned for Emma. She will look after her as long as needed. A few weeks or a few months won’t make any difference. There’s no rush to sell the house. Emma may need to be left in her kindergarten to give her a chance to get over the loss of her mother before she faces any other changes.”

  “Children adapt,” he said defensively.

  “I’m sure she will, given time, love and caring. Meanwhile, if this is to work out for everyone involved, we need to go home, talk this all over and decide how we will cope with having a child dropped into the middle of our lives.”

  “Dropped into the middle of our lives? Is that how you see this, as somehow something done to us? It may have been, but we’re the adults here. We understand what’s at stake.” How could Grace even consider leaving a little girl who had just lost her mother alone? This wasn’t like her, not at all. “Grace, I can’t leave Emma here without her family. We are her family now. I can’t do it, and neither can you. You love children. And this little girl lost her mother. We may have to move in here for a while, but in the end, she will be coming home with us.”

  Grace’s eyes radiated a mix of anxiety and anger. “You’re not listening to me. This is too fast, way too fast. My life has been destroyed. I’m barely able to cope as it is. I need time to work this out. We both do if we are to stay together. It’s too much too soon. I need to…” She eased away from him. “I can’t stay here and watch you decide things based on what you want. There are three of us in this, three people’s feelings to consider. Ignoring what I want, my opinion and ideas, isn’t right. Life doesn’t work that way, Aidan.”

  “But I want you to be with me when I meet her.” Was she suggesting that they simply walk away? Where had all of this gone so wrong? “When we got in the car this morning, I never imagined that we’d be coming here only to leave again.”

  “I’m supposed to do what you want while you ignore what your behavior did to me, is that it?” Grace said, the disbelief in her voice tearing at him.

  “But there is so much that has to be done as soon as possible,” he protested.

  “Not until we talk about this. I mean it, Aidan.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, exasperated by her attitude. “This is my child. You can’t really want me to walk away. It’s just that right now you’re hurt and upset. You’ll feel differently when you see Emma.”

  She focused her gaze on him with a look he knew so well—desperation and hope mixed together. “Okay. Before she gets back here let’s run through the possibilities.”

  “Which are?” he asked, suddenly aware that he had never considered that there might be a different answer than the one he’d constructed from Deidre’s request.

  “Emma is a little girl who has only known the life she’s living right now. How can we assume that moving her to our place, taking her away from everything that is familiar is going to make her life better? What if she has family here who could take her? An aunt and uncle, maybe? I have to believe that Deidre chose you because she believed you’d do what was best for her daughter. And that’s what you and I have to consider. Have you considered that if we decide not to take
her, there will have to be other options for her care?”

  Shock sparked through him. “Grace, not for a minute have I considered not taking her. I thought you understood that. We’ve waited all our married lives for a chance to have children. Now we have that chance.”

  Grace closed her eyes for a few moments, her body trembling. “Aidan, there is more than one answer here. There has to be. I’m not ready to take on the care of that little girl so soon. There has to be a way to work this out so that we have time to adjust to what all of this means.” She looked straight at him, her expression one of determination. “If you’re not willing to do that, I have no other option but to leave you here to work things out on your own.”

  “Leaving? You can’t. I mean you wouldn’t leave a child who needed you.” He struggled to accept that Grace might leave. “Grace, I’ll make a reservation for us at a hotel where we can stay while we work out how to do this. If you like, we’ll wait to meet Emma later. I’ll leave a note for Lisa, and that way she’ll know how to find us. I’m sure that if you think about this, you’ll come to realize that being with us in our home is the best answer for Emma.”

  The look in Grace’s eyes was one of deep regret as she spoke slowly. “I can’t do this right now because what I feel matters. I need time to come to grips with what has happened to you and to me, to our marriage. Yes, Emma’s care is important, but so is the state of our marriage and my feelings. I will not make a snap decision about something that will affect the rest of my life. If you won’t see things my way, try to understand how much I need time to think about this… I’m going home.” She looked into his eyes, holding his gaze. “I want you to come with me, but that’s up to you.”

  “No. Grace, please don’t.”

  “Aidan,” she whispered, her voice thick. “It’s better this way. I don’t want to fight with you, but I can’t decide to take custody of this child this quickly.”

  By her resolute expression, he knew he’d lost. “Grace, I wish you’d stay. We could get to know Emma a little, see how much she needs us to care for her, to give her love and stability in her life,” he said, making one last attempt to convince her.

  “I wish I could, too. But I can’t do this, not this way.” She held out her hands for the car keys. “I’m sure you can rent a vehicle if you need one.”

  He watched her walk toward the door, his heart pounding in his chest, his eyes filling with tears. Loss, desperation cascaded over him as he followed her, intending to reach out to her one last time.

  As Grace opened the door, she turned to him, her eyes meeting his. “I guess it’s too late to ask you to see things my way.”

  He swallowed, feeling haggard and worn-out. His gaze shifted from hers while his jumbled thoughts sought a response that would make Grace stay.

  Yet it was clear from the expression on her face that Grace’s mind was made up. He touched her shoulder, wanting to pull her into his arms, but knew the warning signs—the stiff set of her shoulders, the fingers clenched on the strap of her purse. Grace would not allow him to embrace her. “You have a safe drive, and call me when you get home, will you?” he asked, feeling awkward and out of place.

  “Of course.” As she fumbled with the strap of her purse, her eyes remained fixed on the far corner of the room. Without another word, she left the house.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HER HANDS SHAKING, Grace struggled to put her home address into the GPS. She had no idea how to get out of the city to the highway. Her only clear idea was that she had to get away from here.

  She wanted Aidan to come running out the door, get into the car with her and agree to leave for home with her. She might have been willing to meet Emma, to stay overnight and drive home tomorrow while they talked. But none of that was possible given Aidan’s attitude. He had to have understood how she felt, and yet he refused to take her feelings into consideration.

  Her destination finally loaded into the GPS, she eased out of the driveway, her eyes searching the windows of Deidre’s house for any sign of her husband. There was none. He had decided to remain inside the house, not even coming out to the car to make sure she was okay to drive.

  Gripping the wheel, she started down the driveway, her head aching and her heart hurting so badly she cried out, her gasp of agony filling the car.

  Concentrate. You can’t make it home if you don’t.

  Maybe she should check into a hotel and wait until tomorrow to leave. It would be easier, and by morning, she might be able to get Aidan to see reason. Her heart lifted at the idea, then came crashing down. Their last few moments together had proven that her influence over her husband paled in the face of his concern for his newly discovered daughter.

  Besides, she couldn’t fight with him any longer. She needed to get home, to talk to her brother. He’d be able to offer suggestions about what to do, how to get Aidan to see the truth. Their marriage had been through enough between the stress of fertility testing and Aidan’s confession of his affair. To think that he was suddenly willing to risk the fragile remains of their relationship in order to raise another woman’s child, a child he claimed he had no involvement with, hurt her to the core.

  As she listened to the soothing female voice directing her through town to the highway she had a horrible sinking feeling that this would not turn out well, not because Aidan didn’t want to fix it—she was pretty sure he did—but because she didn’t know if she could go through another round of loss.

  Their inability to conceive a child had been so devastating. But facing the cruel truth that Aidan could father a child meant the devastation was on her. She was inadequate; she had been the cause of their unhappiness all along. All these years, all the times they’d tried for a baby, she’d been the reason they couldn’t have a family. A sob shook her.

  Focus. Focus on the moment.

  As she reached the highway, she instructed the phone to dial her brother’s number and he answered on the first ring. “Where are you? I called the house to talk to Aidan when he didn’t show at work. What’s going on?”

  “I’m on my way home from Spartanburg,” she said, feeling relieved at the sound of her brother’s voice.

  “What? Why were you in Spartanburg? Where’s Aidan? I need to talk to him.”

  She did her best to remain calm while she told Lucas what had happened and about the DNA results.

  “I had no idea that he’d had an affair…and now a child? What in hell is going on with Aidan?” Lucas asked.

  Had Aidan not told Lucas anything? She hadn’t talked to her brother because she hadn’t seen him since all this happened. But Aidan talked to Lucas every day.

  “You can see why I had to leave. He had an affair and now he’s obsessed with the child from that relationship. All the times I tried to get him to understand how important a child was to me, how much I wanted to be a mother. Suddenly he’s completely determined to be a father to a child he claims he’s never met. It’s as if she’s all that matters.”

  “Gracie, you know that’s not true. Aidan loves you. He always has. Sure, he made a mistake, and he is definitely making one now, but you need to give him a little time to sort things out. I’m sure once he has a chance to see what being responsible for this little girl means, he’ll be back to you, begging you to help him figure out the best plan. I agree with you. This is all too sudden.”

  Grace moved into the left lane, accelerating as she passed a transport truck. She was driving way too fast but she didn’t care. She had to get home. “I’m not so sure. He is completely determined to bring Emma home with him, to be her daddy and provide her with a good home. He hasn’t given me, or what I need, a thought since we arrived at Deidre’s house. It’s as if I don’t exist. Lucas, I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “That Aidan has been involved in Emma’s life all along. He denies it, but I can’t believe him. And the photo the na
nny had was so upsetting. Aidan said he didn’t know about it, but I can’t believe that he didn’t. It was a photo taken in a park I didn’t recognize. Someone had to have taken it, and by the smile on his face, it was someone he cared about. On top of that, the nanny said that Deidre wanted Emma to know what her father looked like. That’s why the photo was there. But what if it was more than that? Lucas, I can’t face this. I can’t. He has blocked any attempts to see an adoption lawyer, and until this, he seemed okay with not having children. I’ve given Aiden everything I have to give, and I’m still on the outside of his life.”

  “Take it easy. Remember you’re driving and it’s not safe for you to be worrying and distracted behind the wheel.”

  She began to cry softly, feeling the warmth of the tears as they coursed down her cheeks. She eased her foot off the accelerator a little. The blare of a horn sounded as the car behind her pulled out and passed her. “If he has hidden other things from me, my marriage is over. I might be able to forgive him for the affair, but if he’s been seeing her and his child all this time, I can’t forgive him for that.”

  “Sis, you’re upset. But please just drive carefully and make it back here in one piece. I’ll be waiting for you and we’ll talk. Okay?” he said, his voice filled with concern and compassion.

  “Okay.” Talking to her brother made her feel a little better than she had when she left Aidan. But Lucas made everyone feel safe, listened to everyone’s woes and always seemed to have the right answer. When they were growing up, she had often sought his advice. “Thanks. What would I do without you? I’m so glad you were on the other end of the line when I called.”