by Jane Peden
“That’s bullshit, Camilla.” His voice was calm, controlled, and because of it, even more terrifying than if he’d shouted at her. “It’s more likely you didn’t want to disrupt your own life, including your marriage plans. Did your husband even know he was playing daddy to another man’s bastard?”
She blanched. “I can’t believe you’d use such a word to describe your own son.”
“Well that’s just it, Camilla. Up until about an hour ago I didn’t have a son. Whose fault is that?”
“Look, I know you’re angry—”
Sam just looked at her, his face a picture of icy control. “Angry doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
He tapped his fingers on the dashboard.
“So, tell me, Camilla, why contact me now? If that’s my son—and it seems obvious he is—I’ll support him. But what gave you the idea I’d marry you?”
“My husband died recently. And I don’t…get along with my in-laws. They’ve threatened to take JD away from me.” Camilla knew there was no legitimate way they could take away her child. She certainly wasn’t an unfit mother. But with the kind of power and influence the Winthrop family wielded, she couldn’t risk a legal battle for custody. These were people who wouldn’t hesitate to make up lies about her and twist the system to their own ends.
“So tell them he’s not their grandson.”
She turned her head, looked out the window. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
She looked down, realized she was clenching her hands in her lap, and forced herself to relax.
“JD loved his father,” she said, finally. “I can’t take that away from him.”
“JD never met his father before today,” Sam said coldly, and she felt a hot prickling of anger stab through her.
“It takes more than some sperm in a hotel room in Vegas to make a father.”
“Well, I guess I wouldn’t know that, would I? Since I didn’t know you were pregnant. And now, five years later, you show up and expect me to bail you out of whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, and marry you? But not acknowledge JD as my son.”
It sounded ridiculous even to her own ears. How could she make him understand?
“It’s the only thing I could think of. If I can show that I have a stable home for my son, and a husband with influence and money, my in-laws won’t be able to do anything. A year, that’s all I’m asking from you. Then we get a quiet divorce. I’ll sign whatever papers you want giving up any rights to your money.”
“Damn right you will.”
“I just can’t risk losing JD.” She felt tears pricking behind her eyes and she fought them back. She hadn’t come looking for pity. She’d beg if she had to, but she wouldn’t break down.
“Why exactly do your in-laws think you’re too irresponsible to raise your own son?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m sure it is.” His jaw hardened. He looked like he’d come to some sort of decision, and she held her breath.
“I’m going to give this some thought tonight, Camilla. Don’t you even think about changing your mind and leaving town with that child, because I will hunt you down. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Come to my office tomorrow at ten o’clock. I haven’t decided exactly how to handle this yet, but I’m going to tell you one thing for certain. I am going to be part of my son’s life.”
He pulled back on to the highway, headed back toward her hotel.
“That’s fine. After the divorce you can have visitation. I wouldn’t try to stop you from seeing him.”
He glanced over. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Are you trying to tell me you would have been thrilled to hear some girl you hooked up with in Vegas was pregnant? You didn’t even know my last name.”
“Well, I guess we’ll never know, will we? I may not have been ready for a relationship then. But I would never have walked away from my responsibility for a child. All you needed to do was pick up the phone.”
But she had. Once, in a moment of desperation, she’d called his office, spoken to his assistant, been promised that Sam would return her call. He never did. And again, six months later, she’d tried again. She never heard from him. Apparently she had meant so little to him that he didn’t even remember now.
She’d made plenty of mistakes, but she wasn’t going to take full responsibility for this one.
“I did try to contact you. You were too busy to take my call.”
For a moment, his face registered surprise, then his features hardened.
“I’m busy a lot, but I do return phone calls. If you really wanted to reach me, I’m sure you could have managed it over the past five years.”
“I know how it looks. You don’t know how much I’ve regretted—”
“This isn’t about you. It’s about an innocent child. My child.”
“Our child,” she said quietly.
“That’s the unfortunate part of this situation I’ll have to deal with.”
He pulled into the hotel parking lot and stopped the car abruptly, leaning back in his seat to look at her. His voice was cold and deliberate, but his eyes were dark with anger.
“You’ve made all the decisions for the past five years. I’m making the decisions now.”
As long as his decision was to protect JD from a custody challenge, that was fine with Camilla. But what would it be like to be married to this man, who seemed more like a stranger than someone she’d once shared days and nights of passion with? The car suddenly felt too small, and she felt too aware of him in the confined space.
She saw something change in his eyes, as if he were aware of her thoughts, and for one crazy moment she thought he might reach across the seat and pull her to him, his mouth taking possession of hers. And she imagined herself kissing him back.
The chemistry between them had always been explosive. That was the one thing, it seemed, that hadn’t changed. Her mouth went dry and she could feel her heartbeat racing.
Then the valet opened the door and she was standing in front of the hotel, watching Sam drive away. And wondering if that moment of connection had been just her imagination.
Olivia jumped up the second Camilla opened the door.
“Thank God. I’ve been so worried.”
“JD?”
“Sound asleep.” Olivia settled back down onto the bed. “Well? What happened?”
“He’s really angry. But I think he’s going to help us. I have to meet him at his office tomorrow morning.”
“I still think we should try to come up with another solution. You’re JD’s mother. They’re not going to be able to take him away from you.”
“You know what kind of people they are.”
Olivia rolled over on her back, stared at the ceiling. “Yeah.”
“Besides, it’s too late now. I can’t untell Sam about JD, and he wants to be part of his life.”
“I guess. I just wish for once you’d put what you want first.”
Camilla walked over to the bed, sat down, and gave her sister a hug. “Taking care of you and JD is what I want. And after a year or so, it’ll all blow over and we can go on with our lives.”
“Maybe,” Olivia said. “I don’t think they’ll ever leave you alone.” She lowered her voice, glancing over at the connecting door. “Not unless you tell them Danny wasn’t really JD’s father.”
“He was JD’s dad. In every way that counted,” Camilla said, stroking Livvy’s hair. “I owe Danny at least this much.”
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “Good luck explaining that to your new husband.”
…
Sam leaned back in his chair. The Camilla he remembered had been sweet and fun, with a touching vulnerability just beneath the polish. The Camilla who’d shown up at his office two days ago had concealed her pregnancy from him and married someone else just a week after the two of them had been together in Veg
as. Despite being furious that she’d kept the knowledge that he had a son from him, there was no question he was still attracted to her. There’d been a moment last night when he’d had the urge to kiss her, just to see how much of the chemistry they’d had in Vegas was still there. But this morning the cold light of reality had set in.
He’d been searching the internet for information about Camilla Winthrop—Camilla Billington Winthrop—and it was worse than he’d thought. Her father had been an investment banker who supported his family in a lavish lifestyle. Then the market crashed and the authorities started taking a closer look at his business practices. It was reported that he lost his own fortune as well as the fortunes of a number of his clients, although rumors persisted that he’d managed to squirrel away a couple million dollars in an offshore account, earning him the nickname Bilkington in some quarters.
He died in a car crash before the indictments had ever been issued. He and his then-10-year-old daughter Olivia had been picking up Billington’s wife from an exclusive rehab center. The couple had died in a one-car crash en route to their home in Connecticut, which was by then listed for foreclosure.
He clicked through to the next article. Although nothing could be proven, there were strong suspicions that Billington had intentionally driven his car off the road, intending to commit suicide and take his family with him. The reporter noted that the couple’s only child had been the sole survivor, and that she was listed in critical condition. The wife had a daughter from a previous marriage, Camilla, who couldn’t be reached for comment.
Now that was interesting. So she hadn’t been Billington’s daughter after all. But she hadn’t minded using his name while he was flying high.
A child could never be blamed for their parent’s irresponsible or even criminal behavior. But still. A disturbing pattern was starting to emerge.
There was a sidebar story on Camilla’s mother, noting that before her marriage to the financier, she had been the wife of a wealthy entrepreneur three decades her senior, whom she met while working as a showgirl in Vegas. How ironic, Sam thought.
The next article announced the engagement of Camilla Billington to Daniel Stanford Winthrop III, and linked to a series of previous articles about an accident that had left Winthrop—the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune—a paraplegic. Photos of the former playboy and the man in the wheelchair didn’t look like the same person. There wasn’t much doubt in Sam’s mind what Camilla had seen in him. With her stepfather’s fortune gone, Camilla had apparently not wasted any time finding a man who could support her in the style to which she’d become accustomed.
After all, if she’d married Winthrop for love, what had she been doing in Vegas having wild and crazy sex with Sam the week before her wedding?
It was abundantly clear to Sam why Camilla was so reluctant to publicly acknowledge him as the father of her child. Her four-year-old son was now the heir apparent to the Winthrop fortune. A legacy that would be quickly challenged if the in-laws suspected the truth about the child’s parentage. To keep control of her son’s inheritance, she had to keep custody of her son. Which is where Sam supposed he came in.
Sam put his hands behind his head and considered his options. In order to protect his son, he would have to marry Camilla. He could refuse and demand a paternity test, but the boy was born while the mother was married, and the father was not only identified on the birth certificate, but had acknowledged the son as his own for four years. It would take time, and a judicial proceeding, to compel Camilla to consent to the child’s being tested.
And meanwhile, he had no way of holding Camilla and the child in the state, or for that matter, even the country. If she had access to Winthrop’s money—or if the rumors of the stepfather’s offshore accounts were true—she could take the child and her sister and disappear.
There was no way around it; he would have to marry her. But a woman who had a two-week affair the week before her marriage to a man she wanted only for money and prestige, a woman who concealed her pregnancy from the child’s father and passed him off as her husband’s heir, then showed up on his doorstep with a plan to snare herself a new husband, was hardly a fit mother. Not for his child.
Sam’s own father had discarded him, and his stepfather had considered him nothing more than an inconvenience. Sam’s son was not going to grow up that way.
He’d go along with her plan, for now. But when it was all over, he’d be the one with sole custody of JD, and Camilla would get exactly what she deserved. Nothing.
Chapter Three
When Camilla stepped off the elevator this time and crossed the lobby, the receptionist greeted her warmly and ushered her to Sam’s office. But that did nothing to ease the anxiety burning a hole in her stomach.
Sam was sitting at his desk, looking every bit the ruthless trial lawyer who chewed up hostile witnesses and spit them out. He can think whatever he wants about me, as long he helps me keep JD. After everything she’d been through, humiliating herself to keep her child was a small price to pay.
He nodded to her curtly, and she sat down on the visitor’s chair opposite his desk.
“Here’s the deal,” he said, glancing at the stack of papers in front of him, then returning to stare directly into her eyes. She met his gaze directly, unwavering.
“We will get married as soon as reasonably practical. Since we’re keeping JD’s real parentage a secret—for now—we’ll come up with a story about meeting somewhere, oh, maybe six years ago. We had a brief romance, but we were both too young.”
“You’d have been older than I am now.” She was the one who’d been young and naive.
He ignored her. “We’ll say we met in Vermont. On a ski holiday. Keep it simple.”
“I guess sitting in front of the fire in a ski lodge sounds a little more romantic than sitting at the roulette table.”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly in a smile, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who recalled how romantic it actually had been at the roulette table. She remembered how desirable she’d felt when he watched her face instead of watching the little ball spin round and round the wheel. The warmth of his hand resting lightly on her knee. How he’d kissed her with the taste of champagne on her lips as the stack of chips grew in front of them and called her his lady luck. Then left the table in the middle of a winning streak to go back to his hotel room.
“Why not just stick to Vegas, a year later?” she asked.
The air between them seemed charged with that same attraction they’d felt years ago. Was he remembering the same evening she was? Then his eyes narrowed, and the connection between them was gone so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“That’s not a good idea.” If he’d been softening toward her, his face didn’t reveal it now.
She shrugged. “The closer a lie is to the truth, the less likely you slip up.”
“You should know.”
She felt her face heat and bit back a sharp retort. She needed his help.
“Considering the fact that your mother started out her marriage career as a Las Vegas showgirl, I think it’s best if we don’t do anything to encourage that connection.”
“You had me investigated?”
“Believe me, I intend to. No, Camilla, that little fact turned up with a quick internet search. Tell me, are you trying to beat your mother’s record for how fast you can remarry a wealthy man after your first husband dies?”
“Since you think you know everything, you can just draw your own conclusions. And you can keep your opinion to yourself.” She needed him right now, but she wasn’t about to let him walk all over her. Her mother had been far from perfect, but she’d done the best she could in situations Sam knew nothing about.
“It’s just the facts, Camilla. As a lawyer, I deal in facts. Now, let’s get back to our agreement.”
“All right.”
“We will schedule a small civil ceremony. Some sort of honeymoon will be necessary, or it would raise que
stions. Before and after the wedding, you will accompany me to social functions, and to all outward appearances we will be the perfect, devoted couple. I have a reputation in this community, and I expect you to uphold it, not destroy it.”
“Of course.”
“You, your sister, and JD will move into my home immediately.”
“Is that necessary before the wedding?” JD still had nightmares and woke up crying for his father. She’d assumed that once she got Sam to agree to her plan, there’d be time to introduce JD to him slowly, to ease the transition.
“I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”
She bristled. “What do you think I’m going to do, take JD and leave town after I’ve already put myself through all of this to get your help?” She leveled her voice, tried to speak calmly, reasonably. “I think it’s better if you take it slow with JD. Let him get to know you before we are all living in one house together.” Surely he could see this was the best approach.
She continued. “If we just give it a few months, then—”
“A few months?” There was cold fury in his voice and in his eyes as he stared her down. “Every day that goes by before my son is under my roof and in my care is a day too long.”
“Listen, I understand how you feel.”
“You have no idea how I feel.” Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve made all the decisions about my son for the past four years on your own. That changes now.”
“I’m his mother. Trust me, I—”
“Trust you? That’s amusing.” He leaned toward her. “I was going to give you a week to make plans, but I’ve changed my mind. I want you moved in tomorrow.”
“I think that’s a terrible idea.”
“Too bad. I’m calling the shots now.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “And if I refuse?”
He picked up an expensive-looking pen and tapped it on the desk. “If you’d prefer, we can forget about the whole marriage idea, and I’ll file a petition for a paternity determination. And make sure your in-laws are advised of the proceeding.”
