One Night, So Pregnant!

by Heidi Rice

  Tess’s jaw went slack with shock. She let her gaze drift over Nathaniel Graystone’s imposing physique: the expensive, perfectly pressed shirt; the sharply creased trousers; and the handmade leather shoes, which had a shine so high she could see the volumes of legal texts lining the walls reflecting in the polish.

  This man had been bailed out of juvie as a kid? How was that even possible?

  She cleared her throat, swallowing down the foolish feeling of connection, and crossed to the door, planning to make a swift, silent exit while Nate and his lawyer were busy glaring at each other.

  She didn’t want to know about Nate’s past, or feel any sympathy for that hot-tempered kid. So he’d been a troubled teenager too, so what? That didn’t make what he was planning to do to her any less abhorrent.

  ‘Where exactly do you think you’re going, Miss Tremaine?’ Walter Jensen’s calm question cut off her escape route.

  She wheeled round. ‘I’m leaving. I’ve already told you, I’m not interested in a settlement. I don’t need—’

  ‘How can you not need my money when you’ve got nowhere to live?’ Nate rounded on her—and all her foolish feelings of a connection between them shot out of the office’s casement windows.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I called the super in your building. He was real talkative.’

  Tess gasped, her desire to throttle Ed Mason, the elderly supervisor at her duplex who couldn’t resist a gossip, only superseded by her desire to throttle the man in front of her. ‘Who gave you the right to go snooping around in my affairs?’

  ‘I can do what I like when a woman says she’s carrying my child.’

  Tess sucked in another breath, outraged all over again.

  ‘All right quit it, the both of you,’ Walter Jensen interceded before she could launch into another diatribe. ‘You.’ He pointed at Tess. ‘Sit down and calm down before you cause the baby an injury.’

  ‘But I...’ Tess tried to intervene but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as Jensen’s paternal gaze fixed on hers.

  ‘Miss Tremaine, if you’re old enough to get yourself pregnant you’re certainly old enough to have a civilised conversation about it. And you are still pregnant? Am I right?’

  Tess sat down, unable to deny it. ‘Great idea. Yes, let’s have a civilised conversation about it,’ she said, glowering at Nate, even though she had been forced to concede a tiny proportion of the moral high ground.

  Her lie had complicated this situation, so she would deal with that—before she made it absolutely clear to Nathaniel Graystone that she would not be conceding any more than that, no matter how much money he tried to throw at her.

  ‘Good.’ The lawyer picked up the documents on his desk and levelled his gaze at Nate. ‘Now, Nathaniel, you need to do the same. And I’d suggest, to start, you apologise to Miss Tremaine for snooping into her private affairs.’

  Nate frowned at his attorney, but Tess’s moment of satisfaction was short-lived when the elderly man tucked the documents under his arm and crossed to the door.

  ‘Hold it. Where are you going?’ Nate called after his attorney.

  A rueful smile lifted Jensen’s lips as he placed his hand on the doorknob. ‘I’m going to lunch, son.’

  ‘But, you can’t.’ Nate spread his hands to encompass Tess, who got a much-needed boost from the note of concern in his voice. Good to know she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to face this ‘civilised’ conversation without a chaperone. ‘I’m paying you to handle this.’

  ‘There’s no need for an attorney to be involved yet, Nathaniel,’ Jensen replied, the affection in his voice so palpable it easily compensated for the condescension. ‘I have every confidence you can handle it from here.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE regular ticks of a carriage clock on the mantelpiece only increased the tension as Tess stared at Nate Graystone’s back. He’d paced across the deep-pile carpet about three minutes ago like a caged tiger and had been glaring out of the window without uttering a word ever since.

  After his sulk had gone on for another minute, Tess had got her own temper under enough control to break the deadlock. ‘Your lawyer’s quite a character. How long have you known him?’

  He twisted round. ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘I was just wondering,’ she replied patiently. ‘He mentioned he had to bail you out of juvie. What did you do?’

  The frosty stare became even frostier. ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘So long ago you can’t remember?’ she asked, deciding that needling him was more productive than staring at his back.

  He crossed the room and sat in the chair across from her. ‘Exactly how is this relevant to our current situation?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘I’m curious,’ she said, although the truth was she was a little more than curious now—she’d never seen him on the defensive before. ‘I had a few run-ins with the school authorities myself as a teenager.’

  He barked out a humourless laugh. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  Ignoring the blip of temper, she went on the offensive. ‘What’s the big secret, Nathaniel?’ she said, using his full name deliberately. ‘How about I tell you mine then you can tell me yours?’ Whatever he’d done it probably hadn’t been anything at all. ‘First there was the time I got caught smoking in—’

  ‘Driving a stolen vehicle, without a licence, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer,’ he interrupted, reeling his infractions off with about as much emotion as reciting a shopping list. ‘It was Christmas Eve and I decided to

  celebrate in style.’

  ‘You did all that in one night?’ she said, shocked. She’d never met anyone who’d been more out of control than she had as a teenager.

  He shrugged and looked away. ‘I was twelve. It didn’t happen again.’

  ‘I never...’ She hesitated, still not sure she could believe it. ‘You don’t look like the type.’

  His sharp blue gaze levelled on her. ‘Good. That’s the idea.’

  ‘I bet your parents went ballistic,’ she said, feeling that odd sense of connection again, despite their differences. Her father would have murdered her if she’d ever got arrested.

  ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘They were in Cancún.’

  ‘Cancún? At Christmas time? You’re kidding?’ she said, more shocked by that revelation than the news that he’d been driving a stolen vehicle at twelve. Although Christmases had been strained, difficult affairs in her teens, at least her father had always been there to celebrate them with her, even after she’d begun living with her aunt.

  He sent her a bland look.

  ‘What were they doing in Cancún?’

  He hitched a shoulder. ‘Getting drunk and high. It’s what they did best.’

  ‘But who was looking after you?’ she asked, genuinely sorry for him now. No wonder he’d gone so spectacularly off the rails.

  ‘The staff,’ he said, then glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘How about we stop wasting time discussing this, and start discussing why we’re actually here?’

  She quashed the wave of sympathy towards him at the surly tone, the blunt statement revealing more than he had probably intended. ‘All right.’ She propped her elbow on the armrest of the chair. So he’d had a crummy childhood—that still didn’t make his intentions towards her child any more honourable. ‘Why don’t we kick off with why I’m really here? And what this so-called “settlement”—’ she did air-quotes with her fingers ‘—is supposed to achieve.’

  ‘No problem, but first you tell me whether you’re pregnant or not.’

  She shifted away, the guilty blush warming her cheeks.

  He stiffened and then swore softly, running his hand through his hair. ‘I knew it.’

  He snagged her wrist and held on. ‘Is it mine?’ he asked, his voice frigid.

  She shook her head, but the denial refused to come out of her mouth. One lie was enough.

  His fingers t
ightened. ‘Tell the truth for once.’

  She wrestled her hand out of his grip. ‘What do you mean, for once? I told you the truth weeks ago. And you didn’t believe me. Remember?’

  ‘So it is mine. You’re sure?’

  She ducked her head, rubbed her wrist where his fingers had dug in.

  If only she could lie again. It would be the easy way out. But she couldn’t, because it would be another betrayal of the life growing inside her, and the baby didn’t deserve that.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she murmured, the sudden wave of hopelessness washing over her.

  Nathaniel Graystone was her child’s father. She would always have a connection to this cynical, controlled stranger, because her child would share his DNA.

  ‘And you’re going to keep it?’

  She met his gaze, determined to weather the storm she knew was coming. ‘Yes. And nothing you can say or do is going to make me get rid of it.’

  His brows flattened, the line across his forehead deepening, but he looked stunned, not angry. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on, how dumb do you think I am?’ she countered, scepticism dripping from every syllable. ‘What was the settlement supposed to pay for?’

  ‘Not that.’ The expletive came out on a low murmur of fury. ‘What kind of a jerk do you think I am?’

  She flinched, but didn’t back down, the tiny slither of uncertainty, Eva’s words of caution, quickly quashed by the memory of how he’d humiliated her when she’d come to see him. ‘The kind of jerk who refused to admit this child might be his when I first told him I was pregnant. That kind.’

  ‘My reaction that day has nothing to do with this.’

  ‘What does it have to do with, then? Because if I recall correctly that man didn’t seem too keen on even acknowledging his responsibilities, let alone paying for them.’

  He lurched out of his chair, paced across the silk carpet. When he finally turned back to her, she saw frustration instead of fury. ‘I didn’t ask you here to pay you to have an abortion. I realise I didn’t react too well when you first told me. But I thought...’ He trailed off, the rigid set of his shoulders matching the granite set of his features.

  ‘You thought what?’ she prompted. When he didn’t reply she answered for him. ‘That I was lying about the pregnancy, or your paternity, or both? Isn’t that what you thought? And then you have the cheek to be surprised that I would lie to you about being pregnant. Of course I lied. Why wouldn’t I?’

  She could hear the strain in his voice when he replied. ‘What I said that day had nothing to do with the child. I got you confused with someone else.’

  The churning sensation in her stomach finally settled a little. He hadn’t been planning to bully her into an abortion. ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘It is to me.’

  * * *

  The muscles in Nate’s neck and shoulders stretched taut and started to throb. He didn’t want to talk about Marlena. But seeing Tess’s expression, ripe with suspicion, he realised he didn’t have much of a choice.

  He’d made a mistake when she’d told him about the baby, doubting her because of another woman’s dishonesty. And now he was going to have to pay the penalty. Or have her believe the worst of him.

  He rolled his shoulders, but they continued to ache as he forced the words out. ‘I dated a woman a long time ago. It wasn’t working out, so I broke it off...’ At least he’d had the good sense to do that much to protect himself. ‘They did a profile piece about my business a few months later in the Chronicle—named it one of the top ten start-ups in the Bay Area—and Marlena turned up the night after at my condo in nothing but a fur coat and heels.’ How stupid had he been not to realise the sequence of events at the time? ‘A month later she turned up again and told me I was going to be a father and I believed her. Even though I was mad as hell about it.’

  ‘You were mad at her for getting pregnant?’

  The loaded question took him by surprise. He’d been so deep in the memory of that kick-in-the-gut moment, he’d almost forgotten Tess was listening to every word.

  ‘I was mad at myself.’ He’d been twenty, obsessed with making the business work, and proving he could undo some of the damage his father had done. Having a child because he’d been careless and hadn’t been able to control his own lust would have proved exactly the opposite. ‘But I figured I’d made a mistake, so it was up to me to fix it. I offered to support her, and the child, give it my name on the condition that I didn’t have to be involved.’

  ‘That was generous of you.’

  He heard the note of disdain. ‘It seemed the least I could do,’ he said coldly.

  ‘So you never planned to play a role in the child’s life?’

  ‘No,’ he said bluntly, refusing to feel guilty about it. She could judge him all she wanted, but he’d been convinced at the time he had nothing to offer. It had seemed easier and cleaner to pay for his mistake and step quietly away. Because that was what Marlena’s child had been to him. A mistake.

  Until the night he’d been called to the maternity hospital by a nurse who had seen his name on the insurance paperwork and wrongly assumed he was Marlena’s partner. The sight of the squirming body in the basinet, its delicate little fist pressed against its mouth, had shocked him to the core. The tiny baby boy had been undersized, the nurse had said. Nate had never seen anything so fragile, so helpless before and he’d felt...something. Something he’d never have believed himself capable of feeling.

  ‘It was Walter’s suggestion that I get a DNA test, to confirm paternity,’ he said, remembering the arguments he’d had with his attorney on the subject, a cruel reminder of his own stupidity. Once he’d seen the boy, some foolish part of him had been convinced the baby had to be his. He’d even contacted Marlena with the intention of setting up visitation rights.

  ‘The test showed a 99.8% probability that I was not the father.’ He kept his voice neutral, denied the echo of pain and disbelief. ‘Marlena hadn’t been as upfront as she should have been about when the child was conceived.’

  * * *

  Tess baulked at the quietly spoken words. ‘Marlena sounds like a woman who could do with a jolly good slap,’ she stated, shocked that anyone could be quite so calculating.

  Nate’s head lifted.

  ‘Although right about now I’d like to give you one too,’ Tess added, but the enmity she knew she ought to feel refused to come.

  He’d called a helpless child ‘a mistake’. Had openly admitted that he hadn’t intended to be a father to it. For that alone she ought to be able to despise him. And she would have, but for the hollow note in his voice when he’d spoken about the results of the DNA test, and the expression on his face. He hadn’t looked pleased, or vindicated by the evidence of Marlena’s deception. He’d looked hurt.

  ‘I guess that makes us even,’ he said.

  It wasn’t an apology, but she would take it. For now, because what he had revealed about his past was so much better than what she had feared.

  ‘It was cruel of her to lie to you like that,’ she said.

  ‘Especially as she didn’t need to,’ he said, making it clear he was speaking about Tess as well as Marlena. ‘I gave her the money she needed anyway.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, not sure where the twinge of jealousy came from. If he still had feelings for the woman, why should it matter to her?

  He shrugged. ‘Why make the child suffer? The boy’s father had dumped her as soon as she told him about the pregnancy. She didn’t have any other means of support, which was why she’d tried to trick me.’

  He said the words dismissively, but Tess wondered how many other men would support another man’s child in those circumstances. Hardly any.

  ‘Just so you know, Nate,’ she said, deciding it was way past time they cleared the air completely. ‘I’m not Marlena and I’m not after your money.’

  ‘I know that, Tess.’ The reluctant smile that c
urved his lips made her heart tumble over in her chest. It was a shame he didn’t smile more often.

  ‘Just so you know,’ he said, ‘I never had any intention of making you get rid of the baby.’

  ‘I know that too now,’ she said, echoing his words as relief flowed through her. Thank goodness, she’d been wrong about that. But that didn’t really alter the fact that he’d made it fairly clear he had no desire to be a father, and she did want to be a mother.

  ‘The way I see it,’ she continued, ‘I’ve made the decision to have this baby, so it’s my responsibility to bring it up, both financially and emotionally. There’s absolutely no need for you to feel any responsibility towards it. I think that’s fair.’

  The reluctant smile disappeared. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A child needs a father.’

  The simple, stoic words surprised her. And she had no idea how to respond to the statement, because she had firsthand knowledge of how right he was. How desperately had she needed her own father, after her mother’s death? How much had she yearned for his approval and affection? She’d planned to protect her child by shielding it from a man who didn’t want it, and couldn’t love it. But did she really have the right to make that decision?

  ‘In an ideal world that’s certainly true,’ she said carefully. ‘But children grow up without fathers all the time. And isn’t that what you intended to do with Marlena’s child?’

  ‘That was the plan at the time.’ He ran his hand through his hair, the gesture weary. ‘But plans change. I couldn’t do that to my child. Not now.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, wanting desperately to know. Was it possible he wasn’t as indifferent to the prospect of fatherhood as he’d seemed? That he felt the same connection to this child that she did?

  But instead of giving her a straight answer, all he said was, ‘It’s complicated.’

  The fine hairs on the back of Tess’s neck prickled at the deliberately evasive answer, but she swallowed down her irritation. ‘That’s not very help—’