“Bobby is Tanya’s father,” I said quietly. “He’s the guy I hooked up with at the wedding, when I got pregnant.” Mom’s eyes widened slightly.
“And you told him this morning?” I nodded. “And that’s what you fought about?” I shrugged.
“Sort of,” I said. “He started talking about money and it just got on my last nerve.”
“Sienna,” Mom said, sighing. “You know who the father of your child is. And you’re lucky because the guy who knocked you up is a billionaire.”
“I don’t want a charity situation, Mom,” I said. “I don’t want him to think that he can just throw money at me and Tanya and be done with things.”
“What if he wants to be in her life? Tanya deserves to know her father,” Mom pointed out.
“If he wants to be in her life today, great,” I countered. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? Or next year?”
“Why are you rushing to assume that he’s going to change his mind?” I shrugged.
“I mean, the guy didn’t even try to get in contact after we hooked up,” I said; but that was kind of a weak argument and I knew it.
“You didn’t try all that hard to get in touch with him, either, if I recall correctly,” Mom countered, about as I should have expected. “You have to give the man a chance to be involved in his daughter’s life.”
“What if he just decides to be part of it until he gets bored, and then moves on? It would mess with Tanya for her entire life,” I insisted. Mom had to take a moment to think about that, and I hoped against hope that she would admit that I was right.
“So you don’t start out telling her that he’s her father,” Mom suggested. “But however you handle it, that’s the father of your child, and Tanya deserves for him to have a chance to get to know him. If you’d never had the opportunity to let him know, that would be one thing. But now that you know it’s him, and he knows she exists, if he wants to try you need to let him.”
“All he’s going to try and do is throw money at the situation to ease his guilty conscience,” I protested.
“First of all: I wasn’t aware that I raised a woman too proud to take money from someone who owes it to her,” Mom said. “If he does want to throw money at you and Tanya, my recommendation would be for you to take it. But even if you aren’t going to accept any kind of money from him for your daughter’s care, you should let him at least try to have a relationship with her.” I looked at my daughter, who had moved onto the swings, and sighed. The frustrating part was that I knew my mother was right; I owed it to Tanya to at least give Bobby a chance to have some part in her life. She didn’t ask to be born, and she hadn’t asked to have a single mom. If Bobby being in her life improved it, then how could I reject the idea out of hand without even trying it?
“What if he screws up?” Mom snorted in response to my question.
“Parents screw up all the time,” she said. “You’ve made mistakes.”
“But what if he screws up in a big way? What if he just wants to stick around while it’s fun and then gets bored and abandons her?” I scowled at Mom. “Are you really trying to tell me that it would be good for Tanya to go through that?” Mom sighed.
“Like I said: you don’t have to tell her he’s her father right away,” she replied. “But if he wants to be in her life, really involved in it, then you should let him try. Give some time to see if he’s going to go haring off after some billionaire party scheme, but let him try. Tanya is one of only a handful of kids in her class that doesn’t even know who her father is and never had one before. It would do a lot for her to have a chance at him in her life, if he wants it.”
“Mama!” I got up and walked over to my daughter, who’d moved onto the sandbox. I sat down on the edge of the box, and helped her with the toys; there were some that the park provided as communal toys for everyone to share, and some that other kids had brought with them.
“Here, let’s get this bucket a little fuller,” I told Tanya, grabbing up a spare mini-shovel to help her.
“Can I bring Bearemy here next time?” I shook my head.
“Sorry, baby; Bearemy would get dirty and I can’t give him a bath the way I can for you,” I explained.
“What if I’m really careful?” Tanya looked up at me with her most pleading expression and I couldn’t help chuckling.
“Baby, what if Bearemy got wet? Or if someone spilled something on him? You’d feel bad, and we wouldn’t be able to get him clean,” I pointed out. We tipped the dampened sand in the bucket out onto the drier sand, and Tanya beamed at the castle shape she’d accomplished.
“Can I bring Bearemy to show and tell?” I thought about that. There was just as much a risk of the teddy bear being stained at her school as at the park, but I didn’t want to have to tell her no to two things in a row.
“Maybe if we can find a way to do it without causing a disruption,” I said. “Because Bearemy is pretty big--you wouldn’t be able to just put him in your backpack when show and tell isn’t happening.”
“Oh! Yeah, that would be hard,” Tanya conceded. “I guess I can’t bring him on the trip, either?”
“Well the trip is to a water park,” I said. “I don’t think Bearemy would like getting wet. But you can tell him all about what you did when you get home!”
“I can! Yes!” Tanya hummed a happy little melody to herself as she started filling up another bucket with damp sand. “And I get to go swimming all day. On a school day!” I chuckled at that.
“It’s going to be a fun trip,” I told my daughter. “It was really nice of Mr. Clawson to offer to take the school.”
“He’s so nice!” Tanya patted down the sand in her bucket and carefully tipped it onto the top of the sand, wiggling it a bit to free the mold. “And he’s your friend now too!” I smiled and pretended to be totally occupied by finding another bucket-mold that would go with what my daughter had already built so far.
I couldn’t tell my daughter that the man who’d brought her new favorite toy to her, who was paying for her to go to a huge waterpark on a school day, was not my friend, not really. I didn’t want to ruin her good mood or have her worry about me. I kept playing with her and letting her jabber on about everything on her mind, agreeing that lizards were cool and that rabbits were better than guinea pigs, and so on.
I thought about what my mother said, about how if Bobby really wanted to be a part of his daughter’s life, I had to at least give him a chance for Tanya’s sake. She’d asked me on a few different occasions about why she didn’t have a Daddy or a Papa and I’d managed to sort of push the question aside each time by giving her a non-answer. She wasn’t old enough to understand the concept of a one-night stand, or an accidental pregnancy, and I couldn’t burden her with the idea that she wasn’t planned--especially not when she was too young to even grasp the idea of pregnancy at all beyond knowing that mommies carried babies inside of them until it was time to be born.
“Okay, jelly bean, I think it’s about time to go home for lunch, don’t you? I’m starving,” I said when I could tell Tanya was starting to wind down.
“Can we get hot dogs?” I grinned.
“Yeah, I think we can,” I said. “Let’s ask Grandma if she wants hot dogs for lunch.”
We walked over to my mother and I told her about Tanya’s request for hot dogs. “I think we can stop at the grocery store and get what we need,” Mom said. I knew Tanya probably wanted to go to an actual fast food place, but a grocery store hot dog was every bit as good--especially since we put some leftover chili on them, maybe some cheese.
“It’ll be just as good, baby girl,” I promised my daughter.
“In fact it might be better,” Mom said. “I always get heartburn from restaurant hot dogs, I think it’s because they boil them.”
“And then there’s that yucky hot dog water,” I pointed out.
“Ewwww,” Tanya said, imagining it, and I knew Mom and I had won the day. I thought about what it would mean for my da
ughter to have a rich father in her life; even if she didn’t know he was her dad, it could be a good thing, couldn’t it? You’ve probably already messed up whatever chance she would have had at that, I reminded myself, thinking of the argument with Bobby.
Chapter 15
I forced myself not to pace as I waited outside of the hospital with a bouquet of flowers, hoping that Sienna would get out of work soon. It had been a couple of days since I’d learned that my hookup with Sienna had resulted in a child, Tanya; initially I’d decided to go along with what Sienna had said, figuring that if she didn’t want me to be in her daughter’s life that it was her call. But I couldn’t shake the knowledge that I had a kid. I had a daughter, in fact.
And even without knowing it, I’d liked Tanya from the beginning. I’d liked her out of every kid in the classroom I’d visited, with both of us clueless that we were related to each other. I smiled to myself, remembering that fact; Tanya’s perky, pointed questions made a lot of sense, considering she was my kid as well as Sienna’s. Thinking about her, remembering what she’d looked like in the classroom and then again at her home with her mother and grandmother, I could see bits of myself in her. Slow down, Bobby, I thought, cutting myself short. Sure, there’s no reason to doubt Sienna about Tanya being your daughter. But you don’t know if she’ll agree to let you have any part in the girl’s life. You don’t know if she’s going to just tell you off again this time.
I’d done a little browsing online between when Sienna had left my place and when I’d decided to try and talk to her again, and in Texas I could get a paternity test--and if I could prove that Tanya was my child, I would legally be entitled to visitation if I wanted it. But the last thing I wanted to do was to create a bunch of legal strife for no real gain. I didn’t want Tanya’s first knowledge of me being her father to come along with a bunch of stress I would be causing her mother. Better by far to just talk things out with Sienna and see if I could get her to agree with me.
I turned around and spotted her walking towards the door from the inside, and took a deep breath. I was going to make my case to Sienna as fairly and as politely as possible, and I wasn’t going to let things escalate to an argument if I could help it. I hadn’t said anything to Kara yet, but if I could get Sienna to agree, and if things went well, I could tell my assistant and handler that part of the stipulations my uncle had set for me were already taken care of.
“Sienna,” I said, as soon as she walked out. I held out the bouquet a little bit so she would see it almost before she saw me. “Can we talk? Please?”
“Bobby?” Sienna frowned, looking from the flowers to me and then back again. “What’s this about?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said. A couple of people left the hospital and I realized how public the venue was. “Can I walk you to your car, maybe?”
“I guess if we’re going to talk that would be the best place,” Sienna agreed. I held out the flowers for her to take them; I’d asked the florist what she would want to get from someone who’d kind of messed up but wasn’t a boyfriend, and she’d recommended sunflowers. “I have no idea how you could have guessed these are one of my favorite flowers, but I suppose I should reward you for it by hearing you out.” I grinned.
We walked out to the parking structure, and once we were safely alone with no one to eavesdrop on us, I started in on what I wanted to say. “Look: I know you think that I just want to throw money at the situation, or something like that. Probably you think that I’m just going to be interested in being in Tanya’s life for a few weeks or months and then drop off the face of the planet, right?”
“That was about where my head was, yeah,” Sienna admitted. “And I’m guessing you’re here to promise you won’t do anything like that?”
“Well now that you’ve stolen my line…” I smiled at Sienna, hoping I looked charming. “I mean it, though. I want to be part of Tanya’s life. We don’t have to tell her right away who I am; I can just be her mom’s friend, and that’s it.” Sienna looked at the sunflowers and looked at me, and I could tell she was thinking deep thoughts.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “But I want to make sure that there are some ground rules in place. We’re going to keep things simple, right? Just some outings, dinner, stuff like that?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “In fact, if you’re not too tired, I had an idea for this afternoon.”
“You were really counting on me saying yes, weren’t you?” I laughed.
“Well I was hopeful,” I admitted. “Obviously I can’t force you to let me into Tanya’s life, but I hoped that you’d see the good reasons for it.”
“Well what was your idea?” Sienna stopped next to a beat-up old sedan, and I saw the child seat in back. I thought about the fact that I had at least half a dozen cars hanging around in a garage where I could pick and choose from them, in addition to the car I rode around in with a chauffeur. There is no way in hell she would let you loan her a car. She doesn’t even want child support, I told myself firmly.
“Well, Tanya obviously loves animals, so I was thinking the Natural History Museum would be a good first outing together,” I explained. Sienna half-smiled, looking at me with an expression in her eyes I couldn’t quite make out.
“That sounds good, actually,” Sienna said after a moment. “Let me go and get Tanya, and we’ll meet you there.” I grinned.
“That sounds perfect,” I agreed. “Meet you there in--say--an hour?” Sienna considered that and nodded.
“That’ll give me time to get changed and make sure Tanya’s had a snack before we go,” she said. “Meet you out front?”
“I’ll be there,” I told her, and then backed off to head to where Jack was waiting for me in the car. I had a few last-minute things to make sure of, so it was just as well that Sienna wanted some time to get changed, maybe take a shower before she brought Tanya to the museum. I walked out to where the car was waiting for me and climbed in the back seat, and I looked up in time to see Sienna’s car leaving the parking structure nearby. “Take me to the Museum, Jack,” I said, settling in my seat and thinking--again--about how much easier it would be if I could convince Sienna to let me take a bigger role in her and Tanya’s lives. She could have a car that doesn’t sound like it actively wants to die. She could move into a bigger apartment--get a house, even. But that counted on Sienna deciding to trust me, and I knew that there were good reasons for her to be wary. I would have to prove myself first, and hope for the best.
When we arrived at the museum, I thanked Jack and told him to grab himself some dinner and hang out for a bit, but to be available within three or so hours. “You got it, boss,” Jack said, pulling away from the curb. I went inside, looking around, and walked up to the ticket counter.
“Hey, I spoke with Joel Bartsch earlier, is he still in?” The woman taking care of tickets stared at me for a second, her eyes a little wide.
“Ah--yeah, I think he is, let me just call him,” she said, turning away. It was late in the afternoon, so there weren’t too many people in the museum anyway; but as I waited for Joel to come out, I figured it would take a little bit more muscle to get things exactly the way I wanted them. I’d arranged everything, but sometimes people needed a little last push--I’d learned that almost as soon as I’d inherited my uncle’s fortune.
“Mr. Clawson,” Joel said, hurrying out to greet me. “I wanted to thank you again for your generous donation to the museum, and make sure everything was to your liking.”
“I’m mostly very happy,” I replied, smiling as graciously as I could. “Can we have things ready in the next forty-five minutes or so?” Joel nodded quickly.
“Absolutely,” he said. “That will be plenty of time.” I smiled at him again and shook his hand, and went to check things out a bit before Sienna and Tanya would arrive.
I made it out to the front entrance of the museum about ten minutes before they would get there, and thought for a minute or two about the possibility that the car Si
enna was driving had broken down; if it had, surely she would call me, wouldn’t she? I was just starting to get fidgety when she and Tanya appeared, walking over from a nearby garage.
“No car trouble, I hope?” Sienna gave me a quick, almost distrusting look.
“No, the car was fine,” she said, putting on the voice she had in front of Sienna and her mother.
“Well, I think we’re going to have a really good time,” I said, gesturing towards the doors.
“It shouldn’t be too busy this time of day, either,” Sienna observed. “Lots of time to look at all of the exhibits, right Tanya?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Tanya hopped up and down at the prospect and I smiled even broader.
“Well you’ll have all the time you want, actually,” I explained. “I made a very generous donation and basically rented the museum for the rest of the day.” Sienna stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me.
“You did what?” She had lost the bright, almost too-positive tone in her voice.
“I made a donation to the museum and rented it for the evening,” I explained, shrugging it off. Sienna closed her eyes for a moment and I glanced at Tanya, whose excitement had clearly started to diminish a bit. Sienna opened her eyes and met my gaze, and even though she was smiling I could tell that she wasn’t exactly pleased--definitely not as pleased as I had been expecting.
“I thought we’d discussed spending money,” Sienna said, shooting a glance at our daughter and keeping her voice carefully as neutral as possible.
“We did, and I understand where you’re coming from, but I really wanted to make this special for you and Tanya,” I told her, keeping my own facial expression positive. Sienna looked at Tanya and could clearly see that the little girl was starting to worry that something was wrong.
“I just want to make sure that you didn’t go to too much trouble on our behalf,” Sienna said, putting on that slightly too positive voice again. I gave myself a mental shake; I should have anticipated that Sienna was going to have a problem with what I’d done, but I hadn’t been thinking about what she’d said about not wanting me to throw money at the situation. I’d only been thinking about how much fun Tanya could have with just her mother and me at the museum, with the staff. How she could enjoy all of the exhibits for as long as she wanted without having to deal with other people.
Reunited: A Billionaire Secret Baby Romance (Lost Love Book 2) Page 10
