“Please,” he added. “This might get ugly.”
Get ugly? It was already pretty damn unattractive from where she stood. Closing her eyes, she pivoted, stepped over a sea of papers and underwear, then walked around the corner to the bedroom, her head buzzing and her heart still slamming her chest.
But she didn’t close the door. Instead, she stood stone still and listened as Nate opened the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“Demanding to take what is mine.” It was easy to hear now that it was the voice of a much-older man, accompanied by heavy, uneven footsteps into the room. She cringed, thinking about what he saw. How would she ever—
“Where is he?”
She put her hand on the doorjamb, frowning. Where is who?
“Listen, Colonel—”
“No, you listen to me. You were right to send me that test. One hundred percent right. That boy is an Ivory through and through, and there is only one thing to do. We take him home, son. Damn the torpedoes! We take him home.”
All around her, the world grew darker, shakier, and completely airless. What was he saying? What was he...
The question faded, replaced by the obvious answer. Nothing made sense. Nothing. Except her worst fears had been realized.
The Ivory family was going to take Dylan away from her.
Chapter Twelve
“What?” It was the best Nate could manage under the circumstances. The intrusion, the news, the plummet from a sexual high to a disaster. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The Colonel powered into the room, waving his cane like a scepter, his steel-gray eyes taking in the hot mess, then settling on Nate’s barely dressed state. “You call this work?”
“I call it...private.” Which was unheard of in the Colonel’s eyes. “What do you mean that boy is an Ivory?”
“You called it!” he bellowed, leaning heavily on his cane as he looked down at a jumble of papers. And clothes. He used the end of the cane to lift a pale pink bra by one strap and let it dangle in front of Nate’s face. “Is this what you call being a changed man?”
Nate closed his eyes and ignored the taunt. “Please tell me what you found out.” Except, he already knew. He’d known when he impulsively sent the DNA kit Liza had left on his smaller boat up to his grandfather for private testing.
When he left Jeff Munson in Key West, he simply hadn’t been as satisfied with the man’s signed paper. He’d tried to put it out of his mind, but every time he saw Dylan, he wondered. Sending the DNA test to his grandfather was really to prove the truth to both of them, since the Colonel had already talked about forcing the issue himself.
“I found a match right down to the cell matter, son. This young man is part of our family, and we will raise him as ours.”
Oh, God. His? Dylan was his.
Nate stole a glance over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the bedroom door from where he stood. Could Liza hear this whole conversation? Would she come barreling out here any minute to fight tooth and nail for the child she considered her own?
Even though that child was his?
Nate stabbed his fingers into his hair, swiping it back with a deep sigh. “Look, Colonel, I will handle this.”
“Like hell you will.” Using his cane, he flipped the bra into the air, sending it flying to land on Liza’s desk.
Nate bristled, swamped by frustration, compounded by an intense and unfamiliar coldness. Because he’d been yanked from sex with a woman he deeply cared about? Or was his grandfather’s disapproval leaving Nate cold?
“I will handle it,” he repeated, keeping his tone low and calm. “Liza has full guardianship—”
“Pay her off, get her signature, and...” He looked around, surveying the oversized living room that doubled as a main office. “Where is the boy? I thought he was on the premises.”
“He’s not here. And you can’t pay a person for her child, like—”
“He’s not her child.” The older man pounded his cane, drawing his bushy eyebrows together, deepening the crevice between his eyes. “Nathaniel, you can pay a person for anything, and you know it. She’ll have a price. When can I see him? I’d like a look at him and so would Mimsy. She’s resting right next door at the little villa called Saffron. Nice place, by the way. I like this re—”
“No, you can’t.” He ground out the words, the effort to balance his seething temper with a lifetime of compliance to everything this man wanted. “You can’t give someone money and expect them to accept that in exchange for a living, breathing child.”
“Nathaniel.” The Colonel’s tone showed he knew what kind of battle was brewing inside his grandson. “I’m disappointed in you.”
Nate waited for the words to hit their target and make him feel like a failure. But that sensation didn’t take hold in his heart. Something else did.
A deep, profound, wholly alien feeling that made him want to protect, defend, and support Liza Lemanski...over anyone, including the Colonel.
“I don’t care if you’re disappointed in me.” The words surprised him as much as his grandfather.
An old gray eyebrow launched north, rising above silver-rimmed glasses. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t,” he said, the reality picking up steam inside him. “I don’t care if you withhold your almighty approval or tie up your purse strings or cut me off from family dinners on Sunday night. I don’t care.”
The words were so liberating, he almost laughed out loud.
“Did you hear that?” Nate asked, raising his voice so someone not in the room had to hear it. “I don’t care what you say or do or threaten, Grandfather, because I will not let you hurt Liza or have her...my”—our—”son.”
“I hear you,” the Colonel said, pushing himself off the cane. “And, by the way, a young man from Key West sent me a package in the mail. I was going to throw it away, but I think it might be of interest to some of the private investors you’re trying to interest in this little baseball project of yours.”
His jaw dropped as he stared at a man he thought he loved, a man he thought ruled a family with a velvet fist. But what he saw was a man he didn’t want to be like at all.
“I’m not afraid of a scandal, Colonel,” he said. “But I will fight to the death if you try to take Dylan from Liza.” He swallowed. “And me.”
“I wouldn’t care if you wanted to raise him, but”—he waved the cane over the chaos of papers and clothes—”you are clearly not the changed man you claim to be, and I would worry for the boy.”