But Connor had come up with the idea of marriage.…
And deep in her heart she suspected this was the reason why.
He was hurting. Two years on and still he couldn’t let it go. Underneath his bitterness at their betrayal must lie an immensely profound love for Dana.…
She gave a groan and rolled onto her stomach to bury her face in the soft down pillows.
She needed time to come to terms with this Sunday-morning bombshell. Once she’d recovered from the searing hurt, she’d confront Connor.
But not yet. Not while she felt wounded, raw … and so horribly exposed.
Connor juggled the slippery baby in his arms as water sluiced over them, rinsing off the suds.
Dylan was in heaven, if his squeals and frantic wiggles were anything to go by. Connor had a feeling today’s shower was going to become a weekly Sunday-morning ritual.
And damned if he hadn’t had fun, too.
He hiked the baby up and gave his sodden head a quick kiss. Soft warmth expanded in his chest.
A part of him.
Dylan was his.
And, God willing, they would have years together. He would watch Dylan grow up and he’d always be looking for parts of himself. Would Dylan’s dark-gray baby eyes lighten to the clarity of his? Or would they change to match Suzy’s angelic blues?
He was Dylan’s daddy. He could hardly wait for Dylan to utter the word. He’d teach it to the baby. But it would take nothing away from Michael.
In asking for his help Michael had given him the greatest gift of all. He’d agreed to be a sperm donor so that the bout of mumps Michael had suffered as a child wouldn’t deprive him and Suzy of the child they so desperately wanted.
He would make sure that Dylan grew up knowing everything about Michael. And his mother, too.
Although there were no signs of Suzy in Dylan yet, they would come. With luck the baby had inherited his own height.
“Never fear, you won’t be short,” he murmured to Dylan who was inquisitively playing with the stream of water that drenched them. “My genes won’t allow it.”
He grinned. Victoria would claim it was his arrogant gene showing through.
Victoria …
Intertwined with thinking about her sleepy eyes and tousled hair this morning came memories of last night. Her heat, her generosity, her gentle love for his son that contrasted so sharply with her blowtorch sensuality, which had forever altered his perceptions of her.
Dreary?
Not a damn.
Last night he’d gotten a very good feeling about the future. And today he intended to solidify what they already had.
“Ouch,” he exclaimed as Dylan grabbed at a sprinkling of chest hair. The baby gave him a grin that was all gums. Connor laughed back, then pinning Dylan securely to his right side, he used his free hand to turn off the faucet.
Dylan protested vocally.
“C’mon, Dylan, time to get Victoria—” He broke off. That wasn’t right. It should be Tory. Come to think of it, he was Dylan’s father … his daddy … and he wanted to make that fact public.
Yet according to Dylan’s birth certificate his father was listed as Michael.
God, this was getting complicated.…
Dylan’s squawks of complaint grew louder.
And as he drew a breath for the next burst, Connor hastily turned the water back on. “Okay, you win, big fella.” Connor rather suspected he was creating a problem for next time. “Just a few minutes, right?”
Dylan gurgled with satisfaction.
A bolt of love for the bundle of determination in his arms surged through him. Guardianship and custody were only a part of the complicated ties that bound him to Dylan. Fatherhood was so much more.
A sudden thought startled him. Victoria was more than Dylan’s guardian, too. She was also his wife. But not Dylan’s mommy.
Yet, although she might not share a biological bond with the baby like he did, Connor knew she loved Dylan.
And he really had no right to the title of Daddy until he’d formalized his relationship with Dylan by adopting him.
It was possible Victoria would want to adopt the baby, too … that way she would become Dylan’s mother in fact. Dylan would have a mummy and a daddy.
He bounced Dylan up and down until the baby squealed with laughter. That was something else for them to discuss today. He had great plans for a day on the beach. Building sand castles. A picnic. Paddling in the shallows. And he was determined that he and Victoria would enjoy the day every bit as much as Dylan.
Today. The first day of the rest of their lives. Such a cliché, but so true.
He could barely wait.
By the time Connor had gotten a now screaming-in-protest Dylan out of the shower and switched off the faucets, Victoria was no longer in the bedroom.
He frowned as he took in the neatly made bed. He’d expected to find her languishing amongst the covers, reading the papers and perhaps sipping a second cup of tea.
But the room was empty.
And only a hint of Victoria’s subtle fragrance lingered.
No matter. He’d find her as soon as he’d dressed Dylan, and he’d share what he had planned for the day.
Fifteen minutes later Connor had dressed himself and the baby and come downstairs to find Victoria in the kitchen, buttering a piece of toast. She started as he entered, Dylan riding on his right hip.
He halted in the doorway. “I was going to make breakfast in bed for you.”
“I can’t stay. Sorry.” She gave a rueful shrug. “I need to go to work.”
“Work?” For the first time he noticed she was wearing black trousers and a crisp white shirt with pin tucks down the front. “Today?”
Her eyes slid away from his. “Bridget called. I need to go into the office.”
Disappointment flooded Connor. He’d planned—
The hell with it. It didn’t matter a toss what he’d planned. His plans didn’t fit with Victoria’s goals for her life.
Resentment tasted bitter on his tongue. Last night had given him a false sense of wonder. He’d hoped …
Blast what he’d hoped. Victoria’s career would always come first. He’d married her knowing that, so why the hell was he so disappointed?
Because of last night. Because of the way she’d touched him and responded so sweetly and because of the wonder he’d thought he’d seen in her eyes.
He’d been here before. Yet this time, despite knowing exactly what Victoria’s priorities were, despite being armored against her, he’d begun to believe that this time it would be different.
That what they shared was special.
That Victoria was nothing like Dana.
And she was different—he knew she genuinely cared for Dylan, whereas Dana had only ever raised the topic of children as a precursor to a discussion about marriage.
Victoria wasn’t manipulative … she wouldn’t sleep with him to get a partnership, or beg for a baby when all she wanted was a ring on her finger.
But she did share the same ruthless, single-minded ambition that had driven his ex-lover. And he couldn’t help resenting the fact that Victoria would always put work first.
He’d been a victim of—and survived—that vicious circle once. He had no intention of being devastated a second time. And this time it wasn’t only his heart at risk. This time there was Dylan—his own son—to consider, too.
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow Victoria to be so cavalier about her responsibility to his baby. His baby.
But now was not the time to get into that. Let her go to work. He wasn’t about to blurt it all out in a moment of anger. He’d held off telling her that Dylan was his baby this long because she’d been so worried that he intended to take Dylan away from her. He could wait a little longer. Once he’d cooled down he would confront her with his relationship to Dylan—and with what he’d decided to do about it.
It was time for Victoria to learn who called the shots.
“Do what you want,” he bit out and swung away.
She shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uneasy. “What are you going to do?”
“What I’d planned.” He gave her a look of scorching contempt. “I’m taking Connor to the beach. We’ll spend a day doing what families do.”
He watched as her eyes darkened and a not-very-nice sense of victory swelled him. She’d made her choice.
And so had he.
Chapter Eleven
Over the next week and a half Victoria avoided Connor.
The tightening tension gave her a sense of sitting on the lip of a volcano about to erupt.
Outwardly Connor was civil, and he still read to Dylan every night while she fed the baby his final bottle of the day. But they’d barely spoken since that fateful Sunday morning.
When she met his eyes she could glimpse the gathering turbulence in the darkening storm of gray. There was a confrontation coming and, like the coward she was, she avoided him by using the best excuse she had—work.
As soon as Dylan had eaten breakfast she kissed him goodbye and left him in Anne’s capable hands. She came home after a work day and desperately avoided Connor in the evenings—with the exception of Dylan’s bedtime. Afterward she retreated to her room—and her laptop.
The crumbling of their truce did little to ease the tension that was building day by day between them.
It all came to a head when Victoria arrived home late one night to find Dylan already asleep—and a glowering Connor waiting for her in the living room, every light blazing.
She came to a halt and set her laptop bag down on one of the leather couches.
Standing there, his legs apart, in a beautifully tailored black business suit and pale-blue shirt sans tie, with his shoes still an impossibly glossy black at the end of a day, he looked formidable. Unreachable. It was impossible to tell whether he felt anything for her at all. Except the anger and annoyance that the harsh overhead lighting revealed so clearly.
“Dylan needs a mother.”
Startled by his words, she continued to stare at him.
What did he mean? Anxiety—never far away where Dylan was concerned—pooled in her stomach. Dylan already had a mother.
But she’d never told him.…
Had she been too reticent? Was the omission intended to protect Suzy’s memory going to cost her dearly?
“Nothing to say?”
The glare he directed at her held anger and frustration and something that was dark and dangerous.
“I had to stay later than—”
“I have a business. I work long hours—but I still have time for Dylan. This is the third time you’re late this week—and it’s only Wednesday. And last week you were late almost every night, too.”
He’d been counting. But instead of making her feel like she was winning this battle of wills between them, a wretched anguish speared her. He didn’t think her fit to be a mother.
Her shoulders sagged. Served her right, she supposed. Tonight had been a genuine emergency—the rest of the time she’d been avoiding Connor. She’d been stopping for dinner on the way home so that she didn’t have to eat with him and endure the awful estrangement between them, arriving home in time for Dylan’s bath and bedtime story. She’d desperately missed out on the extra time with Dylan. But what choice did she have?
Right now she couldn’t bear to be anywhere near Connor.
It simply hurt too much.
She was trapped between her need to be with Dylan and her desperation to avoid Connor—and protect her breaking heart.
The memory of their night together … of what they might have had … was eating her alive.
Connor was speaking again, the words sharp and cold as hailstones. She pulled herself out of her misery.
“Victoria, if you can’t be available for Dylan, if you can’t be relied on to be here for the child, then its better you move out.”
“What?”
Shock caused the blood to drain from her face. She collapsed onto the nearest of the two long, black leather couches, suddenly chilled and weak. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
Divorce. He was talking about divorce. “But you promised.”
“What?”
“That you wouldn’t end it between us.” Victoria placed her fingers against her temples, hunching over where she sat as she struggled to gather her thoughts.
She heard his footfalls across the carpet as he moved closer. Those perfectly shiny shoes came into her line of vision. “Things have changed, Victoria.”
Dana and Paul had gotten married.
Connor had realized that this fake marriage was never going to be enough for him.
And now he wanted out.
She spoke at his shoes. “You can’t do thi—”
“You’ve hardly been home for Dylan over the past ten days.” The words were as harsh as a whip. “You spent last Sunday and most of this past weekend at work.”
To avoid him. Because she’d been unable to bear the tension, the antagonism between them. She looked up, her gaze unconsciously pleading with him. “I’ll make sure—”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Victoria. I have to end this. For Dylan’s sake.”
His words cut deep into her heart.
If she’d thought the pain unbearable before, she now bled pure grief. This was what she’d feared all along. Marriage to Connor was supposed to have roadblocked this outcome.
The first burst of angry determination fired up. No. She wasn’t going to let Connor shove her out of Dylan’s life because he hadn’t gotten the woman he’d really wanted.
She put out of her mind those glorious hours when they’d managed to live together only too well … that magical wedding night that had changed everything between them … that had made it impossible for her to live under the same roof when she knew Connor still loved Dana.
It was unbearable that Dana’s wedding had triggered that night of ecstatic passion and incredible emotion. It was worse that he was going to end their arrangement because of a woman who didn’t deserve him.