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Sylvie opened the door wider. “Come in.”
He turned sideways so he could pass her without touching. It was silly, perhaps, but he couldn’t touch her right then. If he did that, he’d lose focus.
The thing that he hated was that he saw again how lovely she looked tonight. He had admired her several times on the way to dinner. He’d been excited about the opportunity to sit down with Sylvie’s mother and stepfather and get to know them better. It was all part of creating a place for himself in this huge Jones family. Now he wasn’t so sure if there was really a place for him in it.
“I want to explain,” Sylvie started. She fidgeted with her hands as she stared downward at her feet.
They went and sat down at the kitchen table, facing one another as if this were an interrogation. The bright and cheerful primary colors on the walls and tiles were an affront to Heath’s dour mood.
“I’m not sure that you can say anything that would change this for me. But you can go ahead,” he said.
Sylvie grimaced. Again, part of him wanted to comfort her, but he held back. Fury was the main emotion roiling through him.
He used his calming techniques. Getting emotional wouldn’t help. He thought, so far, he had done a pretty good job, even as anger had taken root inside him and began branching out like a weed in a compost pile.
“This probably won’t make a lot of sense to you,” she said. “I get that. But we’ve had a chance to spend time together, and I feel like I’ve gotten to know you. I didn’t know you at all back then.”
Sylvie paused and looked at him with a questioning look as if she wanted to make sure he was following her.
Heath felt they’d gone over this ground a million times since he arrived in Zeke’s Bend. It seemed as if no matter what he said or did, Sylvie insisted on keeping him at arm’s length by not admitting the depth of their connection.
She knew him as much as he knew her. Yet while he was scouring the world for her, she was hiding from him. She started hiding when she first met him.
“We got to know each other well enough that first night, as I recall,” he said.
Sylvie tapped her fingertips on the tabletop. “I had just broken up with Alan and I was feeling crappy. You were so handsome and you wanted to take me out and wine and dine me with no strings attached — it was like a play, a fantasy. And that’s all I let myself believe it might be.”
“Because of you, or because of me?”
“You. I’m no one. You’re the someone,” she said. “Anyway, I know you think because we played that Private Yet Public game that we got to know each other. We did, but it was one exchange, a couple hours, a night. Not much to base a lifetime decision on.”
Sylvie leaned forward. “Just to be clear, I haven’t always known who you are, your real name. It was a random accident that I found out, and I was seven months pregnant at the time. After I read all the articles I could find about you, one thing stood out. Everyone always pointed out how ruthless you were. It scared me.”
“So I’m ruthless in business. You have to be if you want to succeed. But what you and I had wasn’t a business transaction,” Heath said.
“Wasn’t it? You were paying for my services as an escort and after we had sex, you tried to give me more money.”
“I wanted to give you money to help you. It had nothing to do with business.”
“We can’t always know the reasons behind what we do.”
“I have no idea what you’re getting at. If you’re saying I was subconsciously trying to turn the best night of my life into a business transaction, then you need to get a refund from whatever pop psychology course shafted you.”
“Funny. You think I should have totally trusted you after knowing you for all of one night, and you don’t think that’s expecting too much? I’m only trying to explain my thinking behind the decisions I made.”
Heath couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. “Those decisions being lies.”
She held up her hands. “Yes, they were lies. I’m not trying to justify myself. I know I can’t. Look, I didn’t know who you were as a person, okay? And I was seven months pregnant and I can’t tell you how weird you get when you’re seven months pregnant. Not as weird as when you’re eight or nine, but still pretty damned strange. We call it pregnancy brain, and —”
“I’ll concede that you didn’t know me if you’ll get back on topic.”
“Fine. Back then, I was afraid if you found out the babies might be yours, you would demand a paternity test. If it came back that you were the father, and as I’ve said, I’m pretty psychic so I had a powerful sense that you were the father. So I was afraid when you found out you were the father, you might want to take my babies away from me. I could never win against you and all the lawyer sharks your billions could buy. I couldn’t risk losing my children.”
He glowered. “I can’t believe you ever thought I would try to take the twins away from you. That’s preposterous.”
“But I was struggling to get by, financially, and your world was so different from mine. I know who you are now, and I know that’s not something you would’ve ever done. But I didn’t know it back then. How could I? When it comes to my children and me, I’m always going to follow the better-safe-than-sorry route.”
He stood up and began to pace the room. He looked at Sylvie. “Crazy.”
Sylvie leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why is it crazy? You can do anything you want to do. You have so much money that you can swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck if you feel like it.”
Heath almost laughed at the vision and that she would compare him to an over-the-top cartoon character. But her description only emphasized the truth of what Sylvie said: they truly were from two different worlds.
That didn’t mean, however, that they couldn’t find a way to bridge those worlds. Opposites attracted all the time. He refused her explanation and logic outright.
“I don’t care what kind of person you thought I might be,” he said. “At the end of the da
y, there was no reasonable reason for you to not get in contact with me and let me know I might be a father.”
Sylvie’s face fell. “Maybe. But Heath, I figured it was a long shot if you even remembered that night, remembered me.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
HE WAS FLOORED. HE’D SEARCHED for this woman for nearly a year, and she thought he might not remember her? “I’m beginning to think that you and I had very different reactions to that night in Chicago. I’m realizing it meant far more to me than to you.”
“That’s a load,” she said with some outrage that sent his anger up a notch. “I’ve got two new human beings in the nursery that would tell you otherwise … if they could talk!”
“You know what I mean.”
“I guess I don’t.”
“I guess you should.”
She threw her hands in the air. “You’re driving me crazy. You won’t listen to reason!”
“Me? Seriously? What’s your psychic side telling you I’m going to do next?”
“You’re not very attractive when you’re sarcastic. And stop pacing around like a caged bear. You’re looming all over me.”
Looming? He bit back his next retort. Someone had to be the adult here and he guessed it was him. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and sat back down. “Let’s take a moment to center ourselves, shall we?”
He thought she might argue, but after a pause, she nodded tersely. They sat in silence for a while.
Sylvie spoke first. “I want you to know that I realize I should have handled the situation differently.”
Understatement, he thought.
“But hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” she said, annoyingly cheeky.
“That’s incredible. So you admit you could have handled the situation differently, but you had no way of knowing that it was wrong at the time.”
“Uh, well, I may have realized it could be wrong, too.”
“Gee, that’s gracious.”
“You’re being all smartass-y now.”
