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He drew a breath and turned to face Lizzie.
‘Damon, I—’
He silenced her with a raised hand. ‘Please. Sit down.’
‘I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.’
The tension in Lizzie’s voice was like a taut band on the point of snapping. He felt no pity. Beyond knowing that if she broke down it would delay things and get them nowhere, he felt no empathy at all. He positioned himself with his back to the window while Lizzie remained by the door. He saw a flicker of fear in her eyes, but then it was gone. She was determined to stand up to him. But he held all the cards and she held none—they both knew that.
Although he hadn’t forgotten Lizzie’s determination to refuse him equal rights, and the fact that he wasn’t even mentioned on Thea’s birth certificate...
On reflection, it seemed that perhaps Lizzie held the trump card.
Her arms were ramrod-straight against her sides, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles were like polished ivory. The blood had drained from her cheeks and her eyes were huge in the ashen wasteland of her face. He had experienced emotion briefly, when Thea had played the violin, but whatever his daughter had unlocked was gone now. It was for Thea alone. He dealt with all problems the same way—by being incisive and emotion-free—and he would do that now.
‘You don’t know her,’ Lizzie told him quietly, as if anticipating what he might say. ‘Thea doesn’t know you. You can’t just walk into her life and claim her, Damon.’
‘You don’t know what I can do.’
Her lips had turned white. She knew the power he wielded.
Her brow pleated. ‘Are you trying to intimidate me?’
‘Never,’ he stated factually. ‘I am simply trying to reclaim what’s mine.’
‘And what then?’ she asked him tensely.
‘That’s what I have to find out. I have to find a solution.’
‘We have to find a solution,’ Lizzie argued quietly.
‘You’ve lost your chance,’ he said frankly. ‘It’s my turn now. I think you should sit down. We have to put our personal differences aside and consider what’s best for Thea.’
‘Thea is all I ever think about,’ Lizzie assured him, with a blaze of passion in her eyes.
‘I haven’t been given that chance,’ he pointed out with supreme restraint.
The disappointment he felt in Lizzie was acute. She was as shallow as the rest of them. Self-interest ruled her. She might never have told him that they had a daughter together if he hadn’t walked into that restaurant in London. She would have kept Thea to herself.
Pain stabbed him when he thought about the years that had been lost. He had to turn away for a few moments and pour them both a glass of iced water to give him something else to focus on while his rage subsided.
‘Why aren’t you angry?’ Lizzie demanded.
He almost laughed.
‘Are you incapable of feelings?’
‘Declara!’
He’d spilled the water on his desk. Incapable of feelings? This entire situation had rocked the foundations of his life.
Snatching up a cloth, he mopped up the spill before turning to face her. ‘Perhaps you can afford to be emotional, but I can’t. How would it look in business if I railed at my competitors and made every decision on a wave of passion?’
‘This isn’t a business decision,’ she fired back. ‘This is our daughter. Thea.’
‘I’m glad you’ve finally remembered,’ he countered with scorn.
‘So this is just another exercise in winning for you?’ Lizzie suggested.
‘Far from it.’
She had no idea of the turmoil inside him. He’d only ever known happy, uncomplicated love—love without boundaries, the type of love that a parent gave to a child, the style of unconditional love that his parents had given to him. It was love without demands, love that would sacrifice everything, and he hadn’t been given the chance to experience that same love with Thea.
The love he felt for Thea already was incalculable. It was as if eleven years had been compacted into a single day of knowing and loving his child. His head was reeling with love. Eleven years of Thea’s existence had been lost, never to be reclaimed. From the night of her conception to the night before her birth, when she’d been nothing more than a tiny light waiting to take a tilt at life, and on to this moment, here in his study, where he was talking about Thea to her mother.
All of those precious moments were lost. Everything that had been Thea before now had gone, never to be reclaimed.
CHAPTER TEN
HIS LOST TIME with Thea had lodged in his heart, where it was lashing around, demanding an explanation. Lizzie thought that because he was acting so contained he felt nothing, when for the first time in his life he didn’t know if he could trust himself to handle this meeting as well as he must. He only knew that for Thea’s sake he had to.
In order to bring himself to talk to Lizzie at all, he had listed the good things she had done. Thea had turned out well. Raising her as a single mother with no family couldn’t have been easy for Lizzie. Eleven years ago she had been just eighteen and pregnant, with no home, no money, no family—no one at all to rely on but herself. She hadn’t just cared for Thea, she loved Thea without boundaries, in the same way that he’d been loved as a child, and Lizzie had raised Thea without the good fortune his parents had enjoyed.
He couldn’t claim any credit for Thea beyond her existence. She was all Lizzie’s work. That was why he’d found Lizzie washing pots in London. It all made sense now. She’d kept nothing for herself and had put all her dreams on indefinite hold for Thea.
But Thea was his daughter too, and he had been denied every moment of her existence—even the knowledge of it—up to now. So, although he could rationalise the situation and give Lizzie some credit, things could not go on as they were.
‘I won’t let you take her, Damon.’
He stared at Lizzie. He’d seen flashes of her vulnerability, but it would be a mistake to think her vulnerable now. His mother had always told him that there was no stronger opponent a man could face than a mother fighting for her child.
‘No court would allow any man to walk into a child’s life and take her from the mother who has loved her from the instant she first felt her stir in the womb—who has loved her unreservedly ever since—unless that man could prove both that he was the father of the child and that the mother was unfit to care for her. And no one—not even you—can prove a lie, Damon.’
‘I’m not just any man,’ he argued tensely. ‘I’m a father. Thea’s father.’
‘I will fight you every step of the way,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll fight your money, your power, and your legal team too. Do you really think you can defeat a mother in defence of her child? Even you don’t have the weapons for that, Damon.’
His feelings were rising. He felt fury that she would deny him Thea even now—and yet he knew acceptance, however reluctant, that his own mother would have said the same.
He wasn’t as callous as Lizzie thought him. She had been in his thoughts too. She’d never left them, really. In the desert, when he’d been working with his team, she had intruded on his thoughts at night, and in the day he’d kept her in mind to ease some of the horrors he’d seen. But she’d kept the most important thing on earth from him, and he could never forgive her for that.
She had cheated him out of Thea, as her father had cheated his father. How could he ever trust her again after that?
‘You’ll have to—’ He’d been about to say, consult a lawyer, when Lizzie leapt ahead of him—but in the wrong direction.
‘I don’t have to do anything you tell me to,’ she assured him. ‘It’s up to you to launch your case—try to destroy me as you destroyed my father.’
‘Lizzie...’
he modulated his tone. ‘We’ve been over this ground several times. We both know that what happened in court that day was for the best.’
‘What I know is that my father was weak and you were strong. Is that what you plan to do now? Crush me?’
Grinding his jaw, he refused to be drawn, but Lizzie had the bit between her teeth.
