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‘I want to discuss our child.’
‘My child,’ she corrected. ‘I think you gave up any paternal rights when you offered me that money.’
Anger flared but he forced it down. ‘I told you, that was a bad idea.’
‘Oh, well, then,’ she drawled. ‘Never mind.’
All right, fine. Maybe he deserved this. He most assuredly did, but that didn’t make accepting it any more pleasant. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Zoe. I acted on impulse.’
‘Some impulse.’
‘I wasn’t prepared to be a father.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to be a father,’ she shot back. ‘I was simply informing you that you’d unknowingly donated some DNA. You don’t have to be involved in this baby’s life. Frankly, I don’t want you to be involved in this baby’s life. I think he or she can do without a dad like you.’
Aaron blinked, her words wounding him far more than they should have. They hurt. ‘Probably,’ he said in a low voice, when he trusted himself to speak. ‘I’ll probably be a pretty lousy dad.’ He certainly didn’t have any good experience to draw from. He took a breath, let it out slowly. ‘But I still want to be involved.’
Her jaw slackened and she stared at him with wide, dark eyes. ‘What?’
‘I want to be involved, Zoe. I regret my earlier…suggestion. I told you, you caught me by surprise.’
‘Remind me never to do that again, then.’
‘I said,’ Aaron said, hearing the edge enter his voice, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And sometimes, Aaron, it’s just not that easy. I can’t forget. And I’m still not sure I want you involved.’
‘I could—’ He stopped, knowing a threat wasn’t the right choice now.
‘You could what?’ she filled in. ‘Take me to court? Sue for custody? With your money you’d probably win, too.’
Aaron said, his teeth gritted, ‘I’d just like to have a civil conversation.’
Her shoulders sagged then and she sank onto the sofa, her head in her hands. He resisted the entirely ridiculous and inappropriate impulse to touch her, offer her some kind of comfort. He wouldn’t even know how. ‘Look, it’s probably all irrelevant anyway.’
‘Irrelevant? What do you mean?’
She glanced up at him, and with a jolt of alarm he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. ‘I had some bleeding,’ she said dully. ‘I might be having a miscarriage.’
Considering his earlier stance, Aaron knew he should be feeling relieved. But he didn’t. He felt…alarmed. Worried. Maybe even sad.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and Zoe’s mouth twisted.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, Zoe, I actually am. Can you just—please stop with the little barbed comments? For a little while, at least?’
She glanced down again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Have you been to the doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘She said there wasn’t much I could do right now. Nature will take its course.’
‘That’s not much of an answer.’ Frustration fired through him. He’d never been the kind of person just to let things happen. From the moment he’d discovered Bryant Enterprises was virtually bankrupt, he’d been striving to bring it back from the brink. Even though several financial advisors had told him to just let it go, he’d refused. He’d worked endlessly to put his family’s firm in the black and he’d work just as hard now. He didn’t give up. He didn’t fail.
‘There must be something you can do,’ he said, keeping his tone reasonable. ‘Stay off your feet, rest.’
She shrugged. ‘My life isn’t like yours, you know. I can’t just become a lady of leisure.’
He stared at her, thinking of her on her feet all day at the café, then tramping up five flights of stairs every night to this awful apartment. ‘Actually,’ he said slowly, the idea just starting to take shape, ‘You could.’
Her brow wrinkled and she shook her head. ‘What do you mean?’
Aaron, decisive now that a solution had presented itself, said, ‘You could come and live with me.’
CHAPTER FOUR
ZOE STARED AT Aaron, his words, his offer, seeming to echo through the apartment.
‘You’re joking,’ she finally said, and he shook his head, the movement brisk and decisive.
‘I told you, I don’t joke.’
She shook her head, everything in her rejecting what he’d suggested. ‘Aaron, we barely know each other.’
‘We’re going to have a baby.’
She hated the thrill that coursed through her at his words, at that treacherous ‘we’. ‘A baby you don’t want.’ His dark brows came together in a frown but he said nothing and Zoe sighed. ‘I’d drive you crazy.’
‘Probably, but I work long hours.’
‘So I’d drive myself crazy, wandering around your awful apartment all day long by myself.’
His incredulous gaze swept around her tiny studio. ‘My awful apartment?’
‘All that cold chrome and steel. It’s heartless.’
‘So the reason you’re objecting to this arrangement is my choice of decor?’
‘No, of course not.’ Zoe folded her arms, hating how he’d already got her on the defensive. Hating how a part of her, a terrible, treacherous part, actually already wanted to say yes. How stupid was that, when they obviously had no future? When staying with him would surely make her crazy, stubborn heart start thinking and hoping for things that were impossible? Things she shouldn’t even really want? ‘It’s just not…practical.’
‘This—’ Aaron said, sweeping an arm around her apartment ‘—is not practical.’
Zoe bit her lip. ‘It probably won’t make a difference, anyway. I mean…what will be, will be.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s never been my philosophy in life.’
‘No, I didn’t think so.’
‘Zoe.’ He took a step towards her, his voice lowering in a way that made her want to shiver. ‘Admittedly, there is a chance a bit of bed rest won’t make any difference. But what if it did? Would you deny our baby that chance?’
Our baby. She bit her lip harder so it hurt. ‘You’re blackmailing me.’
‘I’m just showing you reason.’
‘It’s not very fair.’
‘Why don’t you want to come live with me, have a few weeks’ holiday?’ He sounded exasperated now, as if he’d expected her to fall in with his plans far more quickly than this. ‘You can have your own bedroom.’
‘Given.’
‘And we don’t—We don’t even have to talk to each other, if you don’t want to.’
Zoe stilled. He sounded so oddly vulnerable then, so unlike the autocratic man she’d told herself she should despise. ‘I think I could handle talking to you.’ She relented, if only a little.
Aaron lifted an eyebrow. ‘So what’s the problem?’
So much for vulnerability. ‘Why are you doing this? Offering this? Because it’s about one hundred and eighty degrees from what you were suggesting a week ago.’
‘I know that.’ He pressed his lips together, colour slashing his cheekbones. ‘I’ve had time to think, and I’ve…re-evaluated my position on the matter.’
‘You’ve re-evaluated your position,’ Zoe repeated. ‘This isn’t a board meeting, Aaron.’
‘Will you come or not?’
She hesitated. Told herself this was a bad idea…for her. But it was a good idea for the baby. It was giving her baby—their baby—a chance. ‘I could just go to Millie and Chase’s,’ she said. ‘Or my parents’.’
‘You could.’
But she didn’t want to. Didn’t want to admit to them how desperate and alone she was. How she’d messed up…again. And she knew, no matter what she’d said to Aaron about emotional blackmail, she couldn’t deny her baby this chance. Working on her feet all day and living in a fifth-floor walk-up was not advisable with a threatened miscarriage. She got that. She felt the fear, the guilt. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. Nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll come. For a few days, though. Maybe a week.’ She said this as much for herself, because Aaron didn’t respond to her addendum.
He slid his phone out of his pocket and issued a few terse instructions. Then he glanced at her, his gaze taking in the tiny apartment. ‘You can pack whatever you need. My car will be here in five minutes.’
‘Five minutes?’
A look of impatience crossed his features. ‘I have to get back to work. And the sooner this situation is resolved, the better.’ He turned away, scrolling through his messages as Zoe stood there, her mind whirling. This situation. That was what she was to him, she realised, what her—their—baby was. A situation. A problem he intended to solve as quickly and expediently as possible.
Swallowing, she turned and began to gather her things.
Sure enough, they were speeding uptown in his limo a matter of minutes later, Zoe’s lone suitcase stowed in the back along with her house plant and one of her paintings. Aaron had eyed them askance and Zoe had said rather defiantly that she would not live in his morgue of an apartment without some colour.
