Page 120 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“Now, Killian,” I say.

He looks down at me and says, “Harper,” low and careful, like that’s supposed to be enough, like I’m going to hear that voice and remember who he is and fall back into line, and I hold his gaze for one more second because I want him to understand that I see exactly what he’s doing and I’m choosing not to respond to it today, and then I turn and walk toward the offices.

I pull out my phone.

Harper: Us or them.

44

KILLIAN

Fuck my life.

I’m old enough to know I did this to myself by not keeping her in the loop, but, dammit did she need to find out today?

I know what she saw. I know exactly what conclusion she drew from it, and I know she’s not wrong that she should be angry, she’s just angry at the wrong version of what’s actually happening, and that distinction matters and I need to be the one to explain it before she decides she’s already decided.

I move fast through the main offices, nodding once at Camille without stopping, heading for my office with the specific intent of getting there before Harper does so I can have Maddox’s file open on the desk and the legal documents already minimized on the screen and some version of a controlled conversation available to us instead of whatever the alternative looks like.

I don’t make it.

Harper is already inside, standing in front of my primary monitor with her arms at her sides and her eyes doing something I’ve never seen them do before, which is be completely wide and completely still at the same time, like her body is holding itself very carefully so she doesn’t do something her professional instincts are telling her not to do. The legal documents are open on the screen. All of them. The inheritance amendment, the health coverage structure, the employment contract extension, Thomas’s latest draft with his revision notes still in the margins.

She looks up when I come through the door, and any version of a controlled conversation I had planned evaporates on contact with the look on her face.

“What the fuck is this, Killian?”

I close the office door behind me, fast, because the last thing either of us needs is this conversation reaching the corridor, and I say, “Calm down, Harper.”

Wrong choice of words. I know it the second they leave my mouth.

“Bullshit calm down.” Her voice has an edge in it I haven’t heard before, something that’s past frustration and into something older and harder. “First you lied to me about getting involved with my parents and Evelyn, fucking Evelyn, and now you’re making decisions about my future without talking to me? Decisions about this baby’s future? Who the fuck are you right now?”

I take a breath and cross toward my desk, not to sit behind it but to stand in front of it, between her and the door, because I need her to hear this and I need her to stay in the room long enough to hear it.

“I didn’t lie to you,” I say. “I didn’t tell you everything I was doing, which is different.”

“Don’t you dare give me that bullshit of clusterfucks, right now, Killian.”

“It’s not the same thing. I made a strategic decision about timing. I was protecting you.”

“From what?” The word comes out like a blade. “Facts? Information about my own situation? Because you decided I couldn’t handle knowing that my parents were still here running a con with your ex-wife’s help, so you just let me walk around this estate for two and a half months thinking everything was under control while they had my name on a slide deck in a meeting room?” She gestures at the monitor. “And this. This is you protecting me? Legal documents about my employment and my child’s inheritance that you had drawn up without asking me a single question? Let me guess, Asher and Maddox know all about this?”

“No, not all about it.”

“Fucking perfect,” she lets out an exasperated laugh. “I thought you were done with this fucked up version of yourself, but I guess not.”

“The documents are to make sure you’re protected regardless of what happens between us. Regardless of what the paternity results say. That’s not a decision that requires your input, Harper, that’s something I owe you.”

“You owe me a conversation first.”

“I owe you stability.”

She makes a sound that isn’t a laugh but contains the same energy as one, sharp and short, and says, “Sophia told me you’d do this. She told me and I defended you. I said you’d learned, I said the exam room conversation was real, and here I am two weeks later, after finding out we’re pregnant, that I find out you’ve been in meetings with my con artist father about a business scheme built around my professional reputation while simultaneously having your lawyer restructure your estate to include my child, who you haven’t even confirmed is biologically yours yet, without so much as a text to let me know any of it was in motion.”

She’s not wrong. I’m aware she’s not wrong. That awareness is sitting in my chest right next to the frustration of not being able to get to the part of the conversation where she understands why, because she keeps talking and she’s not wrong about any of it and I cannot get a word in that lands long enough to matter.

“Harper.”