Page 62 of Bombshell

He walks slowly toward my bedside, his cane landing with an ominous thud with each step. As he gets closer, I realize that he looks older than the last time I saw him. There’s more gray at his temples. Lines fold his face into a weathered, weary profile. Even his black suit jacket fits him differently, pulling at the waist in a way it never has before. Maybe I looked past it when I saw him every day. Perhaps, he aged overnight. “What exactly was your plan?”

“Stay in London and figure things out,” I admit.

A nostril flares as though he’s holding down a snarl. It’s there in his beady, hawk-like eyes: reproach, disappointment, disdain. “I don’t know what’s worse. That you're pregnant with some bastard or that you couldn’t even come up with an intelligent plan to keep it quiet!”

“Sorry to disappoint.” My arms wrap protectively around my waist. I don’t know when babies can hear inside the womb, but I won’t allow her life to be dictated by father’s temper.

“Don’t pretend as though you are the victim,” he growls. “You put yourself in this situation. Who’s the father? That piece of trash you were seeing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me. It will make things easier.”

“Easier how?” I ask suspiciously.

“You have three options, Adair.” His lips curve into a rueful smile as he looks at my arms still cradling my baby bump.

“You don’t tell me my options,” I cut him off, wishing I’d asked Dr. Thompson to stay.

“Don’t pretend that you’re an independent woman. You are here on my dime. Do you know how much it cost to keep this quiet? To keep your friends away so they wouldn’t know? To make certain no one ran a story about you?”

“Considering you own half the world’s media, I suppose it shouldn’t be too hard.” Of course, that’s what this is about. Appearances. Just like my parent’s accident. Just like telling Ginny to remain silent about her miscarriage. Weakness won’t be tolerated. Vulnerability could never be shown.

“Exactly! Half,” he repeats. “The other half would love to publish a story about Angus MacLaine’s whore of a daughter.”

“I am not a whore.” It seethes from me. I can’t claim I meant to get pregnant. I didn’t. But she was created by an act of love—at least, on my part. Every time he acts like it was just meaningless sex, he chips away at my resolve to see her existence that way.

“Is that so? Then who is the father?”

“I don’t—”

“Know,” he finishes for me. “Only a whore would say that. Don’t argue otherwise. If you knew, that might suggest otherwise, but if you don’t…”

That’s what this is really about. He’s baiting me, trying to prove what he suspects—that Sterling is the father. The problem is I don’t know why he wants to know. He did everything in his power to get Sterling out of town. Now he’s gone, and I doubt my father wants to drag him back.

“I don’t see why the father is important.” It takes effort to get the words out without allowing my voice to break. It hurts to say it. Maybe because part of me knows it’s true. Sterling isn’t in the picture. Even Francie wouldn’t help me reach him. I’d been cut out of his life like a tumor—and maybe that’s what I was: something toxic he needed to root out before I ruined him, too.

“It’s one of your options,” he says, pulling a chair over to sit beside me. He doesn’t try to take my hand. In fact, he stays as far as possible from me as though my failure is contagious. “Tell me who the father is and we’ll arrange things.”

My eyes narrow. I don’t like the sound of that. “Arrange what?”

“The marriage, of course.”

“You want me to marry the father?” I can’t quite believe I’m saying it.

“For years, your social circle has included permissible choices. Say for instance that Cyrus Eaton or Montgomery West were the father. Either would be a suitable match, and their parents would certainly support it.”

I open my mouth, but I can’t think of a thing to say. It just hangs there. I feel like I’m being asked to play a child’s game. I’ll name candidates and my father will decide which are most like me, and which are not.

That’s how my life was always going to turn out, I realize. It was never my own. It never will be. Not if he has anything to say about it.

“I’m not marrying anyone.” He can’t force me down the aisle.

“Then that leaves two other options. Terminate the pregnancy.”

I swallow and level my eyes to meet his. They blaze back at me and I know that I’m not walking through this fire without getting burned. “No. I’m keeping her.”

“I assumed you would say that.” He sighs, the sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Then, you’re cut off.”