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“You had enough facts that you made the decision to leave.”
“I came back, Brielle. For you. I’m here right now. We’ve been working together this week and you’ve said nothing. Not a word about the fact that we have a son together.” He drove his point home. “Why haven’t you told me?”
“Over five years have passed since you left. I didn’t know why you were here.”
“You knew I didn’t randomly decide to work in your hometown. I was here for you, but why I was here doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was here and you didn’t tell me that you’d given birth to my son. My son!” His anger rolled across the room, shaking her to her very core. “You continued to deceive me.”
“I wasn’t deceiving you,” she said. “I never lied to you.”
“Same difference. You didn’t tell me the truth.”
“Fine. Now you know.”
“Now I know,” he replied, suddenly seeming dazed. “I have a son. Justice is my son.”
“We have a son,” she corrected him, not liking his possessive tone.
His blue gaze shifted to hers, bored into her, dared her to defy him in any way. “I plan to see him, to spend time with my son.”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or just thinking out loud, but she nodded. After how he’d reacted to learning about his connection to Justice, she’d figured that. “I have no problem with you seeing him. You can visit him here some evenings.”
He shook his head. “Not good enough. I want to get to know my son. A few hours in the evenings here and there aren’t going to allow me to do that. I want more. Lots more.”
More? Her ribcage tightened around her lungs. “What are you saying?”
He considered her question for a few seconds then made one of those quick, confident decisions that made him the excellent emergency room doctor he was. “I’m moving in.”
“Pardon?” Brielle shook her head, sure she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“You heard me, and it’s not up for debate.”
“You’re not moving in here.”
“Yes, I am.” He looked quite pleased with his plan, quite the arrogant, self-assured man, quite the man whose brain was making plans faster than she could thwart them. “If you don’t have a spare bedroom, yours will do just fine.”
“I am not having sex with you!”
His eyes were cold when they turned to her. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that any more, Brielle. Something about knowing that you kept my son from me has completely put out any flame that still burned for you.”
His words stabbed deep into her chest and twisted the blade of regret painfully back and forth.
“If I stayed in your room, you could sleep on the bed, the floor, the living-room sofa.” He patted the cushion for emphasis. “Or with Justice.” He shrugged as if he didn’t want to waste another moment even considering her. “Makes no difference because, regardless, I won’t be touching you.”
When she started to argue, he stopped her. “I’d suggest I sleep with Justice, but I figure it might traumatize the boy for a stranger to move into his room. Even if that stranger is his father that his mother failed to inform him of.”
He meant the last to make her feel guilty again but she refused to allow him to pull that stunt with her. She’d worked hard, taken good care of her son. Ross had left on his own. He had no one to blame but himself.
“You can’t just move into my house, Ross. I don’t want you living here.”
“This isn’t about what you want. This is about what is right for Justice.”
He had a point, but...
“You moving in here is right for him how?”
“He will get to know me, really know me, and I will get to know him—that is what’s right. Perhaps you missed the memo, but boys need their fathers every bit as much as they need their mothers.”
She couldn’t argue with him. Not on that. Boys did need their fathers. Didn’t Justice latch onto every second with Vann?
