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‘Not everything, no.’
Her lips compressed at his sensually mocking smile.
‘How much?’ he asked with quiet confidence.
Lexi tried not to be intimidated by his size and understated force of will. Hadn’t he realised that she wasn’t the type of person who could be bought? Or was he the type of person who paid off everyone in order to get his own way? She wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that he was. ‘You mean I can name my price?’ she asked sweetly, as if she might actually be considering his offer.
‘What’s the number?’ he demanded curtly, his smile flattening as if her answer had displeased him, though why that should be the case she hadn’t a clue.
Lexi paused. Would he pay any figure? For a minute she was tempted to find out but she didn’t play these types of games and it would give her more satisfaction to put him—and his open bank account—in their rightful place.
‘The number is that there is no number. You don’t deserve my help. Goodbye.’
Lexi didn’t look at him as she picked up her bag and dropped her mobile phone inside. She was about to stride out of the door with her head held high when Leo’s quiet voice stopped her.
‘I might not. But Ty does.’
Lexi turned and stared at him incredulously. ‘Are you trying to emotionally blackmail me now?’
‘If it means you’ll stay, yes.’
Lexi couldn’t believe the gall of the man. Had he no shame?
‘You get a girl pregnant and then don’t even have the decency to get to know your own flesh and blood and now you’ll do whatever it takes to have someone you don’t even know take care of him. What kind of a man are you?’
He jammed his hands onto his hips and glared at her. ‘Don’t pass judgement on things you don’t understand.’
‘Oh, I understand all right,’ Lexi fumed. ‘I understand that your lifestyle is so precious you rejected an innocent child. Well, that’s something you should have thought about before you got Amanda Weston pregnant, not after.’
‘This has nothing to do with my lifestyle and everything to do with Ty’s well-being.’
‘And just how do you figure that?’
A muscle ticked in his jaw. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you but I did not reject my son.’
‘Oh? What would you call it?’
‘Since he was born I have paid for every single thing he needs and I have six monthly reports carried out to ensure that he is safe and well cared for.’
‘Reports that failed to inform you that his mother travels so often that his grandmother was his main carer until her death a fortnight ago.’
He had the grace to look uncomfortable, pulling at the collar on his shirt in a telling movement.
‘And,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘I fully intend to have a relationship with him when he’s older.’
Of all the …
‘Older and less work?’ she scoffed. ‘He needs you now. A boy looks to his father as he grows up to figure out what it means to be a man. What kind of a man will he grow up to be with an absent father who never cared enough to spend time with him?’ Lexi stopped, aware that her impassioned speech was about to get out of hand. But damn it, that was exactly what had happened to her brother, Joe, who had become lost and angry in his teenage years, even though Lexi and her mother had done their best to shield him from feeling rejected by his father.
‘By all means say what you think, Miss Somers.’
Lexi shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in wasting time on empty words.’
‘Rare for your sex, I have to say.’
‘Oh—’ Lexi shook her head ‘—I’ll add chauvinist to your list of personal attributes, shall I?’
‘I meant it as a compliment.’
