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e. ‘Why don’t you try it, big guy?’
But as he grasped her upper arms something other than fury arched between them—the molten heat in her belly matching the pulse of fire in his eyes.
‘Let her go, right this instant, Nathaniel.’ The booming shout from across the desk had them both jolting back to stare at Walter Jensen.
The elderly man raked a hand through his thinning hair revealing a rapidly receding hairline. ‘Sit down, both of you,’ he growled, jabbing a finger at them as a mottled red flush spread up his throat. ‘Everyone else, leave.’
The clerk slipped his computer under his arm and hot-footed it for the door, but Grant the natty dresser hesitated. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to...?’
Walter put up his hand to halt the question. ‘Grant, please,’ he said, regaining a little of his composure. ‘Go get some lunch. I think it’s clear this isn’t a legal issue any more.’
‘What do you mean this isn’t a legal issue any more?’ Nate started up as soon as the door closed behind Jensen’s assistant.
Jensen sent Nate a hard stare. ‘Be quiet and sit down.’
‘I will not,’ Nate replied, every inch the all-powerful CEO. ‘Have you forgotten who pays the bills around here?’
The elderly attorney didn’t even bat an eyelid at the tone, the level look becoming almost pitying. ‘If you want to take your business elsewhere, you certainly can, because after the scene I’ve just witnessed I’m seriously reconsidering my retirement options.’
Nate tensed, a dull flush highlighting his cheeks. Tess wondered at the relationship between the two men. It seemed it was a lot more personal than client to attorney.
‘I apologise, Walter,’ Nate replied, grudgingly. ‘You know I have no intention of taking my business elsewhere. But I resent being treated like a twelve-year-old.’
Jensen huffed out a breath. ‘Then you should stop behaving like one. Nathaniel, what the hell is wrong with you? I feel like I’m dealing with that hot-tempered kid I had to bail out of juvie again.’
Tess’s jaw went slack with shock. She let her gaze drift over Nathaniel Graystone’s imposing physique: the expensive, perfectly pressed shirt; the sharply creased trousers; and the handmade leather shoes, which had a shine so high she could see the volumes of legal texts lining the walls reflecting in the polish.
This man had been bailed out of juvie as a kid? How was that even possible?
She cleared her throat, swallowing down the foolish feeling of connection, and crossed to the door, planning to make a swift, silent exit while Nate and his lawyer were busy glaring at each other.
She didn’t want to know about Nate’s past, or feel any sympathy for that hot-tempered kid. So he’d been a troubled teenager too, so what? That didn’t make what he was planning to do to her any less abhorrent.
‘Where exactly do you think you’re going, Miss Tremaine?’ Walter Jensen’s calm question cut off her escape route.
She wheeled round. ‘I’m leaving. I’ve already told you, I’m not interested in a settlement. I don’t need—’
‘How can you not need my money when you’ve got nowhere to live?’ Nate rounded on her—and all her foolish feelings of a connection between them shot out of the office’s casement windows.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I called the super in your building. He was real talkative.’
Tess gasped, her desire to throttle Ed Mason, the elderly supervisor at her duplex who couldn’t resist a gossip, only superseded by her desire to throttle the man in front of her. ‘Who gave you the right to go snooping around in my affairs?’
‘I can do what I like when a woman says she’s carrying my child.’
Tess sucked in another breath, outraged all over again.
‘All right quit it, the both of you,’ Walter Jensen interceded before she could launch into another diatribe. ‘You.’ He pointed at Tess. ‘Sit down and calm down before you cause the baby an injury.’
‘But I...’ Tess tried to intervene but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as Jensen’s paternal gaze fixed on hers.
‘Miss Tremaine, if you’re old enough to get yourself pregnant you’re certainly old enough to have a civilised conversation about it. And you are still pregnant? Am I right?’
Tess sat down, unable to deny it. ‘Great idea. Yes, let’s have a civilised conversation about it,’ she said, glowering at Nate, even though she had been forced to concede a tiny proportion of the moral high ground.
Her lie had complicated this situation, so she would deal with that—before she made it absolutely clear to Nathaniel Graystone that she would not be conceding any more than that, no matter how much money he tried to throw at her.
