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The muscles in Nate’s neck and shoulders stretched taut and started to throb. He didn’t want to talk about Marlena. But seeing Tess’s expression, ripe with suspicion, he realised he didn’t have much of a choice.
He’d made a mistake when she’d told him about the baby, doubting her because of another woman’s dishonesty. And now he was going to have to pay the penalty. Or have her believe the worst of him.
He rolled his shoulders, but they continued to ache as he forced the words out. ‘I dated a woman a long time ago. It wasn’t working out, so I broke it off...’ At least he’d had the good sense to do that much to protect himself. ‘They did a profile piece about my business a few months later in the Chronicle—named it one of the top ten start-ups in the Bay Area—and Marlena turned up the night after at my condo in nothing but a fur coat and heels.’ How stupid had he been not to realise the sequence of events at the time? ‘A month later she turned up again and told me I was going to be a father and I believed her. Even though I was mad as hell about it.’
‘You were mad at her for getting pregnant?’
The loaded question took him by surprise. He’d been so deep in the memory of that kick-in-the-gut moment, he’d almost forgotten Tess was listening to every word.
‘I was mad at myself.’ He’d been twenty, obsessed with making the business work, and proving he could undo some of the damage his father had done. Having a child because he’d been careless and hadn’t been able to control his own lust would have proved exactly the opposite. ‘But I figured I’d made a mistake, so it was up to me to fix it. I offered to support her, and the child, give it my name on the condition that I didn’t have to be involved.’
‘That was generous of you.’
He heard the note of disdain. ‘It seemed the least I could do,’ he said coldly.
‘So you never planned to play a role in the child’s life?’
‘No,’ he said bluntly, refusing to feel guilty about it. She could judge him all she wanted, but he’d been convinced at the time he had nothing to offer. It had seemed easier and cleaner to pay for his mistake and step quietly away. Because that was what Marlena’s child had been to him. A mistake.
Until the night he’d been called to the maternity hospital by a nurse who had seen his name on the insurance paperwork and wrongly assumed he was Marlena’s partner. The sight of the squirming body in the basinet, its delicate little fist pressed against its mouth, had shocked him to the core. The tiny baby boy had been undersized, the nurse had said. Nate had never seen anything so fragile, so helpless before and he’d felt...something. Something he’d never have believed himself capable of feeling.
‘It was Walter’s suggestion that I get a DNA test, to confirm paternity,’ he said, remembering the arguments he’d had with his attorney on the subject, a cruel reminder of his own stupidity. Once he’d seen the boy, some foolish part of him had been convinced the baby had to be his. He’d even contacted Marlena with the intention of setting up visitation rights.
‘The test showed a 99.8% probability that I was not the father.’ He kept his voice neutral, denied the echo of pain and disbelief. ‘Marlena hadn’t been as upfront as she should have been about when the child was conceived.’
* * *
Tess baulked at the quietly spoken words. ‘Marlena sounds like a woman who could do with a jolly good slap,’ she stated, shocked that anyone could be quite so calculating.
Nate’s head lifted.
‘Although right about now I’d like to give you one too,’ Tess added, but the enmity she knew she ought to feel refused to come.
He’d called a helpless child ‘a mistake’. Had openly admitted that he hadn’t intended to be a father to it. For that alone she ought to be able to despise him. And she would have, but for the hollow note in his voice when he’d spoken about the results of the DNA test, and the expression on his face. He hadn’t looked pleased, or vindicated by the evidence of Marlena’s deception. He’d looked hurt.
‘I guess that makes us even,’ he said.
It wasn’t an apology, but she would take it. For now, because what he had revealed about his past was so much better than what she had feared.
‘It was cruel of her to lie to you like that,’ she said.
‘Especially as she didn’t need to,’ he said, making it clear he was speaking about Tess as well as Marlena. ‘I gave her the money she needed anyway.’
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, not sure where the twinge of jealousy came from. If he still had feelings for the woman, why should it matter to her?
He shrugged. ‘Why make the child suffer? The boy’s father had dumped her as soon as she told him about the pregnancy. She didn’t have any other means of support, which was why she’d tried to trick me.’
He said the words dismissively, but Tess wondered how many other men would support another man’s child in those circumstances. Hardly any.
‘Just so you know, Nate,’ she said, deciding it was way past time they cleared the air completely. ‘I’m not Marlena and I’m not after your money.’
‘I know that, Tess.’ The reluctant smile that c
urved his lips made her heart tumble over in her chest. It was a shame he didn’t smile more often.
‘Just so you know,’ he said, ‘I never had any intention of making you get rid of the baby.’
‘I know that too now,’ she said, echoing his words as relief flowed through her. Thank goodness, she’d been wrong about that. But that didn’t really alter the fact that he’d made it fairly clear he had no desire to be a father, and she did want to be a mother.
