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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN DANTERETURNEDfrom his trip into the office, he could hear a soft, plaintive voice. Wailing. He stood in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do.
His eyes were dry and his lungs felt bruised, and he didn’t know how he was going to proceed.
With anything.
Minerva had said that she loved him, and there was something about that that had destroyed everything that he built, and told himself he’d built for the last two decades.
How? How had one small woman and a baby utterly and completely taken all that he believed about himself in the world and turned it upside down?
No one should have the power to do that to him, much less her.
And the baby was still crying. Where was she?
Where was Minerva?
Isabella was not his daughter. And she wouldn’t be.
He was going to put a stop to the paperwork that would make her his. Because it was the right thing to do. There was no other alternative. She wouldn’t want him for a father anyway, and he would be an utterly useless one at that.
Hecouldn’tlove.
He couldn’t. The baby was crying, and still Minerva wouldn’t come. Neither did the nanny. He didn’t understand what was happening.
He could go and get her. Wake one of them, as it was three in the morning and it was likely that they were asleep.
But he shouldn’t have to.
It was an infant. Surely, he could handle whatever ailed her.
He charged into the room, and he stopped. He gazed down at her little, helpless body in the center of the crib, and everything inside him froze. She was just so... Small. Helpless. And he was brought again back to his childhood.
To the fact that his parents had created him, his mother had given him life, and had just...
He took a step closer to the crib. Slowly, he bent down, taking the tiny form into his arms and holding her close against his chest. He could hear his own breathing, ragged and intense above the sound of the little girl’s crying.
He cradled the back of her downy head, and she rubbed her face against him.
“Are you hungry?”
Something about his voice made her startle, then still.
He didn’t know how to make a bottle, but he damn sure could figure it out.
And in the kitchen with one arm, that was what he did, while he cradled her close.
He took her back into the nursery, and sat in the rocking chair, looking down at her as he fed her. And he had no idea how he had wound up here.
With an infant.
But she wouldn’t be here. Not in his house. Not anymore. Because she and Minerva were leaving.
Something seized in his chest, and then he felt as if everything broke in half. Like a seismic shock had gone through his entire body. This child could destroy him.
As easily as Minerva could.
That became clear in the moment.
