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Lacey pressed a hand to her mouth, her fingers shaking as she scanned the contents of the letter Brandon’s assistant had attached. Like the email, it was cold, clinical, demanding and totally devoid of feeling, almost as if each carefully chosen syllable had been steeped in Brandon’s anger.
The musical jingle from Ruby’s cartoon started to play in the next room, the notes light and airy and innocent, accompanied by the joyous, uncomplicated sound of her little girl’s laughter... And in direct contrast to the suffocating feeling dragging at Lacey’s insides.
She’d taken too long, been too much of a coward, and now her little girl could well be forced to pay the price.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MRCADE,MSCARSTAIRShas arrived, are you ready for her?’ Daryl asked, peering around the office door as he addressed Brandon and the four solicitors who he had been discussing next steps with for two hours.
Brandon glared at his assistant.
No, I’ll never be ready for this.
The words he wanted to speak echoed in his skull, alongside the anger that had been building steadily for the last three days, ever since he’d laid eyes on Ruby Devlin Carstairs. The anger that had surged yesterday when he had read the DNA test report he’d had commissioned once Daryl had got back to him with the details of the child’s birth certificate.
Lacey’s child had been born thirty-eight weeks and three days after he had made wild, passionate love to her in the manager’s office of a Soho nightclub. When she had been a virgin, and the condom he had worn had split.
Dammit. Not just Lacey’s child. My child.
The father had been unlisted on the birth certificate.
Just one more injustice to add to all the others.
He raked his fingers over his scalp. And took a deep breath, trying to steady the emotions which had been tying his guts into knots ever since discovering there was a ninety-nine-point-eight percent probability he was Ruby Carstairs’ biological father. Not that he’d really needed the confirmation.
Because he’d known somehow she was his as soon as he’d looked into her eyes and seen the same dark green as his own.
Lacey had lied to him for five years. And had made him a worse man than his father.
He had never planned to have children. Never even contemplated it. For the simple reason he was fairly sure he did not have the sensibilities to nurture or protect a child. But it was way too late to worry about that now.
He had to deal with what was, not what should have been.
Ruby Devlin Carstairs was a part of him. And, however angry he was with her mother for keeping her existence from him—however angry he was with himself, for not checking on Lacey after that long-ago encounter—he could not abandon the child...the way his own mother had abandoned him.
How the hell he formed a relationship with this child, he had no idea. He knew absolutely nothing about children. But one thing was certain, her mother would no longer be calling the shots.
‘Sure, show her in,’ he said, then stalked round to stand behind his desk and stare out at the morning skyline.
He forced himself to keep breathing, to stop his temper from exploding. The prickle of awareness—dammit, of arousal—rushing over his skin only made his control shakier as he turned to watch her enter the room.
She wore a similar outfit to the one she’d worn less than a week ago. In his office. When he hadn’t known who she was. And shehadknown he was the father of her child. Demure, tempting, tormenting. But now the glimpse of cleavage, the heightened colour on her face and the shadows in her eyes only made the fury worse—because arousal exploded too.
He still wanted her. Even though she had deceived him for five years.
John Marrow, the head of his legal team, got the meeting started then launched into the first order of business.
‘As you know, Ms Carstairs, the DNA test results we received yesterday afternoon confirm Mr Cade, our client, is the biological father of your daughter Ruby Devlin Carstairs.’
‘Yes.’ Her soft acknowledgement made his shoulders tighten, the anger gripping his insides. ‘I know.’
The fury exploded, but right beneath it were so many other emotions he couldn’t control and didn’t want to name.
He braced himself against the wave of fury and glared at her.
‘How long?’ he snarled, the other people in the room fading from his consciousness, because all he could see was her.
‘Mr Cade, I’m not sure that...’ Marrow began.
