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‘Yes, I do,’ she said boldly.
‘Do you have any idea what your life and our daughter’s life—even your sister’s life, for that matter—is going to be like when this story breaks tomorrow?’
She stared at him. ‘I’m sure it will be a little fraught for a while but—’
‘Fraught?’he shouted, his tone laced with bitterness as well as fury. ‘All three of you will become the epicentre of a media storm. A storm I’ve been in the eye of my entire life. And my child will be in the eye of that storm too. You think the fact she’s still a toddler will make any difference? It won’t. And I refuse to let that happen. She needs and deserves my protection. And that is exactly what she will get.’
‘I see...’ She tried to get her mind into gear. To take on board what he was saying, and to deal with the sudden leap in her heart rate at the evidence he cared about their daughter enough to protect her.
Why had she doubted that so readily?
‘I can arrange for me and Ruby and Milly to stay with friends if we need to, but I can’t marry you.’
She didn’t want to be dependent on Brandon. But there were so many other reasons why marriage would be a bad idea. They didn’t know each other... She wasn’t even sure they liked each other that much. And what about Ruby? Yes, she deserved to know her father, and vice versa. But they didn’t need to get married for that to happen. And, anyway, how would a marriage between them even work? Was he talking about a marriage of convenience? To stem the media coverage? Or something moreinvolved...?
She swallowed heavily, her cheeks igniting again.
Because underneath all her other misgivings was the biggest one of all. What if that lonely, anxious, naïve girl came out of hiding again? The one who had been so desperate for his approval she had convinced herself she loved him after only one night, and been so devastated by his rejection? She couldn’t be that girl again, not even a little bit. But she wasn’t sure she could be entirely rational where Brandon Cade was concerned...
‘The story will surely die down in a few weeks,’ she tried again, suddenly desperate to avert the marriage. Because it felt like too much. Just like Brandon Cade had always been too much.
‘If you absolutely insist, we could announce our engagement,’ she added, trying to find some middle ground—after all, this situation was not Brandon’s fault, and she wanted to be fair to him, or as fair as she could be. But she refused to be railroaded. ‘To deflect attention and supply a new narrative for the press until it all blows over? And then we can quietly announce the engagement’s off six months from now.’
‘That’s not going to work for me,’ Brandon replied, knowing it was God’s honest truth. Hewantedthis marriage, and not just for all the perfectly valid reasons he had stated.
The desire to have Lacey where he wanted her—in his home, as his wife—was about more than just payback. It was also about more than his ferocious determination to protect his daughter from the things he had suffered when his mother had abandoned him to a man who had paraded him in front of the world’s media as his heir...
And it didn’t have much at all to do with his desire to safeguard the Atlanta deal. It wasn’t even solely down to the fierce need which pulsed through his veins every time he got within ten feet of this woman. A need he had never experienced with any other woman. But he’d be damned if he’d acknowledge any of those wayward emotions in front of Lacey. Because it would give her too much power, and she already had more power over him than he had ever allowed any woman.
‘Why not?’ Lacey asked, her eyes wide with confusion now.
His temper snapped. ‘Because she is my child and I want full parental rights,’ he said. Marrow had outlined earlier that marriage, as well as establishing paternity, would be the best way for him to gain full parental rights for his child. Surely that fact was more than enough to explain his sudden fierce determination to marry Lacey Carstairs...? ‘So you’ll never be able to stop me from having a relationship with her again.’
She flinched. ‘But you can still have a relationship with Ruby—’
‘Not good enough,’ he cut her off. ‘Why should I trust you to keep up your end of that bargain?’
‘Because I’m her mother...’ she began. ‘And I want what’s best for her. I know I made a mistake not telling you about her, but—’
‘So what if you’re her mother? That guarantees nothing,’ he cut in again, the bitter laugh disguising the hollow pain in his chest. He hated her in that moment, for bringing that old vulnerability back. The flash of anger—and agony—was so intense, he blurted out the truth. ‘My own mother sold me to my father when I was three months old as part of her ten-million-pound divorce settlement. And then she turned up again when I was seventeen, after he died, to ask for more money. Because apparently she’d spent it all,’ he snarled. ‘A mother’s desire to do the right thing for her child can be bartered to the highest bidder, just like everything else.’
‘But that’s...hideous.’ The utter shock on Lacey’s face had him realising he’d said too much.
Far too much.
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d exposed himself. Had told her something he’d never revealed to anyone, other than a few of his employees—who were legally bound to keep his secrets. Unlike Lacey.
‘I’m...so sorry,’ she continued, the compassion darkening her eyes only making him feel more exposed, and more angry—with himself now, as much as her. ‘Your mother sounds like no kind of mother at all.’
He sucked in a staggered breath and yanked himself viciously back from the edge.
Damn it, he didn’t need or want her sympathy. Nor did he need her understanding. Why had he even bothered to explain himself? He didn’t even owe her that much.
‘Don’t worry, I got over it a long time ago,’ he said, burying the old trauma deep again so he could forget about it. His mother had no power to hurt him any more and she hadn’t for a long time.
He had exorcised Elise Cade from his life when she had turned up unexpectedly at the reading of his father’s will. He’d seen through her simpering regrets and her desire to ‘form a relationship’ with him almost instantly... But he was still furious that, for one giddy, idiotic moment, he had believed she might genuinely care for him. He could still feel that sudden leap in his heartrate when she’d introduced herself—and thrown her arms around his neck—the resentment he should have felt momentarily blindsided by that idiotic spurt of hope, of emotion.
Of course, she’d jettisoned her maternal act as soon as he’d tested her, and had been all too eager to grasp the large sum of money he’d offered her to leave him alone and never contact him again. But it had taken considerably longer to destroy that hollow pain all over again—that feeling of inadequacy, of desperation, which had haunted him as a child. And made him want things he shouldn’t need.
