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She remained quiet, waiting for him to go on.
With a quick glance away, Morgan looked at her again and said, “Obviously, we split up and I got full legal custody of Ciara, no problem, not even a request for visitation rights. In fact, Fawn tried to get her name removed from the birth certificate, which she could not do, but she managed some patch-up camouflage nonsense that seemed to be enough combined with her fictitious professional name. I agreed not to tell anyone who Ciara’s mother was—verbally, not legally, but I’ve held to my promise. For the first years of Ciara’s life, I told my daughter her mother had died. But by the time Ciara was seven years old, she started asking me to tell her about the woman her deceased mother had been. My daughter’s heartfelt and innocent desire to know about her own life made me change my mind. I did not want to be a liar to the most important person in the world to me.”
“How did Ciara take it?”
“I could tell it hurt her,” he said, his voice soft, “but Ciara is a resilient creature, and after processing it for a while and forgiving me, she said she wanted to meet her mother. Compounding that natural desire was the excitement over the fact that her mom was the famous actress Fawn Reynolds.”
“You are kidding.” Blake was not surprised that a man who looked like Morgan would have such a beautiful woman for a partner, but she’d had no idea the actress was such a cold person. “What did you do?”
He fiddled with a pen on his desk, his tension visible. “I let Ciara write her a letter and sent it from me to Fawn’s attorney, the one who knew about our past. Snail mail, which I thought would give it a better chance of being taken seriously. The letter Ciara wrote was heartbreaking. Telling Fawn she was proud to be her daughter and that she knew she could not tell anyone about it but that she would like to meet her. I’ll be honest—I was hoping Fawn never replied. It would have gotten the hurt over with in one fell swoop.”
“She answered her?” Blake’s stomach clenched over the bad outcome she sensed coming.
“Yes, and Fawn replied with a message saying they were going to spend a wonderful weekend together and arranged to have a car pick up Ciara and bring her to her fancy digs in Malibu. But her message also made it clear it would just be the two of them, that the invitation was only for Ciara. In other words, I was not welcome.” Morgan heaved a sigh. “I can’t believe I allowed her to go.”
“But Ciara would have been furious at you if you hadn’t,” Blake said. “If you had kept her from meeting her mother.”
He nodded. “Right. And I stupidly thought at twenty-eight years old Fawn would have matured a bit. The sincere reply we got seemed to indicate that. Now I realize it was probably written by her assistant, partly because it was so articulate, and also because it never actually mentioned that Ciara was her daughter, only that she was someone Fawn said she was eager to have visit her.”
“What happened?” Blake was on the edge of her seat.
“Ciara told me they spent maybe twenty minutes together when she first arrived and then Fawn’s latest boyfriend came over and Fawn and her fuck boy went to her bedroom, then went out, leaving Ciara alone. Fawn had introduced Ciara to him as the daughter of her Irish housekeeper, and it was the housekeeper that put Ciara in a spare room after she found her asleep in front of the TV that night.”
Blake gasped. “Fawn just left her there?”
“Yep. Ciara did not see her again. In the morning, a scary woman showed up and barked at Ciara, making it clear she resented Fawn ‘dumping her niece’ on her. Turned out Fawn had left town with her boyfriend and this was Fawn’s personal assistant and she was told Fawn’s brother’s kid showed up out of the blue. So, Ciara called me up sobbing and upset and I went there and brought her home.”
Blake had to blink back her tears. She could easily cry for Ciara right now, but then Morgan might think she was too unstable to be her nanny. “That cruel bitch.”
He nodded. “She is that.”
“Poor little Ciara. How did she act when she got home?”
“She cried a lot. We talked a lot. And I told her I was sorry. That I never should have assumed a bad person would turn into a good person just because she had aged a few years and gotten all the success she’d wanted. She saw a child psychologist briefly, a person whose medical confidentiality I trusted. At first I was sorry I ever told Ciara, but it would have been worse for her if this latest mess had come out and she didn’t know anything. It would have taken her by surprise and she’d hate me for never telling her the truth.”
“Latest mess?” Blake asked, brows knit.
Morgan smirked. “You don’t follow any celebrity gossip, do you?”
“Not at all.”
He shifted on the stool, looking as if he was struggling to hold back his anger. Blake could only imagine the power of this man if he let that loose, yet she was not put off by it because she could see his gentle caring heart beneath it all.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been paying a firm to keep my daughter’s name and mine out of the media, but there is only so much you can do when it comes to public records. Apparently some reporter dug around and found out Fawn’s real name and that she’d had a child and abandoned her, and Fawn got some really bad publicity over that. So now she wants to be seen as a good mommy and she’s making up a narrative about her just having kept her child private but actually being very close to her.”
“I’m gonna throw up. Or kill the woman,” she said through gritted teeth.
“My feelings exactly,” Morgan said. “One reason I moved east is because Fawn showed up at my house in SoCal with a camera crew ready to do a mother-daughter photo op. I kicked them out. I will not allow Fawn to take any photos of Ciara. I do not want her picture on any social media or gossip rag, and after Fawn’s last move I won’t even let her visit her unless she wants to come sit in my living room while I supervise. However, Fawn is now married to Hollywood producer Gavin Foose, who has gotten her a slick high-powered lawyer, and she is going to court to try and take Ciara away from me.”
“What?”
He held her gaze for a moment, and Blake tried not to react to his handsome face so close to hers. “I don’t think she will win,” he said. “I have plenty of damaging material on her as an unfit mother, but things that are unfair and even downright wrong can and do happen in some court cases.”
“Is that why you have the electric fence?”
“Yes, but only partly.” One side of his mouth lifted. “I’m a paranoid at heart. Probably why I went into protective services. That is almost entirely about being ready for something that might or might not happen and reading behavior to anticipate an issue and prevent it.”
“Would Fawn try to hurt Ciara? Or me?” She had to ask.
