Lily shook herself free from her silent depressing reverie. At her sides her hands clenched. No. She would protect her baby from ever feeling unwanted.
Just the baby?
Hadn’t there been the smallest hint of self-preservation in her decision? Having Ben in her life, a constant reminder of her romantic self-delusion, would not have been easy to deal with.
It would have been agony. Just looking at him, she thought it was! She was no longer naïve enough to call it love, but the primal reaction she had to him was not something she could control, even if it was just sex.
* * *
The quiet rebuttal caused Ben to draw a breath. His smouldering gaze dropped, his lashes brushing the slashing angle of his cheek that hid the flicker of uncertainty in his blue eyes. He wondered, wasn’t she right?
His own father had been marginally more involved in his life than his mother, not because of any genuine fatherly feelings but only in the sense that he’d cared more about appearances.
Would he be any better?
Self-doubt was not something that kept Ben awake at night. He’d made his share of bad decisions. The secret was being prepared to take responsibility and live with the consequences of those flawed decisions, even life-changing ones.
But this hadn’t been his decision.
But it had happened, so deal with it, Ben!
‘So you decided to take me out of the equation.’ Just saying it out loud made his anger spike hotly. That it was an equation he had never wanted to be part of did not lessen his sense of outrage or his determination to do the right thing, for his daughter.
‘I didn’t think of it quite in those terms, but yes...if you like.’
‘And you were only thinking of Emily Rose?’
The underlying mockery in his voice brought her rounded chin up. ‘It’s my job.’
‘And you decided that her life would be better without me in it...?’
* * *
Not fooled by his light conversational tone, Lily didn’t react. She stood there watching him warily, determined not to let him see that his comment had slipped under her defences.
‘What about what she wants?’
She angled an uneasy look up at his lean face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A child shouldn’t grow up feeling unloved or unwanted.’
‘She isn’t!’ Lily shot back, furious at the suggestion.
‘You were happy to let her think her father doesn’t love or want her. Did you pause when you were making your unilateral decision to think how she might feel a few years down the line thinking that her father had rejected her? How that might affect her emotional development, her future relationships? You’re willing to deprive her of what you had...what you took for granted... Well, I’m not.’
The statement had more impact because Ben clearly wasn’t canvassing for the sympathy vote; he was simply stating a fact. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Lily felt her own tender heart soften. A child herself at the time, it had never occurred to her to wonder why Ben had come to live with his grandfather. That he had been unwanted had not even crossed her mind.
‘I’m going to make damned sure that my daughter isn’t going to grow up thinking she’s to blame. She’ll have what every kid deserves. What I—’
Didn’t have, Lily completed silently as he paused for breath. She trawled her memory trying to think of a single occasion when she had seen Ben’s parents at Warren Court after Ben had moved in. She came up blank.
‘I’m sorry that you were an unhappy child, but—’
He pinned her with a cold blue stare. ‘This isn’t about me. It’s about what is best for our child. You may feel it’s some sort of badge of honour to struggle financially but—’
‘I don’t!’ she protested, smothering a dangerous wave of empathy along with the image of a sad, lonely little boy. Ben was not a little boy any more; he was a powerful man. A very angry, powerful man. And he was angry at her. ‘You never wanted children...’
‘And you wanted to put your career on hold just as it was taking off?’
‘That’s not the point!’
His brows lifted as his lips tugged into a triumphant smile. ‘Exactly. Even if I was the total rat you think I am, even if I had been given the option and chose not to be part of her life, I have a financial obligation at least.’
‘This isn’t about money!’
‘No, it’s about a hell of a lot more,’ he growled. ‘More than your selfish pride. So save me the poor and proud of it speech. My daughter is going to have all the advantages I can give her, so get used to it.’