As for relating to kids, okay, he didn’t have the first idea, but Natalie was a two-for-one package, so he was going to have to figure it out. The one thing he couldn’t be was too self-centered and inflexible to try. He really would be his father if he couldn’t live with a child who didn’t carry his own DNA.
Still, as casual and confident as he tried to appear about the whole thing, Natalie must have sensed his tension because she was very quiet on the drive, only speaking to point out a landmark or give him directions.
It was pretty countryside with rolling hills and churches nestled back in the trees and icicles hanging in claws from rocky escarpments. He could see why she was willing to let her daughter get away into this kind of fresh air and natural surroundings.
They arrived at a farmhouse where an older woman swept blown snow off the porch and Zoey threw a stick for a midsize mutt in the trampled snow.
Natalie introduced him to Claudette, who said she’d go in to put on fresh coffee, then she introduced him to Zoey, whose hair was covered with a crooked hat that Natalie called a toque when she straightened it.
“Grandma was going to take me to the barn to see the kittens. Do you like kittens?” Zoey asked, leaning way back to see his face.
“Who doesn’t?” he asked, wondering if that was too glib. Frivolous banter was his fallback, but maybe you took a kid more seriously.
“Uncle Frank,” she answered innocently. “They make him sneeze. C’mon. There’s five. Like me.”
“There’s five of her?” Demitri mused to Natalie as they followed.
“You’ll start to think so,” she assured him, slanting a look up at him that told him she was reserving judgment, but watching closely.
He refused to be daunted. Surely Zoey couldn’t be harder to schmooze than the average sociopathic celebrity demanding VIP treatment.
She wasn’t. It turned out fine. Better than fine. They wandered the farm with her for almost an hour, admired the snowman she’d made with her cousins, located all the kittens in the barn and learned their names, waited while she gathered eggs and listened attentively when she explained each step of how her grandmother had turned the alpaca’s fur into the matching hat and sweater she wore.
“You’re being very patient,” Natalie commented as they followed Zoey to the house.
He was startled by the remark, since he had yet to reach for any patience. He was here to meet the girl and he’d been getting to know what made her tick. She was five. He didn’t expect her to discuss the day’s stock-market numbers. She knew more about fish and hockey than a lot of the blowhards he’d met over the years and either laughed at his jokes or didn’t get it and said something bemusing, which made him chuckle.
“I’m waiting for the hard part to start,” he responded, indicating his watch. “It’s been forty minutes and she hasn’t asked for drugs, thrown a television off a balcony or gone viral on the internet with a nude selfie.”
She snickered. “And that was just the one teen pop star?”
“Everyone always thought I was partying with them. I was trying to keep the lawsuits to a minimum.”
They stayed for coffee and it was relaxed and easy. Claudette was one of those earth-mother sorts who made him feel at home immediately, not asking nosy questions or seeming overly curious about his relationship with Natalie. She projected warm acceptance, and he could see why Natalie treasured her.
Zoey colored at the table between him and Natalie as the grown-ups talked, at one point asking, “Mom, do you want to help me?”
Demitri gave in to temptation and picked up a crayon. He hadn’t messed around with them in years and the smell took him back to his own childhood, when Adara had tried to keep him quiet with drawing projects. He was missing work, he realized. There had been a part of him holding his breath as he and Natalie had looked at properties yesterday. Zoey had been the unknown quantity, but now he was beginning to see her as part of the broader picture, and felt more certainty he was making the right choice.
“Is that me?” Zoey asked, pausing her own coloring to watch.
He was showing off, sketching Zoey in primary colors. It was a shameless bid to win her affection, but where he thought the endgame was winning Natalie’s, he found himself inordinately pleased by Zoey’s “That’s one for the fridge!”
Later that night, when Natalie showed him to the door, shadows edged her gaze as she asked a very weighty “Well?”
“Well, what?” he asked, deliberately obtuse. “Am I resentful that I’m being kicked out to a hotel? Just disappointed. I said I’d respect your boundaries where she’s concerned and I will.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” He stole a light kiss. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
CHAPTER NINE
GOING TO NEW YORK was a step back into the fantasy world of Paris, which scared her. And she really should have seen the signs.
“Which one?” she’d asked, holding up two dresses from her closet. One was a very sophisticated blue cocktail dress she’d bought at a consignment store. The other was the black dress she’d worn on their first date.
“You’re adorable,” he’d replied with a shake of his head, going back to the travel arrangements he’d been making on his tablet. “I’ll buy you something in New York,” he had added in an aside.
“We could have shopped last weekend,” she’d protested, but began to understand why even Montreal’s excellent shopping wasn’t good enough for him after he’d flown them in a chartered plane to New York and had shown them into his screamingly sophisticated penthouse.
How had she forgotten how rich he was?
They had spent the week having Parisian trysts in the afternoons before Zoey came home from school, then Natalie had cooked dinner for all of them. After a lifetime of catering to spoiled guests, one decently disciplined five-year-old was a piece of cake for Demitri. Zoey was quickly becoming one more female caught in the net of his effortless charisma. And so was Natalie, because he spent time on Zoey, not money, listening to her stories about school friends and playing games with her after her bath. The evenings had been domestic and nice.
And somehow Natalie had forgotten that even though Demitri might not have a real job at the moment, his family owned a worldwide chain of five-star hotels. He had a trust fund, an investment broker he talked to a few times a week and one of those credit cards without a limit. Also a top-floor apartment bigger than her house. With a pool.
“That’s a lot of windows,” Zoey had said when they’d entered his home, craning her neck up the twenty feet of panes that made Demitri’s flat seem as if it occupied a place among the constellations. “You have a lot of books, too.”
“I do,” he’d agreed. “I’ve even read most of them, which I imagine surprises your mother. Have a look around. Don’t go outside without me, though.”
Zoey had run off to explore, but Natalie hadn’t needed to catalogue the professional decor or the signatures on the paintings or eyeball the view from the terrace. She’d already been suffering a fresh set of panic as she had seen a brand-new reason his family might have no desire to see her at their little dinner. Peasant stock did not belong here.
Except it wasn’t just a little dinner, she found out over breakfast.
Eggs benedict, strawberry waffles and pastries had magically appeared while she’d been trying to figure out Demitri’s espresso machine. Zoey thought it was Christmas when the whipping cream came out of the delivery bin.
“How do you feel about dinosaurs, Zoey? I thought we’d visit the Natural History Museum today,” Demitri said when they sat down to eat.
“Oh, that sounds fun,” Natalie enthused. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take you another time.” He stabbed a hash brown off her plate. “You have an appointment at the spa.”
“Do I?” she said, lifting her chin in dismay.
“You’re also meeting with a stylist.”
“Is there something wrong with the way I look?”
“Not at all. Wear what you like. But I’ll be in a tuxedo and all the other women will be in gowns. I thought you would prefer one.”
“All— As in lots of women? I thought this was family dinner?”
“It’s a white-tie ball,” he said, as if she ought to have known. As if those happened in the normal world.
“For how many?” she exclaimed.
“Two hundred couples or so. You didn’t ask,” he protested at her glare. “It’s not a secret. It’s a charity thing for the homeless. Adara does it every year. Look it up.”
“And Zoey is invited to this thing?”