Bitter? Aidan thought over Stan’s choice of words and eventually shrugged it off. “Maybe so. Wouldn’t you be bitter if your supposedly loving fiancée left you for your wealthier, more successful boss?”
“He wasn’t your boss,” Stan pointed out. “You’d quit the agency by then to come work at the pub. I remember her coming in here to break it off.”
“Technicality. What’s important is that she decided—within weeks of my father’s death, I might add—that marrying a bar owner wasn’t good enough for her. If I wasn’t going to be a hot shot advertising exec with a chance at making partner at the agency, she wasn’t interested.”
“That was pretty cold. But what makes you think this new woman you’re involved with would do the same thing?”
“I don’t.” Aidan shook his head and wiped down the worn wood countertop of Murphy’s Pub. Most of the day-to-day tasks of running Murphy’s were the kind he could go through almost robotically without concentrating too hard. Unfortunately today, that meant his mind was free to run through his earlier conversation with Violet again and again. “It’s just a general distrust of the wealthy. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the rich are happy to keep it that way. Anyway, I’m not involved with Violet. I was. We have a child together thanks to some tequila and a three percent failure rate on condoms. I don’t think she’s interested in, uh...”
“Banging the bartender on the regular?”
“Nice choice of words there, Stan. But yes. Our fling was one thing. An actual relationship is totally different.”
“Just because it’s different doesn’t mean she’s disinterested.”
“She didn’t exactly run out to find me when she realized she was pregnant. Would you if you were in her shoes? I’m just a bartender barely keeping afloat, Stan. She’s probably embarrassed to tell people about me.”
“I thought she hit her head or something.”
“That’s what she says.”
“You don’t believe her?”
Aidan sighed and leaned his elbows on the countertop. “I don’t know. It seems awfully fantastical. The far simpler answer is that she wanted to forget she ever met me and when put on the spot, she came up with that story so she didn’t look like the bad guy.”
“Or she really did have an accident and forget. She’s been very accommodating since you two ran into each other, hasn’t she?”
She had. That was part of the problem. The Violet he knew didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would make up a story like that. She’d seemed genuinely relieved to know his name and connect the dots of her past. But did that Violet from all those months ago have anything in common with the high-class lady who had his baby? It was hard to associate those two parts of her personality.
“Let me ask you this, then,” Stan said when Aidan didn’t respond to his question. “You say she wouldn’t want to date you. But what about you? Are you interested in a relationship with her?”
Aidan’s jaw clenched tightly as he thought over his response. Easily, the answer came that he wanted her. How could he not want her? She was the most beautiful, sensual creature to ever waltz into his life. But the Violet he wanted was the one who had stumbled into his bar all those months ago. Was billionaire socialite Violet going to be as uninhibited and free? Knowing more about her and who she really was by the light of day had changed things for him.
As Stan had mentioned, Aidan didn’t exactly have the greatest impression of rich people, and it wasn’t just because of Iris and that toad Trevor. No, he’d been burned more than once by people with more money than moral fiber. Violet may not fit into that category, but he didn’t know for sure. As she’d pointed out earlier that afternoon, they didn’t really know much about each other. It wasn’t long ago that he didn’t know her last name or where she lived or worked. What he did know—what he had burned into his brain—was every curve of her body, the taste of her skin and the soft sounds she made just seconds before her orgasm broke.
“It’s too early to say.” Aidan answered the question at last. “It’s complicated.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the unmistakable gesture of the two men drinking in the far corner. They wanted another round. Aidan moved away from Stan and poured two pints of beer. Then he carried them over to the table and bussed their empty glasses.
“All relationships are complicated,” Stan pointed out when he returned. “What makes this more complicated than usual?”
“Aside from her being ridiculously wealthy? How about that if something were to happen between us now it has the potential to complicate our coparenting arrangement?”
“Coparenting?” Stan said with an expression of distaste. “What’s that, raising a kid together?”
“Yeah. That’s what they call it now.”
“When I was young enough to get a woman in trouble, they called it marriage.”
Marriage? He supposed that some people would think that was the answer. Aidan was actually lucky his devout Irish Catholic parents were both dead and buried or the news of their illegitimate grandson might have killed them.
“Yeah, well, the topic of marriage hasn’t even come up and I’m not in the least bit surprised. Why would she want to marry me, Stan? She doesn’t need me to raise our son. She has a fortune at her disposal. The biggest Manhattan apartment I’ve ever set foot in. A live-in nanny. Me showing up in her life is mostly a complication for her, I’m sure. She’s letting me be involved in Knox’s life to be nice. There’s nothing I can offer her or my son.”
“That’s not true,” Stan said in as comforting a tone as he could muster. The older, burly, rough construction worker was hardly the comforting type. “You’re his father. At least you’re pretty sure you are. Once the tests come back and you’re certain, there’s nothing that will ever change that and no one else that should take that place in his life. You don’t need money or a fancy job to be there for your son. Just be a dad. That’s important. More important than bleeding your checking account dry trying to pay for the kid’s fancy private schools. She can handle that. You stick to what you’re good at.”
“And what’s that?” Aidan asked. “I used to be good at getting people to buy things they didn’t need. In high school, I was a decent baseball pitcher. I can pour a perfect beer. None of those skills will help me where Knox is concerned.”
“Just be the best dad you know how to be,” Stan grumbled. “Is that so hard?”