“I’m sorry, Cari. You probably did the right thing by keeping our son a secret,” he said.
“I did the only thing I could,” she said.
“Now that we both know we have a son, I will be able to help you with the decisions,” he said.
“I don’t need help,” she said.
“What do you need?” he asked, knowing he was going to have to be cooperative and to try to convince her he possessed whatever traits she deemed necessary for her son’s father. Because the more he thought about DJ, the more he realized that for the first time since he’d left home and started helping Kell acquire and break businesses apart, he wanted to build something of his own. He wanted to build something that would last with his son. He wanted to build a family.
* * *
Cari wasn’t too sure exactly what she needed except to get home and to get away from Dec. He was trying and that was one of the sweetest things she’d ever seen him do. Okay, it was definitely the sweetest. Dec wasn’t a man who asked. He normally bullied and pushed until he got what he wanted.
She knew that she’d thrown him a curveball and she should probably get him to agree to as much as he would tonight. But she hadn’t counted on it feeling like a curveball to her, too. She’d thought he’d deny the existence of a son. She’d feared he’d just shrug and walk away. But this reaction was the one she’d secretly hoped for.
In her mind’s eye she could just imagine Jessi shaking her head and telling Cari to snap out of it. And Cari knew that Jess would be right to say those words. Dec was still the same man he’d been earlier. She had to remember that people didn’t change in less than an hour.
Dec was a man who destroyed things. He was the axman for Playtone Games and there were probably hundreds of people whose lives he’d altered with the cold-blooded decisions he made every day. It was silly to think he wasn’t going to apply those same principles to his personal life.
“I guess I should be going. If you don’t want to take me back to the restaurant, I can catch a cab.”
“Why would you say that?” he asked her.
“I figured you need some time to process everything I said tonight.”
“I definitely do, but you’re not catching a cab,” he said. “We have to start getting to know each other.”
She nodded. “That’s why I came to dinner with you tonight.”
“That, and guilt,” he said.
She couldn’t help but smile at the knowing way he’d said that. “Maybe.”
She hadn’t realized what a heavy emotional strain keeping DJ a secret had been, but for the first time this evening she felt able to breathe and that knot of tension in her stomach had loosened.
“So tell me… Well, tell me about how you first took the news,” he said. “It had to have been a shock.”
She leaned back in her chair and she remembered she’d gone to the walk-in clinic in Vegas where she’d been for her last gaming trade show. The news that the doctor had delivered had been more of a confirmation of what she’d sort of already guessed. “Immediately I knew I couldn’t tell anyone who you were.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Are you close to your sisters?”
“We are sort of close. When our parents were alive, our dad was busy working and our mom had her moments when she was unavailable to us. So Emma and Jessi sort of looked out for me,” she said. “I wanted to tell them, especially since Emma already had a son, but I was afraid and unsure. And I had this little baby inside of me and I knew that I was all he had.”
She almost touched her stomach, remembering the very instant when she’d made the decision to keep the baby’s father a secret from her sisters. Dec hadn’t called and she’d felt like it was her and the baby together against the world. “I just knew that I had to protect him and keep him safe. From that moment forward I did everything for him.”
He was watching her like he’d never seen her before, and she couldn’t blame him. She didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know he’d wanted the evening to go in a different direction. And he was handling it as Dec handled everything.
“Does nothing throw you?” she asked.
“This did,” he admitted. “I have always been so careful and never planned or anticipated a child.”
She smiled. “DJ surprised us both. I said something similar to Jessi when I was decorating the nursery a few weeks before he was born and she said that maybe there was something in the universe that had a different plan for me.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked.