Even tonight when he’d said to stop the blame game, she had looked at him and seen guilt and maybe some pain. But as the man who drove a Maserati and told her he didn’t want a family, he might not be thinking that he wished he’d known about his son sooner so he could have been with them.
She rubbed her head and tossed, turning over one more time. Biting back a scream of frustration at the way her own thoughts kept circling and making her crazy, she climbed out of bed and went into her home office. She turned on her Eiffel Tower desk lamp and sat down on her padded chaise before grabbing her iPad and pashmina. Time for a little retail therapy. Nothing cleared her mind like shopping did.
And right now she needed to get out of her own head.
But when she turned on her iPad she saw DJ’s smiling little face. Those big brown eyes of his looked up at her and she wondered how she could hard-line Dec and keep him out of DJ’s life if there was even the slightest chance that he could be the father she hoped he’d be.
She traced her finger over her son’s face and knew that no matter what she had to protect him. The best thing to do with Dec and his dating plan was to keep it platonic.
But that wasn’t going to be easy. It hadn’t taken much for him to get her blood stirring and make her breasts heavy and full. She wanted Dec. Her body felt empty and aching. She wanted to just have more mindless sex with him, but she wasn’t stupid. If the last time had had life-changing consequences, this time was even more dangerous.
She had to keep her head together. She opened the Safari web browser and saw the Mommy & Me class page was still open. She’d just signed herself and DJ up for swimming lessons. She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
If anyone had told her that a man would have this much influence over her life she would have called him or her a liar. But even though he wasn’t her boyfriend and hadn’t been in her life for over eighteen months, Declan Montrose was surely the one who was driving every choice she made.
* * *
Dec waited at the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier where Cari had said she’d meet him. He’d grown up taking Saturday trips here with his nanny until he turned ten and his mother had decreed him too old for the amusements. Now as he stood in the mid-August sun on a weekday waiting to meet his own son for the first time, he wondered if he should just give Cari a check to help her out with any child-rearing expenses and walk away.
His mother should have done that. She just hadn’t had it in her to be kind and caring, and she’d even told him when he’d asked her why she’d adopted a child that she’d done it so that Thomas Montrose couldn’t get his hands on any of her fortune. She’d started to become bitter about being married for her money. He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head.
“Dec?”
He turned and saw Cari standing a few feet from him. She was dressed for the office in slim-fitting black slacks that she’d paired with a sheer, flimsy-looking long-sleeved blouse. He could see the outline of her bra underneath it. But his eyes were focused on the baby in her arms.
She stood there sort of uncertain, and then she pushed her sunglasses up on her head and smiled at him.
“I knew you’d be here early,” she said.
He realized she was nervous, and he thought back to that boy he’d been so long ago and how he’d never been sure around his parents. Never sure that they loved him and really wanted him. Then he looked at the baby in Cari’s arms and felt a surge of love for him.
“This is DJ,” she said when he walked over to stand next to her.
Dec looked down at his son and felt that strong surge of emotion again, and tears burned his eyes. He kept his head down so she wouldn’t see. He’d never felt anything as powerful as he did at this moment. “Can I hold him?”
“Of course,” she said. She turned the baby in her arms and handed him over to Dec.
Dec hesitated, feeling awkward and unsure, and the baby made a little noise as he took him into his arms. “Hey there, DJ.”
“Mamamama,” he said. But it wasn’t clean or crisp. His little mouth moved on the word and drew it out. His little hands reached up and Cari snatched Dec’s sunglasses a second before DJ’s hands got there.
“Sorry, he has a thing for sunglasses and I don’t think you’d appreciate him chewing on these,” she said.
“It’s fine,” he said. He was caught up in the fact that DJ was his. Of all the things he’d achieved in his life, this was the most unexpected.
“Want to walk up the pier?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“You okay?” she asked when they started walking.