Meeting Thadie today had been tough. She packed a massive punch he hadn’t expected, and hearing he was a dad had sent him off into unknown territory. He’d never envisioned being a dad but life, or fate, had decided otherwise.
Thoughts rushed into his mind, collided and blew up. A couple hung around.
Where did they go from here? How should he handle this news? And, hardest of all, did he want to be a dad and what type of father could he even be?
As a child, he’d yearned for love, playful attention, kind words, and laughter. He’d never got anything but criticism from either of his parents. By his mid-teens, his ambivalent feelings about love solidified after his mum backed up his dad’s feelings about him leaving the army. That day, he’d started creating his own legacy, and had also started constructing sky-high emotional barriers. He kept his emotional distance from people, rationalising that if he never allowed anyone to get close, he couldn’t be hurt again.
The decision to avoid love, in any form, was made. Emotions were unnecessary. Discipline, focus, and hard work were what he’d need if he was to create a legacy that had no connection to The General. He refused to be distracted by relationships, by friendships, by women.
Did that extend to children he’d never known he had? Being a father wasn’t something Thadie expected from him. She wasvery happy for him to walk straight out of her and the twins’ lives.
He could do that, he admitted. He had met the boys and it was obvious they had a good life and were happy, and well looked after. He could easily put a debit order on his account and send Thadie money for maintenance. He could, as she suggested, talk to the boys via video-calls when his schedule allowed. She was making it easy for him, he just had to walk out of the door.
But he couldn’t, he didn’t want to. They were hissons, dammit, they were Dochertys, and carried clan blood in their veins. He wasn’t going to force them to be soldiers or have anything to do with military life, but he did want the twins to know their family history. He might not like his father, but he was a proud Scot.
But what did he know about being a father? He’d never had one, having been raised by a general and his aide-de-camp. He’d had little contact and nothing to do with kids, hell, he’d barely been allowed to be a bairn himself, and he did not know how to raise happy and healthy—emotionally and physically—boys.
And, even if he had the daft idea to take on twin boys, where would he find the time? Running Docherty Security took all his time, and it was hard enough trying to carve out time to take on the specialised missions he so loved. How would he fit the boys into his life? Could he be a dad who operated from the sidelines of their life? Would that be enough?
Would they, one day, question his involvement, his commitment? It was obvious that his sons were as smart as whips, especially Finn, and they’d sense if he didn’t give fatherhood everything he had.
The risk of failure was high.
And Angus didn’t fail. Ever.
Sometimes not failing meant weighing options, making a tactical retreat, and coming at a problem via the back or sidedoor. Maybe he could be their ‘friend’ as Thadie suggested—he could still be involved in their lives.
Without the responsibility and the risk.
The problem was that he wasn’t a guy who shirked responsibility and he wasn’t risk averse. He was responsible for thousands of employees. But the decisions he made about them were intellectual, rational decisions. As for risk, he was the guy his government called when they needed someone to think out of the box, to take above-average chances. He could do both for his business and his country...
But neither entity involved his emotions or asked him to lay his heart on the line...
And that was what being a father was.
He didn’t know if he could be what they needed, or deserved, but neither could he walk away. Rock, meet hard place.
And he hadn’t even started to think of Thadie and how she’d fit into his life.
Angus sat up and leaned back, resting his head on the back of the couch. She’d disrupted his life four years ago and had done it again today. Back then, he’d thought they were going to have a four-day affair, instead she’d disappeared. He’d thought he’d come here to find out how, and why, he’d read her—and the situation—wrong, but instead he faced fatherhood and the uncomfortable knowledge that his attraction to her was ten times stronger.
Attraction? What a stupid word for the tumultuous emotions coursing through his body. He desired her, craved her, needed to see her naked again. And under the lust, curiosity bubbled.
He now understood why she hadn’t contacted him—not his fault, or hers—but his initial questions were replaced by so many more...
Why did a woman, blessed with intelligence and wealth, choose to marry a man she didn’t love? Yeah, she said it was togive the boys a father, but she had a close relationship with her brothers, with the older, dignified, Zulu man. There were men in the boys’ lives, she didn’t need to marry to give them role models.
From Docherty Security files, he’d learned her background. Shortly before they’d met in London, she’d graduated with an MA in Fashion Design, but he couldn’t find any traces of her being employed. Had she gone straight from her masters into motherhood?
What else?
She had a massive social media following and was regarded to be an influencer, and she also was involved in a few charities. But neither of those were enough to fill hours in the day. She could afford to hire help to look after the twins so why hadn’t she resumed her career? Fashion was, he recalled from their first conversation in London, something she loved. Look, he respected women who were stay-at-home mums, he’d heard it was one of the toughest gigs in the world, but he couldn’t quite put Thadie into that box.
The truth was that he needed more time: time with her, time with the boys, time for him to get used to his new reality. Time to figure out the puzzle that was Thadie Le Roux.
And his suddenly overly complicated life.
Angus lifted his head as Thadie stepped into the room. She looked exhausted, her lovely skin tight across her cheekbones. He had been trained to adapt to new situations quickly and he was feeling the strain. After all that had happened to her over the past few days, and, as he’d heard, over the past few months, the rope holding her together was fraying. It was time to leave, to give her some space.