Her Baby's Father. Anne Haven
all I know, this is just a hoax.”
“So your answer is nothing. You won’t be accountable.”
“Please don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Then, tell me yes or no. Will you be a father to your child?”
Drew brushed at the knee of his pants. “I want to be very clear about something, Jennifer. I don’t like blackmail. Your unwillingness to take the simple step of backing up your allegation makes your case weak. And I warn you that if you attempt to use your pregnancy against me by involving my family, you will pay a large price.” He paused, checking his Rolex—the same one that had spent several hours on her bedside table six months ago. “It’s late. I need to go home. And I urge you to think very carefully about your course of action from here on out.”
He went to the door.
“So your answer is no,” she said from her seat, in a voice that surprised her for its clarity.
He didn’t turn around. “Good night, Jennifer.”
ROSS HEARD THE SOUND of the study door and stepped from the living room into the front hall.
Drew appeared to be his usual confident self, but Ross thought he saw a little strain at the edges. Just a hint of tension around his eyes and a tight pull to his mouth.
“Well?” Ross asked.
“She’s pregnant,” Drew said. “She looks good pregnant.”
Ross waited.
“It’s not mine.” Drew crossed his arms. “She tried to tell me it was. I’m sure she told you the same thing.”
“She did.”
“And you believed her.”
Ross walked over to the front hall table. He picked up his silver letter opener—a wedding gift—and slit open a piece of junk mail from a wireless phone company.
The action was just the sort of thing Drew would do. Reading his mail while Ross tried to discuss something important with him. He knew it was rude. He regretted it. But it was the only way he could keep from hitting his brother.
Ross had never been a violent person. Outside of some martial arts training in his early twenties, he didn’t recall striking anyone in his life. His brother was the only person who ever made him feel this way, and he hated the power it gave Drew.
He scanned the contents of the envelope, not seeing it. Tossed the papers into the trash. “Yes, I believe her.”
Drew didn’t have anything to say to that. Ross expected him to make a fuss about family loyalty, about believing a virtual stranger over his own brother, but he was probably aware of how ridiculous that would sound.
Speaking of loyalty, he wondered what Drew knew about that summer, about what had happened between Jennifer and him. Because when you got down to it, his actions hadn’t been any more honorable than his brother’s. And he would have done a lot more than kiss her if she hadn’t called it to a halt.
“What are you going to do?” he asked Drew.
“Nothing. It’s not my baby.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Go to hell,” Drew muttered.
Ross took it as an admission of the truth, though he was sure Drew didn’t mean it that way. He felt his relationship with his brother shifting. Drew had failed the test. Things could never be the same. In the past he’d treated his brother with a kind of respect, had kept his hands out of Drew’s business. He’d suspected things, of course, but he’d refrained from digging, hadn’t wanted to know the truth.
And people who didn’t want to know the truth often got slapped with it.
“Lucy,” he said.
“What about her?”
“Think about it.”
“I’m thinking,” Drew said, in a tone that implied he saw absolutely nothing worth considering. “And I can’t think why she would find out Jennifer is trying to blackmail me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“They don’t exactly move in the same circles.”
Lucy was wealthy. Not a snob, but from a world different from Jennifer’s. Under normal circumstances they would be unlikely to meet.
“I don’t plan to cover for you,” Ross said.
“Is that a threat?”
If you want to take it that way.
“Anyhow,” Drew continued, “I don’t see the problem. I looked up an old friend on a business trip. I took a girl I used to know in high school to dinner. Why would Lucy care?”
A lie. An outright lie. That was how Drew planned to play this. If confronted, he would deny everything but the fact that he’d seen her. He would claim they’d had an amicable dinner and nothing more. He would say she’d gotten herself in trouble and decided to blame it on him because she knew he had money. And how convenient that she chose to do it now, before a simple blood test could expose her lie—because no conscientious doctor would perform amniocentesis just to prove the identity of the father.
“You’ll have to face it eventually,” Ross said.
But his brother had never been much good at facing things. And God knew he probably just hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with this, either. That if he simply pushed it from his mind it would go away. That she would give up and leave town, or that someone else would step in to take care of things.
Someone like him.
Hell, he already had. He’d offered her money. A place to stay. And if Jennifer chose to keep his brother’s actions secret, he would have to be grateful for their mother’s sake, even though it meant he would be helping Drew and lying to Lucy in the process.
Lucy deserved to know the truth, but it wasn’t Ross’s place to tell her. She wouldn’t trust his motives. She might not believe him. She might not want to know. Hell, maybe she had lovers on the side, too.
Hard to imagine. But maybe she would accept Drew’s straying if she did find out, forgive him in order to keep what they had together. The outward success, the beautiful house, the social standing.
The family they’d started… Been able to start.
But Jennifer’s baby complicated everything. A couple could survive a simple extramarital affair with therapy, time and hard work on the relationship. But a child was something else. An embodied reminder, forever, of the moment of infidelity. A human being requiring care and attention from Drew, if he had such to give.
Which he surely didn’t.
It pissed Ross off that what was probably best for Jennifer and was definitely best for his mother—at least, right now—would also benefit Drew: for her to accept Ross’s help and stay, with her baby, out of Drew’s life. His brother would be getting off scot-free. But wasn’t that what he always managed to do? Obtain what he wanted from people, whether they liked it or not?
Ross wondered when he’d gotten so sour. When he’d started to want Drew to be shown up for what he was, to pay for his actions.
Drew jangled his keys, ready to go.
“So that’s it,” Ross said.
His brother shrugged. “Seems so.” He inclined his head toward the driveway. “Where’s she headed, anyway?”
Ah, so he wasn’t so unconcerned. Ross detected a trace of desperation in the question, a need to know that was more than the bland curiosity Drew tried to convey.
“Here.”
“Here, here?”
That,