Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
“Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
Bree’s eyes widened in alarm, making Jax realize his voice had come out like a gunshot. The floor was mostly empty since it was lunch hour, but the silence across the bullpen turned expectant.
A gut-chilling sense of deception and betrayal hit like nausea. He had left his number. He had tried to do the right thing.
She had cut him out anyway. Pushed him out of his daughter’s life. Why?
He had spent the past two hours telling himself he was jumping to asinine conclusions, but now he barely kept control of himself. All he could do was step back and point to the boardroom where he’d first seen her.
Bree swallowed and ducked her head, leading the way.
“Jax.” Nico’s voice resounded with warning from the elevators.
He ignored him and closed the door, pressing his hand on it to ensure no one would interrupt them.
“How?” he demanded.
“The condom broke,” she reminded, body language tense with distress.
“You said you were on the pill. You said you would take the other kind.”
“I did! But I bought a take-away meal on the way to the train station and started throwing up as soon as I was aboard. My friend actually had to take me to the hospital in Zurich because I was so dehydrated. We barely made it to London in time for our flight. By the time I got to Virginia, I was a wreck. I crawled into bed to sleep off the jet lag and didn’t even think about the pills until I came up for air. By then it had been almost a week. I thought I’d wait for my period then restart them but…” She swallowed.
“I left you my number,” he reminded her grimly.
“I—” Her mouth firmed and her chin came up in rebelliousness. “I didn’t take it. I left it in the room.”
“On purpose?” She had to be kidding. “Why?”
“You didn’t ask for my number. Why should I take yours?”
“For this. This was the reason I gave you my number,” he said through his teeth.
“I didn’t think it would happen, did I? I wasn’t sick when I walked out without it.”
“Have you been sick this whole time? You’ve had four years to contact me.”
“How?” she snapped. “I didn’t know your full name until a couple of weeks ago.”
“You could have called Alphonso at the restaurant in Como.”
“And said what ? Hey, you know that guy who picks up women when they’re dining alone? I was one of them. Can I have his number? How often does he field that call?” She clamped her lips together and looked past him, expression closing up.
There was a rap on the door. Eve stared crossly at him through the glass.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was muted, but Nico and Dom stood behind her, glaring with suspicion.
“Go to lunch without me,” Jax barked.
“I will not.” Eve pushed on the door. “Let me in.”
He yanked it open. “This is a personal matter.”
“Bree?” Eve prompted. “Would you like to come with me?”
“What do you think I’m going to do to her?” he demanded. “We’re talking .”
“I’m fine,” Bree assured Eve, but her sallow complexion and the way she had her arms coiled tightly around her torso told a different story. “We actually met once. I should have mentioned it, but I wasn’t sure he would remember. I’m fine. Honestly.”
Eve swung him a look of disgust. “You hooked up and ghosted her? Nice.”
“This is none of your business, Eve. Get out.” He jerked his head at the bunch of them.
“This is literally my business,” Eve insisted. “Bree works for me so let me have a moment to speak with her—”
“ No . Come with me,” Jax said to Bree.
She touched the strap of the tote bag slung over her shoulder, then nodded jerkily.
“You’re obviously upset,” Eve said as Bree brushed past her. “You don’t have to go anywhere with him.”
“It’s okay.” She didn’t look at the men as she kept walking.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nico challenged as Jax came out of the boardroom.
As if there was a comprehensible answer to that question. Until he was able to wrap his own brain around this news, there was no way he was sharing it with anyone else.
Jax ignored his brother and followed Bree, aware of the blistering glares behind him.
At least they didn’t try to follow them into the elevator. When the doors closed, he pivoted to face her.
“ How long did you say you knew who I was?”
“I saw your photo in Eve and Dom’s wedding announcement.” She spoke to the middle button on his shirt.
“So you’ve had weeks to reach out.” The cynic in him was adding up these details into something nefarious. A plot that meant she was targeting him. Deliberately trying to damage him in some way. Maybe she was just taking advantage of timing. Maybe her daughter wasn’t his after all.
“From the moment I realized I was pregnant, I believed I would raise Sofia alone,” Bree said defensively. “When I finally knew who you were, I needed time to consider what it meant to involve you.”
He wanted to leap on her dilemma as evidence her daughter wasn’t his, but his attention was snared by a greater detail.
“Sofia? That’s her name?” The musicality of it was a heart punch, bending his white-hot anger into prisms of emotional colors: curiosity and protectiveness, worry for her well-being, and yearning for the time he’d missed. “I want to see her.”
Bree clicked her phone and held it out.
Jax had meant he wanted to see her in real life, to judge for himself, but the image on the lock screen was another hammer-blow against any doubt. The round face with black ringlets and dark eyes and tiny white teeth looked too much like Eve as a toddler for him to dismiss her as anything other than a Visconti.
Still he fought it. He didn’t trust easily. Not anymore. He had learned the hard way that humans were complicated, self-serving creatures. He moved among them with an alertness to the fact they could turn on you without notice.
Bree might not have acted maliciously in keeping Sofia from him, but she hadn’t been as forthcoming as she could have been. He shouldn’t take her word for it. The sensible thing was to wait for a paternity test, but his gut had told him Sofia was his.
Even if she wasn’t, he wanted her to be.
That thought staggered him. What did he know of being a father? Parents were supposed to protect their young, weren’t they? He was a scandal magnet. He would only let down his daughter the way he’d let down everyone else.
He absolutely should not want Bree’s child to be his.
But he did.
For no reason other than he wanted Bree.
The elevator opened. They walked across the lobby, out the rotating door into the bluster of harsh wind and spitting rain.
“Where are we going?” Bree asked in a small voice.
He looked at her blankly, still trying to put his thoughts in order. They needed somewhere private to talk.
“The Visconti Signature is three blocks that way,” he decided.
***
They didn’t bother with a taxi. Bree hurried alongside Jax, not complaining about the pace his long legs set, even though she wore low pumps. The biting wind was trying to shear her clothes from her body. She wanted off the street as quickly as possible.
She wasn’t given time to admire the inlaid marble and chandelier and grand staircase of the Signature’s lobby. The front desk manager recognized Jax and hurried to give him whatever he wanted—which was the Presidential suite, apparently.
One private elevator trip later, they entered a palatial apartment. She’d seen photos of comparable rooms in WBE hotels, but had never had a reason to go into one. It was more residence than hotel room with two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a fireplace, a dining nook, and a terrace overlooking Central Park.
Jax walked straight to the bar, poured a drink and knocked it back. He hissed as he refilled his glass. “Do you want one?”
“Yes.” She was in her own state of shock. “Look, I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I knew you were coming to town and I’ve been trying to figure out when and how and whether to tell you. It never occurred to me you’d guess.”
As she accepted the drink, her fingers brushed his. Her insides were still trembling, especially when his expression was so ominous, but that tiny contact sent a spark into the kindling of awareness she was trying to ignore.
They locked eyes and she saw his pupils swell, as though what had happened within her was reciprocated in him.
She nervously backed off and set aside her purse, then shifted to sit on the sofa, putting the coffee table between them. She sipped and the scotch replaced the heat of desire with an acidic burn that felt just as dangerous. She sipped again, then said the one thing she had rehearsed for this moment.
“I don’t expect anything from you. It was my decision to have Sofia. Unless you want to be in her life in a meaningful way, there’s nothing you need to do.”
“Of course I want a relationship with my daughter,” he said starkly. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I don’t know, Jax. We spent one afternoon together. We’re strangers.”
He muttered a frustrated curse and moved to the windows that overlooked the rain-washed city. His free hand gripped the back of his neck, then he dropped it to speak over his shoulder.
“She’s definitely mine? What about that other man you were with before you went to Italy? What about the rest of your trip? Was I really the only man you brought back to your room?”
She was so insulted by that, her jaw locked.
He turned. “I’m not judging.”
“You are so judging,” she choked. “And that’s rich from a man who picks up tourists and uses cheap condoms.”
His cheek ticked.
“No, Kabir is not her father,” she said astringently. “We weren’t having sex before he left. Remember? And since you’re the only other man I’ve slept with besides him—”
“Ever ?”
He was so taken aback, she deduced he’d had scores of lovers before her and since. That didn’t surprise her, given how smoothly he operated. It was none of her business anyway so she had no right to feel scorned.
But she did.
“Strangely enough, I haven’t had time for all these men you think I’ve been entertaining. I was pregnant and constructing a life around being a working mother. If I get an evening with a book and a bath, I consider myself lucky.” She rose and gathered her purse. “I don’t actually care if you believe you’re her father. Get a paternity test if you want one or walk away and pretend this never happened. I just told you I don’t want anything from you so there’s no reason for me to lie. I was hoping we could be civil, but apparently not. I’ll say goodbye.”
“I don’t need a paternity test,” he ground out, then ran his hand over his jaw. “She looks just like Lili.
“Who?”
“Eve. Evelina. We called her Lili when she was little.”
A small snort of amusement escaped her. “After I met Eve, I joked to my mother that I should get a maternity test, since Sofia looked so much like her.”
“Your mother knows I’m her father?” He was back to sounding livid.
Bree grasped the strap on her purse. “Mom was with me when I saw your photo.”
“How exactly did this go, Bree? You realized who I was, then went to work for my sister ? Does Eve know I’m Sofia’s father? Does Nico?”
“No.” She dropped her purse again, agitated enough to pace. “Eve offered me this role four weeks ago. From a career standpoint, I had to take it. I have a daughter to support.” She paused to let that sink in. “Frankly, it was nice to be recognized for my potential. This isn’t nepotism. I earned my place on her team. And yes, it gave me access to your family. I won’t apologize for wanting to get to know more about you before deciding whether to tell you.”
“Such as?”
“Whether you were married. Or involved with someone.” Definitely asking for Sofia’s sake, not her own.
“You asked Eve if I was married?”
“Not outright.” She picked at a rough edge on her nail. “When she mentioned her party this weekend, I asked if there were any other family weddings on the horizon. It was friendly conversation.”
He shook his head, seeming astounded by all of this. She couldn’t blame him.
“I knew you were coming to town this week and that this would be a chance to tell you, but I didn’t expect to see you today.” She let her hands fall to her sides. “And I didn’t know whether to tell you because I didn’t know how you would react.”
“Shock,” he provided with heavy irony, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t like having things hidden from me, especially something as important as a person I created.”
“What did you do to make her except break a condom? I did all the work.”
“You didn’t give me an opportunity to do anything else, did you?” he shot back. “You had options, Bree. You didn’t even try.”
He wasn’t wrong. She could have made up any story and passed a message through Alphonso, but in her experience men— fathers —weren’t very reliable. She hadn’t relished the humiliation of begging a stranger in Italy for the number of a man who might have told her she was on her own anyway. She absolutely refused to set her daughter up for the apathy she’d suffered, so she had let Jax remain a stranger she couldn’t find. She had proceeded as though it would be just her and Sofia because it was less agonizing than hoping for Jax to enter their lives and wind up disappointed.
“You’re telling me the truth?” The intensity of his stare squeezed her lungs.
“I can’t tell if you want it to be true or not,” she said with a pang of disappointment. In her perfect world, he was over the moon to learn he had a daughter. Instead, he seemed to be holding both of them off. “A paternity test would show if I was lying.”
He ran his hand down his face and a shaken breath left him. “We’ll do one because others will expect it, but okay. I have a daughter.” His expression flexed as he fully took this information on board. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
Maybe she was judging him too harshly. Of course this was a shock.
“What, um…” She hugged herself. “What do you want to do now? Take some time to process? I can leave. We can talk again later this week.”
“No,” he said abruptly. “You’ve been around Eve enough to know that family is important to us. If Sofia is my family, then she is part of my life now. In a meaningful way.” He threw her own words back at her.
“And what does that mean to you?” She lifted haughty brows.
“I don’t know yet. Shared custody? Isn’t that what most involved parents have?”
“You’ll move back here to New York?” A small chill of threat moved through her. “Just like that?”
“No.” He dismissed that with a scowl.
“How do you see that working then? I’m not dragging a three-year-old across the Atlantic every two weeks.” She waved toward the windows.
His restless gaze moved around the room, but she had the sense he was looking inward. “You’ll have to live in Italy.”
“What? No! Our life is here. You can visit her whenever you’re in town.”
“How is that meaningful?” he rejected impatiently. “I’ll support you,” he added as though money was the only thing that worried her. “You won’t have to work.”
“I happen to like working.” Financial independence was deeply important to her.
“Then work remotely. Or I’ll find you something in my office. You’re throwing up arguments that have no bearing.”
“And you’re acting like I’m that pushover you met in Italy. You can’t throw money around and expect me to lie down for you.”
He held her stare while her words hung in the air.
She started to blush, thinking about exactly how easy she’d been for him that day. He was remembering it, too. She could tell.
The air had already been crackling with heightened emotions. Now her awareness that they were alone in this suite hummed even louder. Her body tingled as though she was a receptor for the specific sexual energy he radiated.
“I wasn’t talking about sex.”
“It was a Freudian slip?” he mocked lightly. “Because we can take this into the bedroom and work out the sexual tension.”
“I wouldn’t trust your condoms.”
“Keep throwing that at me, Bree. You said you were on the pill. I happen to know the medicine chest in a room like this is very well stocked, by the way.” His mouth curled with cruel enticement.
He was taunting her, but the atmosphere had altered, shifting from animosity to something more provocative. His gaze skimmed her and temptation began to hum in her ears.
I haven’t even begun to seduce you.
“This is a power move,” she said shakily. “You don’t even like me.”
“You’re the mother of my child.” He held her gaze as he approached. She could practically smell the pheromones coming off him. “I could never hate you. Or harm you. I’m merely angry with you.”
“And I’m supposed to want angry sex?” She couldn’t remember where she’d put her purse. She had a clear line to the door, but didn’t move. Because she wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of herself. Of the yearnings that gripped her. Her feet were magnetized to the floor. The rest of her willed him to make a move. It was foolish, so foolish.
“If you don’t want sex, say that. We’ll stick to arguing.” He cradled her jaw, warm and gentle and devastating. His thumb grazed her bottom lip.
She caught at his wrist, but it was too late. He had already cast his spell. Or broken one. Her slumbering senses leaped awake. Tingling heat suffused her, tightening her skin while loosening sinew and inhibition. Swirls of desire twisted through her belly. Against her will, a sob of need panged in her throat.
He heard it and answered with a gruff noise. He dipped his head and sealed his mouth to hers.
Her lips melted, opening to seek the taste of him and he struck, releasing the full impact of his hunger. He plundered, hot and potent and ravenous. He combed his fingers into her short hair, pulling just enough to tip her head back and give him more to work with. More to take .
A moan of helplessness became trapped in her throat. Maybe she should have pushed him away, but her hands slid beneath his jacket, across the crisp fabric of his shirt and splayed on the warm plane of his back. She pulled herself closer to him, trying to ease the ache in her breasts. In her soul .
Of all the reasons she hadn’t taken another lover in four years, this was the biggest one. No one else was him . No one smelled like spice and tang and musk. No one wore fine textures over steel, cool control over heat. No one touched her in this same casual knead of pleasure into her flesh while he filled his hands with her. No one made her feel so wanted. Craved.
She pushed at his jacket and he shed it abruptly, then his wide hands slid down to her waist, to her hip and around to her buttocks. He picked her up.
She wrapped her legs around him, expecting he would take her to the bedroom, but he balanced her on the rounded back of the sofa and pressed the column of his erection to the notch of her thighs.
A thrill of excitement bolted into that place where he rocked. She clung her arms around his neck and his kiss became blatantly sexual. She strained, moving against him to soothe herself and incite him. It had been so long .
When his hand found the edge of her top and sought the skin beneath, she scraped her own jacket off and arched her bra-covered breast into the splay of his hand, gleeful when he brushed the cup aside and teased her bare nipple. She offered herself to his touch even as she drank up this glorious sense that she was back where she belonged.
Which was an illusion. This was nothing more than it had been the first time: compatible chemistry. Consenting adults scratching an erotic itch.
She bucked helplessly anyway, clinging around his neck, mouth sealed to his, seeking the pinnacle.
It was only as she began to dissolve that she remembered her first encounter with him had changed her life forever.
He set his hand on her tailbone and pressed harder, intensifying her pleasure. Plunging her into a sea of sensual waves that battered and destroyed her.