Chapter Twenty-Seven
I have no idea why the tack looks like a hurricane went through here. Val knew it wasn’t Melody’s fault and Liam was very picky and liked everything in its place, so clearly it wasn’t his. That left Les or Roland and of the two she figured it was Roland, the teenage helper. She was going to have to talk to him. But for now it was up to her.
She was straightening up the tack when she looked up to see Trent standing in the doorway of the room. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she didn’t want to deal with him. For sure not alone.
“Where’s your husband?”
“He went to the feed store. He’ll be back any minute.”
“Good. I wanted to talk to you without his interference.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “I can’t imagine what you have to say to me unless you’ve decided to do the right thing.”
“I don’t think our definitions of ‘the right thing’ are the same. I talked to a lawyer, you know.” She didn’t speak, waiting for him to continue. “He says it’s almost a sure thing that I can get partial custody of the kid.”
Not surprising but the thought petrified her. “Did he also tell you that if you claim the baby you’ll be responsible for child support? For eighteen years.”
Trent frowned. “That can be negotiated. The amount, anyway.”
“I find it hard to believe you suddenly want to claim this child. You sure as hell didn’t before you found out I married Liam.”
“Bastard doesn’t deserve to raise my kid.”
“And you do? That’s a laugh. What kind of father do you think you’ll make?” The thought of Trent being responsible for a helpless baby gave her nightmares.
“I might be persuaded not to claim it.”
This was new. She narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean? What do you want?”
“What’s it worth to you for me to sign over my parental rights?”
“Money? You want me to buy you off?”
He shrugged but didn’t respond.
“It’s illegal to sell a child.”
“Even to its mother? Besides, I’m not selling it. It’s not like I’m trafficking the kid.”
Oh Jesus. The thought of her precious baby being trafficked made her want to throw up. “You’re not coming near my baby.”
“It’s my baby too.”
“We’ll see what the court has to say when I tell the judge you tried extort money from me by giving up your rights to the baby.”
He scowled. “That’s not what I was doing. I just thought you might want to make it worth my while to sign over my rights.”
“You truly are scum. I can’t believe I ever slept with you.”
“As I remember it, you were pretty happy at the time.”
“That’s because I didn’t realize then what a terrible person you are.” It hadn’t been a bad experience, other than the condom breaking, but it sure hadn’t been anything great either. Honestly, it had been about as bland as possible.
Liam came in carrying a fifty-pound bag of oats over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said to Trent.
“Just talking to my baby mama.” He smirked at Liam.
Liam dropped the oats and grabbed him by his coat lapels. “Val isn’t ‘your’ anything. Say that again, you son of a bitch, and I’ll beat the shit out of you.”
“You can try. What’s the matter? Can’t stand to hear the truth?”
Between the two of them, Val would put her money on Liam. But fighting wouldn’t solve anything other than to make Trent even more obnoxious. She stepped in before Liam could punch him, grabbing his arm. “Don’t Liam. He’s not worth it.”
“That’s debatable.” But he let go of him. “Don’t say that again or I will finish this.”
“He’s trying to extort money from me.” Once she said it, she winced, realizing that was a dumb thing to tell him when he was already angry.
“What?” He didn’t quite roar the word.
“That’s not what I was doing. I just mentioned that I might be persuaded to sign off on my rights to the kid.”
Liam stared at him as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “You want us to pay you to sign over your rights? Are you for real? God, I knew you were disgusting but this is even more revolting than I thought.”
Trent shrugged. “There’s one other thing you could do.”
“Get out, Trent,” Liam said.
Trent looked at Val and lifted his eyebrows. “You could leave his ass. Then I’d sign off on my rights.”
Val stared at him. “You want me to leave Liam? To raise the baby on my own?”
“I told you, I don’t want him raising my kid.”
“But you don’t want to raise the baby yourself.”
Trent shrugged.
She’d had enough. She launched herself at him, ready to finish what Liam had started. But Liam caught her around the waist before she reached the bastard. “Let me go!”
He didn’t. “It won’t do any good.”
“It would make me feel better.”
Trent laughed.
“You selfish son of a bitch. You’d rather your baby have no father than to have Liam?”
“Think about it.” He left without another word.
“Are you okay?” Liam asked as he let go of her.
“No. I’m…terrified.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Liam, what if he tries to get partial custody? How could I trust my baby to someone like him?” She whirled away from him. “Maybe we should pay him.”
Liam put his hands on her arms and turned her around. “Absolutely not. He’s a piece of shit. Once you give him money it will never be over. He’d blackmail us forever. I think he can change his mind about giving up his rights whenever he wants.”
“Really?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Marina. There might be a time limit on how long he can threaten that. But whatever she says, I know it’s a bad idea to give him money.”
“We could get a divorce.” A choice that would break her heart.
“Do you want a divorce?”
“No. But if that’s the only choice…”
“It’s not. We can face together whatever the son of a bitch throws at us. Together, not apart.”
*
The day following her confrontation with Trent, Val woke up with a heavy heart. She’d had a hard time sleeping the night before. She kept remembering what Trent had said and worrying that he really was going to try to share custody. If he’d been a decent man, she would have agreed. But he wasn’t.
She knew people who’d been through custody battles. They didn’t always turn out the way they should. Even though Trent was scum, he probably wouldn’t be in the eyes of the court. From everything she’d heard, family court tended to favor the biological parents. Both of them.
She knew what she had to do. Trent would never have even thought about her or her baby again if she hadn’t married Liam. But because he was jealous of Liam he was striking out. He didn’t care that he hurt her too. He didn’t care about what was best for the baby. He only wanted to stick it to Liam. And he was doing it.
She stewed about it all day in between taking care of her chores. But she only saw one solution and it was one she hated. Divorce. And then Trent would be out of their lives for good.
And Liam would be out of hers. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it. She loved him more now than she ever had. Leaving him now would kill her. Two days before Christmas. She should be excited, thinking about giving Liam his presents and being with him on Christmas morning.
“Logan and Cici and Connor are coming over after church tomorrow night,” Liam said, walking into the bedroom. “Do you want to go to the five o’clock service with them?”
“All right.” She loved the Christmas Eve candlelight service. She didn’t make it to church as often as she’d have liked but for her, Christmas Eve was a must.
Liam started stripping off his shirt. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m about to take a shower. Can you talk to me while I do?”
Oh, right. She was going to tell him they needed to break up while he was naked in the shower. She could predict how that would go and breaking up was not the direction.
“No, I’ll wait.”
“Are you sure? You look upset.”
“It will keep.”
She spent the time while he showered rehearsing what she was going to say. And trying, mostly unsuccessfully, not to think about joining him in that shower.
He came out with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Okay, I’m listening.”
Great. Now she had to look at his bare chest, which always distracted her. The man had muscles for days. Not surprising given his work. Wrangling horses, taking care of the cows, fixing the fences, and doing myriad other chores that had to do with ranching made a man tough. She should know. She’d been a lot tougher herself until her pregnancy.
She still worked but every time Liam caught her doing something he thought she shouldn’t do he made her stop and did it himself. Like lifting anything heavy. Climbing up into the loft—which as far as she was concerned was ridiculous, but Liam was adamant that she didn’t need to do it. As for horseback riding, since she was an experienced rider, the doctor had okayed riding during the first trimester. At a walk. And now that she was nearly twelve weeks she’d have to stop even that any day now. The doctor had told her she’d prefer she not ride at all but there were a lot of ranches and a lot of cowgirls in Marietta, so she knew that was a foolish hope.
“Val? What did you want to talk about?”
“Trent.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “I thought we decided not to worry about him.”
“We did but I can’t help worrying anyway. You know he hates you and that’s why he’s making trouble. He doesn’t care about the baby. Or he only cares about it because he knows it will hurt you if he gets partial custody. He knows you intend to be a father to the baby, and he’s set on not letting that happen.”
“I don’t know that there’s anything we can do, Val. At least until you have the baby, and we explore the options. There’s bound to be a way to prove he’d be unfit to take care of the baby. Maybe we could limit it to visitation with one of us present.”
“Maybe. But I can’t bet on that. There’s one other thing we could do. One thing he said would change his mind about giving up his rights.”
“Are you talking about breaking up?” His tone was incredulous.
“Yes.”
He stared at her. “No. Hell, no. We aren’t breaking up. What would that solve? Other than to make both of us miserable. Or at least, I’d be miserable.”
So would she. “Think about it, Liam. He hates you. He wants to stick it to you. What better way to do that than to cause us to break up? And then you wouldn’t have access to the baby either. Or at least, that’s what we’d tell him.”
“A, we are absolutely not breaking up. B, even if we divorced, I’d still be the baby’s legal father at least until he could prove paternity. And if he does prove paternity then he’ll have to pay child support. My bet is he’ll get tired of this long before you actually have the baby.”
“I don’t know. He said he’d give up his rights if we divorced.”
“And what if he doesn’t? You can’t trust anything he says. What if he continues to harass you? We’d have gotten divorced for no reason.”
Val didn’t want a divorce either. But she didn’t want Trent involved in her baby’s life. At least, no more than he had to be. She didn’t believe he’d gone from wanting nothing to do with her and the baby, to wanting to be a father to the child and have partial custody for no reason. No, he’d changed his mind when he discovered she’d married Liam.
“You’re forgetting one major point in this scenario,” he said.
“What?”
Liam took her in his arms and kissed her. “I love you and I love the baby. A divorce is the last thing I want.”
“Oh, Liam.” She laid her head against his chest. He was so warm. So loving. A man she could depend on. And she was starting to believe he really did love her and the baby.