kiss of a man unconcerned about his ability to turn it on or off. Which suited Payton fine. After so many years of watching every word, she didn’t want to censor herself now.
As they hit the damp packed sand, Nate offered a spot beneath his arm. She stepped into the warmth of his hold and they walked in companionable silence.
Gulls soared overhead, and children sprinted through the sand in the distance.
Nate pulled off his glasses and, tucking them into the V of his sweater, turned to her. The normal vibrancy of his eyes had gone brittle beneath the strain of his burden. She knew what was coming. An explanation for this cloak and dagger game with the press, the pretend affair that all too briefly turned real. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he would.
“One of the women I dated last year came to me pregnant.”
Her heart stalled in her chest as she imagined a child, a golden-haired, blue-eyed bit of Nate, new to the world. And a woman she couldn’t even fathom? “My God, Nate…”
What could she say? Congratulations? It hardly seemed as though joyous celebration were the theme of his disclosure considering the lengths to which he was going to shake the press off the scent of his secret. And yet, offering her sympathy seemed equally inappropriate. Questions rose fast and urgent within her, each more desperate to claw free than the one before, but she willed herself silent, waiting for him to go on.
“I was fairly sure she’d been with someone else after we’d ended things, but the timing she described…It was possible. She wanted to get married. Swore up and down the baby was mine. Only, I knew it wasn’t. Hell, I suspected.” He let out a heavy sigh, ducked and scooped up a handful of sand. Let the grains sift through his fingers. “Maybe I just wished.”
Eyes to the darkening waters of Lake Michigan, he straightened. “Whatever the case, I wouldn’t marry her. Not until I had a blood test to confirm her claim. She kept pushing. Didn’t want her child born a bastard. Didn’t want the risk of a prebirth DNA sample.” He shook his head, his jaw set off to one side.
Payton waited, her heart in her throat. Her mind blanked beyond anything but the words coming painfully from Nate’s mouth.
“In the end, she was born healthy. Not mine. Not that I’d had much doubt at that point.”
“Nate, I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible to wait through.”
He cast her a quick smile. “Yeah, well. It’s been a tough six months. And honestly, the last thing I need is to have the press getting things stirred up again.”
She could only imagine what it had been like for him. Of course he didn’t want the gory details rehashed for public consumption.
But what she couldn’t understand was how a woman who’d actually dated Nate would ever think she’d get away with a ploy like that. “What happened to them?”
“They live in a small town outside of Stuttgart. They’re both doing well.”
“You keep track of them?”
“Annegret needed help.” His tone didn’t convey pity, pain or any other depth of feeling. It was matter-of-fact as he stared out over the turbulent waters. “I don’t like what happened. Honestly, I don’t like her. But she didn’t know how to take care of herself. Her father cut her off. The baby’s father was married. And I’d been a part of the picture recently enough…” He let out a heavy sigh. “She was desperate and thought she’d found a solution through me.”
Perhaps not so ruthless after all…and maybe that was what he didn’t want broadcast around the globe.
“I found her a small house. I cover her bills. But the arrangement is she can’t talk. If she tries to profit from this in any way, the funding is off. So there’s a reason I don’t want the press getting a hold of her.”
She could see that quite clearly. He’d financed the woman who tried to trap him into marriage with a false paternity claim. It was a risky precedent to set. So why had he done it?
Slanting a glance his way, she asked, “Did you love her?”
Nate’s head snapped around, the strangest expression of shock on his face. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“But you set her up?”
He waved her off. “She was without resources.”
“So are a lot of women. Do you have a charitable foundation in place to help them all?” Though, now that she thought about it, he’d tried to do the very same thing with her that afternoon. Was it some kind of white-knight syndrome or was Nate simply the kind of man who couldn’t sit idly by when he was capable of making a difference?
“There was a part of me that wouldn’t let myself hate her. I knew on some level it was possible the child was mine. And if it turned out to be true, that baby couldn’t be born to a father who loathed her. Do you see what I’m saying?”
Payton didn’t trust herself to speak. Didn’t trust herself to touch him for fear she wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d developed an attachment to a child he hadn’t believed was his. Forced himself to care—maybe even to love—on the chance it was.
Pushing beyond her own heartbreak, she reached for his hand. “When you found out?”
His head tilted back, eyes fixing on the sky. “I care about Bella. But I can’t drop in and out of her life or be her daddy just because she doesn’t have one. It would never work with her mother. So I made sure she was taken care of and I let her go.”
That kind of emotional toll was unfathomable.
He seemed to have followed her train of thought. “I’d never planned on having a family. I didn’t want one thrust upon me. So in that regard it was a relief.”
“Because if she’d been yours?”
He met her gaze, steady and unwavering. “I would have married her mother and played the hand life dealt me.”
A nervous alarm sounded deep within her. It had been too close. He would have given everything up and she never would have had him back in her life. “Even though you didn’t love her?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. If Bella was mine, I would have made us a family. I would have made it work. No issue. But that’s the only way I’d make a trek down the aisle.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said he didn’t want to marry. Though this time she sensed more distaste behind his words. “Pretty adamant about that, huh?”
Nate caught her sidelong glance. “Yeah.”
“Was it always like that with you?” She never would have guessed it from the way he’d been in high school; of course, she wouldn’t have wanted to see something that didn’t support her fantasy that someday he’d marry her!
“I didn’t think a lot about it, but probably. My parents’ marriage—” He shook his head, squinting off into the distance before letting the rest drop as though it didn’t merit voicing. “In college and after, I was working so hard there wasn’t time for much more than a quick—There wasn’t time for anything involved.”
