leave for a party.”
He was quite right. There was no defense for what she’d done, and Chloe felt her face burn with shame for the lies she’d told when they first met—and since. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Except that I can’t regret what happened that night because I have Sophie as a result.”
“Unfortunately, I can and do regret what happened that night, Mrs. Hamilton, precisely because you have Sophie.”
“If you’d ever met her, you’d know that she’s the most wonderful person—”
“But I haven’t met my own daughter, and that’s the point, isn’t it?” He looked at her with shriveling scorn. “Did your husband know that Sophie wasn’t his child? Come to think of it, why are you so sure Jason isn’t her father?”
There was no way to preserve Jason’s privacy at this point. “My husband is…he was sterile.”
“So how did you explain the fact of your pregnancy to him?”
“He was shocked when I told him, of course—”
“You have a gift for understatement, Mrs. Hamilton.”
She ignored his mockery and plowed on doggedly. “Jason was shocked and upset, but once Sophie was born, he fell in love with her. She is…she became Jason’s daughter in every way, except biologically. He loved her as much as I do.”
“As a divorce lawyer, I find that hard to believe. My experience strongly suggests that men have a difficult time accepting living proof of their wife’s infidelity.”
“Hard to believe or not, it’s the truth.” For once, the whole truth and nothing but. Jason had adored Sophie and been grateful for her existence.
“In case this hasn’t occurred to you, the cops are going to find your husband’s supposedly forgiving attitude impossibly hard to believe.” Liam sounded grim.
She stared at him, appalled. “Why do the police have to know Jason isn’t Sophie’s father? What on earth does my daughter’s biological background have to do with Jason’s murder?”
He shook his head, clearly impatient with her naiveté. “The cops have to know upfront. You’re setting yourself up for disaster if you let them discover this information for themselves.”
“Why would they find out?”
“The postmortem might easily reveal that Jason is sterile, depending on the cause of his sterility. Or the cops might subpoena his medical records and find out that way. Trust me on this, if you keep quiet and the truth comes out during the course of the investigation, the cops will interpret your silence as an admission that you consider Sophie’s paternity a dirty little secret. They’ll assume your husband was furious when he discovered Sophie wasn’t his biological child. They’ll imagine her existence caused bitter arguments between you and Jason. They’ll conclude the arguments escalated over the years and, after an especially violent disagreement, Jason ended up dead on your living room floor, with you wielding the murder weapon.”
His scenario sounded chillingly credible. “Is that what you think happened?” Chloe asked. “That I killed my husband because we were fighting about Sophie?”
“As a possible scenario, it matches all the known facts.” The complete lack of inflection in his voice somehow transformed his statement into an accusation.
“Nobody who’d ever seen Jason with Sophie would believe something so crazy.”
“But the cops haven’t seen your husband with Sophie,” Liam pointed out with infuriating calm. “Neither have the potential jurors if you end up being brought to trial. However, you were seen poised over Jason’s body with the murder weapon in your bloody hands. I can only hope for your sake that nobody heard you and Jason arguing last night?”
There was a definite question in his final words. Add one more person to the list of those who were already convinced she’d murdered her husband, Chloe thought wearily. She dropped her gaze. No doubt Liam would interpret her silence as an admission that she and Jason had been arguing last night. Unfortunately, his interpretation would be correct. Their disagreement had been about Jason’s political ambitions and how best to achieve them, certainly not about Sophie.
“Jason never regretted his decision to welcome Sophie as his daughter,” Chloe said finally. “She was a source of joy to both of us. I have no way to convince you of that, but it’s the simple truth.”
“Did Jason know I was the man who’d impregnated his wife?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you. How come he never confronted me? Why didn’t he demand an explanation as to why I slept with his wife?”
Chloe met Liam’s derisory gaze head on and a ripple of anger floated across the surface of her despair. “The truth is he considered the precise identity of our daughter’s biological father somewhat irrelevant. As long as you didn’t know the truth, he had no interest in confronting you.”
Her barb found its target and Liam’s mouth tightened. “As the man trapped into impregnating you, I can’t say that I agree with your husband’s point of view. I consider the fact that I have a child to be extremely important and I’m furious that you kept the information hidden from me.”
“I couldn’t tell you about Sophie,” she said, realizing there was almost no hope that Liam would understand why she’d felt compelled to remain silent. “If Jason was willing to accept Sophie as his daughter, I felt I owed him the courtesy of not telling anyone how she’d been conceived.”
“Not even the lucky father?” Liam’s voice vibrated with irony.
She shook her head. “Not even you. Perhaps especially not you.”
“I’m sure you agonized over the ethics of the situation.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Especially when I decided to end the marriage and came to you for help with a divorce.”
“Let’s talk about that for a moment. Why did you choose—” The intercom buzzed again and Liam snatched the phone. “Yes?”
Chloe couldn’t hear the receptionist’s part of the conversation, but Liam responded by saying he’d be right there.
He hung up. “I have to end this conversation, Mrs. Hamilton. My client has been waiting for fifteen minutes—”
“For heaven’s sake, would you stop calling me Mrs. Hamilton!” she snapped. “My name, as you very well know, is Chloe. I think our acquaintance has reached a stage of intimacy where it’s okay for you to use it!”
“Nothing about our acquaintance has anything to do with intimacy,” he replied angrily.
“Whatever.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall, too exhausted to fight anymore. She stood up, struggling to regain at least a vestige of her old pride and determination. “I should leave. This has been a mistake and, as you keep reminding me, you have important clients waiting.” She turned to go, suddenly chilled by the air-conditioning. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold air and realized as she did so that she was still wearing the
