a state of mental turmoil when she prepared to leave the house that she’d changed into decent slacks but forgotten to put on the silk blouse that went with them. Good grief, she must look like a demented bag lady. Chloe felt a wave of embarrassment sweep over her.
With all that was going on right now, it was crazy to come unglued because her outfit was less than perfect, but somehow the knowledge that she was wearing a worn out T-shirt was the last straw. She hated the fact that she had been so overwhelmed by the police interrogation that she couldn’t even dress herself properly. She was annoyed by the fact that she wanted Liam’s approval, or at least his acceptance. Why did she care if he disapproved of her? He was an accidental sperm donor, nothing more. Still, if she’d looked a bit more elegant, maybe he’d have worked a bit harder to hide his contempt. Tears threatened to overflow, and she blinked them away, pride coming to her rescue when everything else failed. She wasn’t going to give in to self-pity, not in front of Liam, who so clearly had no interest in joining her sob party.
He walked around from behind his desk and came to stand between her and the door. She was relieved when he gave no sign that he realized how close she was to breaking down.
“Obviously there are a lot of things we still need to talk about,” he said. “I can’t spend any more time with you right now and I have to be in court right after lunch. Can you be back here at four?”
She hesitated for a moment. “If the police don’t arrest me, I’ll be here.”
“Go to the movies,” he said. “Pick a theater in a nice, family-oriented suburb. Movie theaters are great places to hide from cops.” He tapped briefly on a side door she hadn’t noticed before and a female voice responded.
He opened the door. “Hey, Helen, I have a client coming through if you don’t mind.” He turned back to Chloe. “This leads to my paralegal’s office. If you go out this way, you can access the main corridor directly. It’s probably better if you avoid exiting through the reception area. I think you and my next client probably know each other.”
“Thank you.” She walked towards Helen’s office, numb enough to follow his instructions without question.
“Chloe.”
She stopped and swung around to look at him, grateful for his small concession of using her name. “Yes?”
“Where is…your daughter…right now?”
“My sister came and picked her up early this morning. She took Sophie back to her house in Conifer.”
“How long can you leave…Sophie…there?”
“As far as my sister is concerned, forever. As far as Sophie is concerned—at least until bedtime. My sister has two preschoolers of her own, and Sophie loves to play with her cousins.”
He gave a quick nod to acknowledge her answer. “Then I’ll expect to see you here this afternoon at four. Try not to get arrested in the meantime, okay?”
Three
He had a child. Sophie was his daughter. Chloe Hamilton was the mother of his child. His daughter was three and a half years old.
However many ways he found to express the simple facts, Liam still couldn’t wrap his mind around the crazy notion that he was a father. A father, for God’s sake! If ever there was one role that he’d been determined never to take on, fatherhood would have to be it.
Among the worst of the unpleasant emotions accompanying the discovery that he had a child was the shame of knowing he’d behaved no better than his own father, the late, not-very-lamented Ron Raven. Ron had impregnated Avery Fairfax twenty-seven years ago, when his legal wife, Ellie, was already pregnant. Then Ron had solved the dilemma of two women simultaneously pregnant with his child by marrying Avery—without bothering to divorce Ellie first.
Ever since he learned about his father’s bigamy, Liam had derived a morbid satisfaction from heaping scorn on his father’s head for the idiocy of contracting a fake marriage. He’d harped on Ron’s carelessness in causing the pregnancy that had precipitated it. Now it seemed that he had been as careless as his father. Juggle the pieces of the Liam-Chloe-Jason triangle, toss them up in the air and you could watch them fall to the ground in a pattern humiliatingly close to the Ellie-Ron-Avery triangle. Like father, like son wasn’t a cliché he’d ever wanted to live up to, Liam reflected cynically, but it seemed he’d done just that.
Court, thank God, was over for the day, and he’d managed to focus on the Cellinis’ civil war, euphemistically described as their divorce petition, long enough to avoid disaster for his client. The financial decisions had gone in favor of Mr. Cellini, more because the legal facts were overwhelmingly on his side than because Liam had presented them with any special brilliance. Still, right now he’d take his victories any way he could get them.
He parked his car in the lot at the back of his office building and sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Five hours had passed since he learned he had a daughter and he still had no idea what he was going to say to Chloe Hamilton except that he wanted to see Sophie. He felt supremely ill-equipped to assume the role of father but, despite his fury at having been tricked into parenthood, he had no intention of taking out his anger on Sophie.
His child. His daughter. The unbelievable refrain started up again. Jesus, there was absolutely no way to make those words sound anything less than insane.
His cell phone rang just as he was getting out of the car and he answered automatically, his attention focused four years in the past on a sexual encounter with Chloe that—surprisingly—he could remember quite clearly.
“Liam Raven.”
A woman responded, her voice tinged with laughter. “Golly gee, big brother, your bark is getting worse by the day! If you always sound this fierce, it’s a wonder you have any clients left!”
“Megan! How are you doing? Sorry to sound so abrupt. I was distracted.” At almost any other time, Liam would have been delighted to hear from his sister. Megan was nearly nine years his junior, so their childhoods had followed separate paths, but he’d always loved her and he was pleased that she seemed so happy in her new relationship with Adam Fairfax. The Fairfaxes weren’t the family he’d have chosen for Megan to marry into, to put it mildly, but in his more rational moments, he realized Adam was no more responsible for the multiple sins of Ron Raven than anyone else caught up in the fallout from Ron’s bigamy. Adam, after all, couldn’t help the fact that he was Avery Fairfax’s younger brother.
Liam shook his head, trying to clear away the fuzziness of shock lingering from the morning’s revelations. He wanted to respond to his sister without alerting her that anything was wrong, but Chloe’s news was so much at the forefront of his thoughts that he was in danger of blurting out something about Sophie if he didn’t watch himself. He loved Megan and respected both her intelligence and her integrity, but he was more in the habit of protecting her than asking for her advice. Besides, he had no intention of telling anyone—friends or family—that he had a child until he’d decided exactly what he was going to make of his relationship with Sophie. He saw no point in adding more complications to an emotional stew that was already overspiced with his own neuroses.
He grabbed his briefcase and tucked the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, using his hip to shut the car door. “It’s good to hear from you, Meg. How are you?”
“Hmm, let’s see. Busy at work. Missing Wyoming. Hopelessly in love with Adam.
