studied her carefully. Would he be able to tell if she was lying to him? He was no longer sure. “Then he never wrote back or tried to get in contact with you later on?”
“No,” she said with feeling. “He could have cared less about being a father. If anything, I’m sure he was relieved that I didn’t want him in Jonathan’s life in any manner, shape or form.”
But that left a very loose end. Leaning back in his chair, Kullen continued to study her as he asked, “Then how do you explain how Mrs. Dalton found out about Jonathan?” He gave her a way out. “Or don’t you know?”
Lilli laughed shortly. “Oh, I know. She said she was going through Erik’s things about a month after the funeral and she found my note telling him about the baby.”
“So he kept the note.”
He made it sound as if that proved there was some sentiment involved. Erik Dalton hadn’t had a good bone in his body. If there had been one, it would have fled, horrified. “If he consciously kept the note, it was probably to use as a bargaining chip at some future date in case he needed it.”
“Bargaining chip?” Kullen repeated. “Who would he be bargaining with?”
That was easy. “His mother. Seems she’s very big on continuing the family line.”
Now it was making sense. “And now that her only son is gone, she’s set her sights on her grandson.” It wasn’t a guess.
Lilli sighed as she pressed her lips together. “That’s about it.”
Since he’d got her talking, he pressed his advantage. The more information he had, the better he could serve her. “What happened after she found the note?” he asked.
The events were indelibly etched on her brain. And she would forever regret taking pity on the woman. Her mistake had been to put herself in the woman’s place and feel sorry for her.
“Mrs. Dalton called and asked if she could see Jonathan. She wanted me to bring him to the house so that she could meet him.”
He knew the answer before he asked, but he asked anyway. “And did you?”
Hindsight was completely useless—because there was no going back to rectify things. “In light of what she’d just been through, I thought turning her down would have been unnecessarily cruel.”
Lilli McCall really was too good to be true, Kullen thought. Careful, she ran out on you once—and obviously straight into the arms of her rich lover. Being played for a fool once is more than enough.
“So you went to see her with Jonathan,” he concluded for her.
Lilli suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. Sighing wasn’t going to help, either. She had to do something, get aggressive and fight this woman on her own terms. “So I went with Jonathan.”
He’d started making notes to keep the events in their proper chronology. “And then what?”
“At first she seemed very nice. Her eyes literally lit up when she saw Jonathan. She said it was uncanny how much he looked like her own son at that age. That seeing Jonathan took her back, made her remember the past.” Lilli’s mouth hardened. “And then she talked about what she could do for Jonathan, how different his life would be if he lived with her. She started making plans as if I wasn’t even standing in the room. That’s when I panicked,” she confessed.
He didn’t blame her. Elizabeth Dalton was a statuesque, imposing woman who, he’d heard, enjoyed intimidating people. “How did the visit end?”
“Not well. Elizabeth asked me to leave Jonathan with her. I said no.” She lifted one shoulder in a semi-shrug. “She doesn’t like hearing that word.”
He just bet she didn’t. It probably surprised the hell out of her when someone as soft-spoken as Lilli stood up to her.
“She’s undoubtedly not used to hearing it,” he said. “So what happened after that?”
“The next afternoon, one of her lawyers got in contact with me. A very prim and proper little man who offered me money in exchange for giving up custody of my son. Offering me money,” she repeated with disgust. “As if Jonathan was some kind of a toy or inanimate commodity that was for sale.” Impassioned, her voice rose with each word. “Elizabeth Dalton ruined her son, I’m not going to let her ruin mine.”
He made a few more notes on the page, then turned to a fresh one. “I guess they’re right,” he observed.
“About what?” she wanted to know.
“That no good deed goes unpunished.”
“Do you think that if I hadn’t taken Jonathan over to meet her—?”
He cut her short by shaking his head. He put her mind at rest. This was not her fault. None of it. “Even if you hadn’t taken your son to meet his grandmother, I have a feeling the outcome would have been the same once she found out about Jonathan. And you’re right in your assessment. Elizabeth Dalton likes to pride herself on getting whatever she sets her mind to.”
Lilli could feel her stomach growing queasy. “Should I be worried?”
He gauged his answer slowly. “If you’re asking me if you should be getting your passports ready in order to flee the country, no. There’s no need to resort to drastic measures.” He took a guess at her next question and answered it before she could ask. “Do I think winning is going to be a piece of cake? No, I don’t. In general, a mother’s rights trump anything else that might be raised in a court of law.”
“In general,” she echoed. “But in this case?”
He wished he could tell her she had nothing to worry about. But he couldn’t, and she needed to be prepared. “In this case, Elizabeth Dalton has a lot of powerful friends. If she and her squadron of lawyers decide to win by fair means or foul, I want you to realize we’re going to have one hell of a fight on our hands.”
There was only one thing that she wanted to know. “Will we win?”
He didn’t deal in rainbows and fairy dust. He knew he should be prudent and cautiously tell her to be prepared for anything, because in this case they were up against a force of nature. A force of nature who numbered more than one judge in her inner circle of influential friends.
But he knew Lilli didn’t need cautious words. She needed hope. He couldn’t take that from her, couldn’t just dash any shred of hope she might have against the rocks of reality. No matter how much she’d hurt him, he couldn’t bring himself to be cruel to her.
So he gave her the most confident smile he had in his arsenal and nodded.
“Yes, Virginia,” he said, paraphrasing the famous line in the legendary Christmas story, “we’re going to win. It’s not going to be easy, or quick,” he predicted, “but we are going to win.”
Overwhelmed, Lilli hadn’t realized until just this moment how close she was to a complete meltdown. She was only a hair’s breadth away. The sense of relief, of hope, was huge. This time, she allowed the tears to flow. They slid fast and furiously
