herself? Lawyers weren’t cheap, that she knew. She couldn’t ask her parents for help, either. If her father knew Byron wanted the boy... It’d be an all-out war.
And if she lost? Once, she’d thought she knew Byron. But he’d turned out to be more of a Beaumont than she ever would have guessed. She had no idea what lengths he would go to, and she didn’t really want to find out the hard way.
It was a risk she couldn’t take. It’d be a short-term solution, she tried to tell herself. Just until they could get a formalized custody agreement arranged.
Byron’s arms went around her, holding her to his chest. “I don’t want to punish you, Leona,” he said. None of the coldness was left in his tone. “But he’s my son, too.”
“I know.” That’s what she wanted to believe.
“It won’t be bad, will it?” He swallowed. “At least, better than living with your parents?”
She shuddered at the thought. “We’ll have to have rules. No fighting or anything in front of the baby.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But I’m not looking for a fight.”
If only she could believe that. There was one other important detail that had to be settled before she agreed. “We’ll sleep in separate bedrooms. Just because we’re living together doesn’t mean I want you back.”
His hands stilled and then he snorted. “This is for Percy. You can have your own bedroom. I don’t expect you to sleep with me.” There was a brief pause. “It’d probably be best if we keep things simple between us until we decide on what to do next.”
“Agreed,” she said. Which completely disregarded the fact that, at this very moment, he was holding her in a highly not-simple way. Could she really expect either of them to maintain a respectable distance? “Simple is better.”
“And you’ll keep helping me with the restaurant?”
“Yes.” The absolute last thing she could do now was quit her job. Even if Byron was covering the rent, she still needed to maintain her independence. He might not be looking for a fight—and she wasn’t exactly spoiling for one, either—but if things went wrong, she needed to be able to pick up and start over again.
Again.
He swallowed. “And your parents? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want my son anywhere near your father.”
“They’re not a part of this. I cut ties when we left.”
He leaned back and looked her in the eye again. “Why did you leave? I mean, we’d talked about getting our own place or you moving in with me—but you wouldn’t do it then.”
The corners of her mouth turned down as she pushed back against tears. She hadn’t moved in with Byron before because moving in would mean telling him who she really was and she hadn’t wanted to risk it. Looking back, she should have. But instead, she’d convinced herself that once she finished college and got a job—that would be the time to leave home. But she didn’t explain any of that. Instead she said, “May and I had to get out. My father was...unbearable.” She shuddered again at the memory of her father’s completely unfiltered rage.
“Did he hit you?” Byron demanded, a fierce look in his eyes.
“No.” But there are other ways to make a person hurt. “He threatened to have me declared unfit and to take the baby after he was born.”
“He did what?”
“Because it was you.” This time, she couldn’t push the tears back. “Because of who you are. He wanted to make sure you’d never get the baby.”
For years, her father had berated Leona, her sister, her mother. All of them bore the brunt of his rage. And she’d put up with it for far longer than she should have because she hadn’t known any better.
Until she’d met Byron. Until he’d shown her that there was a different way to live, that people could actually care for each other. If only she’d been brave enough before...
But then again, now she knew Byron’s true colors. She could have escaped her father only to be stuck with a man who’d abandon her anyway.
Still, it had been those times with Byron that had given her the courage to leave home, single, pregnant and with May. She’d realized then that she had to get out while she could, before Leon Harper got ahold of her son.
Byron was staring at her in total shock. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
She nodded.
A moment passed as he gaped at her. “Then there’s only one thing to do,” he finally said in a shaky voice.
No, she wanted to say, even though she didn’t know what that one thing was. She knew she wasn’t going to like it, wasn’t going to want it.
“We have to get married.”
This was his life now, he realized. Proposing marriage in whispers to a woman who was crying, all so they wouldn’t wake the baby. “Why hasn’t he done it yet? Why hasn’t he taken Percy away from you?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the only way to keep Percy safe, Leona, and you know it.”
If they weren’t married, what was to stop her father from charging in like a bull elephant at any second? Byron had been out of the picture for a year. He didn’t know the specifics of family law, but he was pretty sure his absence would count against him. He would beat Leon—he was the boy’s father—but it would be a long, exhausting battle.
Memories of his mother mixed in with all the current confusion—not just the screaming fights, but how his father had had all of her things loaded into a moving van before he’d served her with divorce papers. How his mother had never quite recovered from being kicked out, from being steamrollered in court and losing her children.
Could Byron let that happen to Leona? Could he live with himself if she was the collateral damage in yet another Beaumont-Harper legal battle?
He should. She’d lied to him—twice. And not about whether or not she’d spent too much money or hated his cooking or any of those petty things other people lied about. She’d lied about who she was and the fact that she’d given birth to Byron’s son.
And yet... He couldn’t do it. Because Leona was right about one thing—it didn’t really matter who’d done what a year ago. He couldn’t bear to think of her being destroyed like his mother had been. That was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.
He could barely think right now. Babies and apartments and a wedding. A ring. And a restaurant. Couldn’t forget that.
And applesauce. He turned to the stove—yeah, it was done. He shut the burner off to let it cool. For some insane reason, he wondered if Leona had chocolate chips. If ever there was a time for cookies, this was it.
He turned
