My eyes hardened. “We don’t need you.”
Pain flashed across his handsome face, then the lines of his cheekbones and dark jawline tightened. “You’re not even giving me a chance.”
“I tried that already.”
He gritted his teeth. “I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“You told me straight out you never wanted a child. Never. Never ever.”
“People can change.”
“What are you trying to say, Edward?” I clenched my hands at my sides. “Are you saying now I don’t need you, now I don’t even want you, you suddenly want to be part of our lives?” I tossed my head. “Forget it!”
His expression hardened. “Because you now have what you really wanted all along—an acting career, and Jason Black?”
“Leave him out of this!”
He set his jaw. “Has he asked you to marry him?”
I looked away.
“He has, hasn’t he?” Edward’s voice hit me like a blow. “So you could forgive him for sleeping with your stepsister? But not me for letting you go?”
“Look,” I said acidly, glaring at him. “I don’t know what kind of spiritual breakdown you’re going through—seems a little early for a midlife crisis, isn’t it? But keep us out of it.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“Just biologically.”
“Just?” he said incredulously.
“You can’t be responsible for a houseplant. You said so yourself!”
“I could change.”
“Don’t.”
My single cold word hung in the air between us. He took a deep breath, looking down at me.
“What happened to you, Diana?” he said softly.
I lifted my head. “Don’t you know? Can’t you tell? The naive woman you knew died in London.”
“Oh my God...” he whispered, reaching towards me. Wild-eyed, I backed away. He straightened, setting down his hands at his sides. “All right, Diana,” he said quietly. “All right.”
Blinking fast, willing myself not to cry, I walked away from him. My knees felt weak. I sank into a marble bench hidden amid a cool, shadowy copse of trees. But he followed, standing a few yards away.
I looked at him in the sunshine, in front of the brilliant colors of my mother’s roses.
“You were right all along,” I said. “I should have listened to you when you tried to tell me. Love is a suckers’ game.” I looked away. “The only way to win is not to play.”
He took a single staggering step back from me. Then, with a deep breath, he held himself still. As if he were trying to hold himself back from—from what?
Clenching his hands at his sides, Edward came and sat beside me, on the other end of the bench, careful not to touch me.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never wanted you to learn that from me.”
“You helped me out. Made me grow up.”
“Let me tell you something else now.” Sunlight brushed his dark blue eyes, and I saw the depths, like a brilliant sparkling light illuminating the deepest, darkest ocean. “I never should have let you go.”
My lips parted. I stared up at him in shock.
He gave me a sudden crooked smile. “From the moment you left, I knew I’d made the greatest mistake of my life. In fact,” he said in a low voice, “it was no life at all.” He leaned forward. “I came to California to try to win you back.”
I stared at him, stricken.
I could hardly believe Edward was sitting in my mother’s garden in Beverly Hills. Sitting beside me on the marble bench Howard had given her one year for Mother’s Day.
“You want me back?” I breathed.
He nodded. “More than anything.”
We all create our own garden, Mom used to say. Gardening was a lot like life, in her opinion. Sure, plants depended on sun and soil, but the most important thing was the gardener. What choices did she make? Did she hack off roses with a dull blade? Did she overwater the ivy? Did she let wisteria grow wild, until it overran the walls, blocking all light in an insurmountable thicket of twisted vine? The garden you had showed the choices you’d made. What you’d done with the hand nature dealt you.
Now, Edward was offering me a choice I never imagined I’d have. He wanted me back?
I thought of the months of anguish I’d endured after London. He’d nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t live through another broken heart. I couldn’t.
My shoulders tightened. No. I lifted my chin. I’d finally stopped loving him. It was going to stay that way.
“We all make choices we have to live with,” I said quietly. My eyes glittered as I looked at him. “I’ve moved on. So should you.”
“Have you?” He straightened on the bench. And his jaw tightened. “You seem to forget one thing. I’m the baby’s father. I have rights.”
I stiffened. He was threatening me now?
“So it’s like that, is it?”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight you, Diana. It’s the last thing I want. I came here to tell you I was wrong.”
“Funny.” Turning away, I gave a hard laugh. “Because I’ve decided you were right, ending our affair like you did. A long-term relationship just brings pain. Friends with benefits—that’s the only way to go.”
“Is that what you have with Jason?” he said roughly.
I shrugged. “More or less.”
“Well, which is it? More—or less?”
“More friendship, less benefits.”
“How much less?”
Gritting my teeth, I grudgingly admitted, “None.”
He relaxed slightly. He leaned forward. “Diana, don’t you want our child to have what you had—two parents? A real home?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “In a perfect world...”
“She can have it. All you have to do is say yes.”
I lifted my chin. “What are you asking me, exactly?”
“I’m
