was no contest.
“Yes.”
“Will you come with me tomorrow to look at places? You can bring Percy, too, since he’s going to be living there. He might have an opinion.”
She couldn’t help but grin. It was a thoughtful thing to say. If only everything he said and did was that thoughtful. “Yes.”
He stared at her for a moment longer. There was something in his eyes, something deep and serious. “Will you marry me?”
She needed to say yes. For Percy. But... “I need to know what this marriage will actually be before I agree to it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Will you see other women?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate at all, which was good, she guessed. There was a pause. “You?”
“No. I have too much on my plate to even think about dating.”
That got her a nice smile. “So we’re agreed. No seeing other people. What else?”
Just the small matter of the facts. And the fact was that Beaumonts always cheated. Hardwick Beaumont always took the kids. Beaumonts were not to be trusted, no matter what.
“If it doesn’t work out,” she asked in a quiet voice as she picked up Percy and held him to her chest, “you won’t take him away from me, will you?”
Byron sat up, as well. He leaned forward and kissed the top of Percy’s head and said, “I am not my father, Leona.”
She didn’t reply. The silence seemed to stretch, pushing him away from her.
“And what about you?” His voice had turned colder. “If it doesn’t work out, you won’t take him and disappear? I will not stand for another lie, Leona. Because if you betray me again...” The words trailed off, but there was no give in his voice.
A cold chill ran up her spine. The threat was implicit. If she did something he didn’t like, he would make her suffer for it.
“I never lied.” It sounded weak to her own ears. “I told you my last name.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? It wasn’t a bald-faced lie, therefore you’re completely innocent? How touching.” He held out his arms for Percy.
She held her baby so tightly that he started to fuss. Byron sighed, the only acknowledgment of her feelings. “I want things to be different, you know. I don’t want to be my parents.” He came and sat beside her. Percy squirmed in her arms and she had no choice but to hand him over to Byron. “I know exactly what my father did to my mother,” he went on in a quiet voice. “I would never, ever do that to you or to Percy.”
She shouldn’t believe him, shouldn’t trust him. But he said it with such conviction that she couldn’t help it. She looked down at her son, who was happily trying to suck on all his fingers at once. “I need help with him. If May doesn’t move down with us, we’ll have to find a day care for him and that’s not cheap. The drops for his ears aren’t cheap, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay for Percy’s surgery to get tubes, either. For the ear infections.”
“I’ll take care of it. All of it.” He said it in an almost dismissive way, as if he’d never had to worry about money.
Well, maybe he hadn’t. After all, she hadn’t, either—not until she’d walked away from her father and his fortune. There’d been a very real price for her independence, but it’d been one she was willing to pay to keep Percy happy and safe.
Would she really give up that hard-fought independence and let Byron call the shots just because it was best for her son—even if it wasn’t anywhere close to what was best for her?
No, she would not panic. She forced herself to breath and keep her head on her shoulders. “What about your family?”
“What about them?”
She gave him a hard look. “You saw how Frances reacted to me. If we get married, are they going to be...difficult about it?”
He grimaced. “Things have changed. It’s almost like we all finally figured out that Hardwick is really and truly dead and we don’t have to be what he thought we were anymore. Even Chadwick is different now. He smiles and everything.”
“I wish my father realized that, too,” she said wistfully. If only they could all just go on with their lives without a decades-old feud to haunt them.
Percy made the high whining noise that signaled he was getting hungry. “Oh, I should be making dinner.”
She started to get up, but Byron was quicker. “Let me. What else does he eat?”
“He liked the applesauce,” she called after him as he headed for the kitchen. “And yogurt and cereal. But it’s still mostly baby food at this point.”
Byron ducked his head around the kitchen door, a jar of what looked like green beans and mashed potatoes in his hand. “This stuff?” He made a face.
“Yes, that stuff,” she replied, trying not to be defensive about it. “That’s a good brand—all organic, no added anything.”
After giving her a dismissive look, Byron disappeared back into the kitchen. Leona stood and checked Percy’s diaper. “I have a feeling,” she told the baby as she carried him back to the changing table, “that he’s going to start from scratch.”
She wasn’t wrong about that. By the time she got Percy changed, Byron had peeled potatoes boiling and a can of green beans heating. “I don’t like using the canned stuff,” he told her in his chef voice. “I’ll pick up some fresh or frozen ones for him.”
“You don’t have to...” He cut her off with a look. She sighed in resignation. “Fine. Go ahead.”
In forty minutes, they sat down to mashed potatoes and green beans—Percy’s being slightly more mashed together than theirs—and pan-fried chicken in a parmesan crust. “This is delicious,” she said in between spooning Percy’s dinner into his mouth and taking bites of her own. Percy agreed by thumping the top of his high-chair tray with both hands and opening his mouth for more.
“Good,” Byron said, watching Percy swallow another mouthful. “I used to cook for the new kids, you know. When my dad would remarry and his new wife had babies. Dad expected us all to like the same things he did, but it was hard for a four-year-old to really get into steak au poivre, you know? George always had something else for us, but we had to eat it in the kitchen so neither of our parents would catch us.” He looked at his plate. “That was a long time ago.”
“That sounds a lot like dinners in my house growing up.”
Byron looked at her. “We never really did discuss your past. You always changed the subject.” He stabbed at his chicken viciously. “And I never caught on.”
She couldn’t tell who he was madder at—her or himself. “I knew who you were—it was hard to miss that last name. But I...” She sighed. “I wanted something different than Harpers versus Beaumonts. I wanted to see if you were really
