plunge in.
“I want two weeks,” she said, her voice breaking only slightly.
The long silence that followed was heavy, laced with unmistakable anger. Steven Rollins’s eyes were like dark smoldering flames.
“No. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t, generally. I—”
He held up one hand. “I’m not even going to discuss this. This is my daughter you’re talking about.”
“I know that.” And this time her voice wasn’t calm or cool or any of the things she wanted it to be. “I know that,” she said again, trying to bring the emotion down a notch. “And I understand what you’re thinking. You want me to sign away my right to Suzy forever and you want me to do it now. Well, I’m prepared to do that. I’ll sign this very minute. I’ll agree to disappear completely when we’re done, but first I want the right to spend just a short time with her. Two weeks is such a small amount of time, and it’s all I’m asking for. I have the right to ask, you know.”
“I could fight you in court.”
“You could, but someone would have to explain how those eggs ended up in the wrong place. That could take lots of time. This could drag out. You give me my two weeks, and I’m gone for good. It’s over, and you and Suzy can get on with your lives without me.”
He scrubbed one hand back through his dark hair. “Why are you doing this? You didn’t even know she existed before yesterday. She can’t mean anything to you.”
And she obviously meant everything to this man. Jackie knew that. She honored it, but…
She took a moment to gather her thoughts. She raised her chin, her hair falling back as she gazed way up into Steven’s eyes. “I’m doing this because I gave up a child once before. I freely donated the eggs that time, and there was no question of me ever having time alone with the baby when she was born. I didn’t think it would matter, but it did. Giving a child life, and her mother hope, has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, but also one of the most painful. Chloe can never know about me, at least not until she’s much older. Her mother, Trish, and I are cousins, and it would only complicate things to tell her child that I’m her biological mother. I know that, and I accept it. I chose it, so I don’t have a problem with the situation.
“But this time is different. My eggs were used without my permission, and I’m incensed about that. Somewhere on your ranch is a little girl who started out as a part of me, however much you dislike that fact. This time I get the chance to do things differently. I get the chance to be a part, however small, of her life. And it can work because she’s young enough that she’ll never remember me. You’ll never remember much of me, but I’ll have something to hold in my heart forever. I’ll walk away, Mr. Rollins. You’ll have my word and my legal, unbreakable signature before witnesses as a guarantee. Just don’t ask me to sign Suzy away without ever having seen her. Don’t be that cruel. Would you simply walk away if someone had told you that she was out there and that you had fathered her?”
Steven opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it again. “Is this how you get people to donate expensive artwork to your auctions, Ms. Hammond? By blackmailing them?”
Heat and anger rolled through Jackie, but she subdued them. The man was testing her, and she wouldn’t be tested. She’d jumped through hoops for her father, and later for Garret, a man who had claimed to love her for a time. She’d given up her own wishes too many times and all to no avail. “You came to me, not the other way around,” she reminded the man.
As the seconds ticked by they stared at each other, a silent standoff. Then he held out his hands, palms out.
“You’re a hard woman, Ms. Hammond.”
His comment caught Jackie off guard. She had been called many things in her lifetime—invisible, shy, maternal, sweet, a marshmallow, a leaf blowing in the wind, a pushover. But then she had never had anyone come to her with this kind of news before. And she had never faced the prospect of giving away her baby without ever having the chance to see her face even once. She rather liked being hard in this instance. This was a situation that called for hard and pushy, and for the first time in her life she was rising to the occasion.
“After we sign the papers, you’ll bring Suzy here?” she asked.
“No. Not here. You’ll come to my home, and that is something I’m not budging on, Ms. Hammond. I have a ranch, and I’m needed there. I can’t just run off for two weeks, and I won’t let Suzy go anywhere unless I’m there. My ranch or nothing.”
Jackie blanched inside, but she refused to allow herself to think. “All right, your ranch, but we go right away. I’m ready.”
Steven gave her a long, lingering once-over—from the tip of her shiny sedate hairstyle, past her pale cream dress, to the bottom of her sensible pumps. She almost thought he was going to smile. “You don’t look like you’re ready for a ranch,” he mused.
She wasn’t, not really. The thought of horses and cows and bulls and who knew what else scared her to death. “I’ll go wherever your child is,” she said firmly. “For two weeks I’ll be there and then I’ll return here where I belong. I’ll vanish like mist in the sunlight, and you won’t have to worry about me ever again.”
He gave her a short, slow nod. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, “and if you ever try to break our bargain, I will come after you with every weapon I possess. Anyone who tries to steal my daughter had better run, and run fast.”
But Jackie was pretty sure that no one would ever be able to run fast enough if Steven Rollins wanted to catch them. She had a feeling that she had just bitten off a lot more than she could chew. Steven Rollins was more man than she had ever tackled.
The very thought of tackling or tangling with him was…
“Frightening,” she said out loud, later in her room. But in her mind, she heard another word.
Exhilarating.
She had never felt so alive as she had yesterday and today, arguing with this man who clearly wished she would disappear in a puff of blue smoke.
And she had just agreed to go live on a ranch with that same, too-handsome man who hated her. How on earth was she going to survive for the next fourteen days? She’d done all right here in this environment where she felt at home, but what weapons would she possess once she was out of her element and alone with him?
“What do you mean, you’re leaving me in charge?” Jackie’s sister, Parris, was clearly not happy about Jackie’s decision. “You can’t just pack up and go off to some ranch and leave me to do all the work.”
Jackie tactfully refrained from mentioning that Parris had done very little of the work regarding the company thus far. Not that that was surprising. Parris had never had to work for anything. When Jackie’s father had divorced her mother and remarried Parris’s mom, Jackie had worked extra hard to secure her father’s attention. But it never seemed to make a bit of difference. He didn’t want to be with Jackie. He had found another daughter, and his oldest child’s efforts didn’t matter all that much. And three years ago, when Jackie had imagined herself in love with Garret Brickwater, she had done her best to make the relationship work, but Garret had taken one look at Parris’s beauty and had no use for her older sister anymore.
That
