already letting her gaze slide around his office rather than getting to the point of her visit. He watched her as she took in the streamlined office furniture, the framed awards from the city and the professionally done photos of the other Bradley department stores across the country.
Pride rose up inside him as he, too, took a moment to admire those photos. Simon had worked hard for the last ten years to rebuild a family dynasty that his father had brought to the brink of ruin. In one short decade, Simon had not only regained ground lost, thanks to his father’s sloppy business sense, he’d taken the Bradley family chain of upscale shopping centers further than anyone else ever had.
And he hadn’t accomplished all of that by being distracted. Not even by a pretty woman.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, coming around his desk to escort her personally to the door, “I am rather busy today….”
She flashed him a full smile and Simon felt his heart take an odd, hard lurch in his chest. Her eyes lit up and that dimple in her cheek deepened and she was suddenly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Shaken, Simon brushed that thought aside and told himself to get a grip.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tula said, waving both hands in the air as if to erase her own tendency to get sidetracked. “I really am here to talk to you about something very important.”
“All right then, what is it that’s so urgent you vowed to spend a week in my waiting area if you weren’t allowed to speak to me immediately?”
She opened her mouth, shut it again, then suggested, “Maybe you should sit down.”
“Ms. Barrons …”
“Fine,” she said with a shake of her head. “Your call. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Pointedly, he glanced at his watch.
“I get it,” she told him. “Busy man. You want it and you want it now. Okay then, here it is. Congratulations, Simon Bradley. You’re a father.”
He stiffened and any sense of courtesy went out the window along with his sense of bemused tolerance. “Your five minutes are up, Ms. Barrons.” He took her elbow in a firm grip and steered her toward the door.
Her much shorter legs were moving fast, trying to either keep up or slow him down, he wasn’t sure which. Either way, it didn’t make a difference to him. Beautiful or not, whatever game she was playing, it wasn’t going to work. Simon was no one’s father and he damn well knew it.
“Hey!” She finally dug the heels of her boots into the lush carpet and slowed his progress a bit. “Wait a second! Geez, overreact much?”
“I’m not a father,” he ground out tightly. “And trust me when I say that if I had ever slept with you, I would remember.”
“I didn’t say I was the baby’s mother.”
He didn’t listen. Just kept moving toward the door at a relentless pace.
“I would have worked up to that little declaration slower, you know,” she was babbling. “You’re the one who wanted it direct and fast.”
“I see. This was for my benefit.”
“No, it’s for your son’s benefit, you boob.”
He staggered a little in spite of knowing that she had to be lying. A son? Impossible.
She took advantage of the momentary pause in his forced march toward the door to break free of his grip and step back just out of reach. He was unsettled enough to let her go. He didn’t know what she was trying to pull, but at the moment, her eyes looked soft but determined as she met his gaze.
“I realize this is coming as a complete shock to you. Heck, it would be for anybody.”
Simon shook his head and narrowed his eyes on her. Enough of this. He didn’t have a son and he wasn’t going to fall for whatever moneygrubbing scheme she’d come up with in her delusional fantasies. Best to lay that on the line right from the start.
“I’ve never even seen you before, Ms. Barrons, so obviously, we don’t have a child together. Next time you want to convince someone to pay for a child that doesn’t exist, you might want to try it on someone you’ve actually slept with.”
She blinked up at him in confusion, then a moment later she laughed. “No, no. I told you, I’m not the baby’s mother. I’m the baby’s aunt. But you’re definitely his father. Nathan has your eyes and even that stubborn chin of yours. Which does not bode well, I suppose. But stubbornness can often be a good quality, don’t you think?”
Nathan.
The imaginary baby had a name.
But that didn’t make any of this situation real.
“This is insane,” he told her. “You’re obviously after something, so why not just spill it and get it over with.”
She was muttering to herself as she walked back to his desk and Simon was forced to follow her. “I had a speech all prepared, you know. You rushed me and everything’s confused now.”
“I think you’re the only thing confused here,” Simon told her, moving to pick up his phone and call security. They could escort her out and he’d be done with this and back to work.
“I’m not confused,” she said. She read his expression and added, “I’m not crazy, either. Look, give me five minutes, okay?”
He hung up. Wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the gleam in her blue eyes. Maybe it was that tantalizing dimple that continued to show itself and disappear again. But if there was the slightest chance that what she was saying was true, then he owed it to himself to find out.
“All right,” he said, checking his watch. “Five minutes.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and said, “Here we go. Do you remember dating a woman named Sherry Taylor about a year and a half ago?”
A thin thread of apprehension slithered through Simon as he searched his memory. “Yes,” he said warily.
“Well … I’m Sherry’s cousin, Tula Barrons. Actually, Tallulah, named after my grandmother, but that’s such a hideous name that I go by Tula….”
He was hardly listening to her now. Instead his mind was focused on those nebulous memories of a woman in his past. Was it possible?
She took another steadying breath and said, “I know this is hard to take in, but while you two were together, Sherry got pregnant. She gave birth to your son six months ago, in Long Beach.”
“She what?”
“I know, I know. She should have told you,” the woman said, lifting both hands as if to say it wasn’t her fault. “I actually tried to convince her to tell you, but she said she didn’t want to intrude on your life or anything, so …”
Intrude on his life.
That was an understatement. God, he could barely remember what the woman looked
