The Billionaire's Bridal Bid (11 page)

He’d moped around for weeks before his work at FMJ brought him back to the world. But even once he had more perspective he’d thought her fickle and unfeeling, but not devious.

Now, still reeling from the shock, all he could say was, “I never imagined her capable of doing something like this.”

There was a long moment during which Jonathon said nothing. The only sound in the room was the faint shuffling of papers. Finally, Jonathon said, “Maybe she didn’t.”

Matt whirled to gape at Jonathon. “I can’t believe you’re defending her.”

“I’m not.” He held up his hands in a sign of innocence. “How closely did you look at this information?”

“What is there to look at? The kid looks just like me. And like Claire. Obviously, he’s our son.”

“It’s not so obvious.” Jonathon extended the birth certificate. “He was born in late February. You and Claire didn’t start dating until October. He would have been extremely premature.”

“Are you saying he’s not my son?” Had Claire been
pregnant when they were dating? Wouldn’t he have noticed something like that?

Since Matt hadn’t taken the birth certificate, Jonathon returned to studying it. “I’m saying I don’t think he’s Claire’s, either.”

“What?”

“Claire is her given name, correct? Not a nickname. Because the name on the certificate isn’t Claire Caldiera. It’s Courtney.”

“What?” This time, he snatched the paper from Jonathon’s hand and studied it himself. The whole world seemed to telescope down to just him and the page.

Right there under Mother’s Name was typed Courtney Caldiera.

“Claire’s sister,” he said. “Claire’s younger sister.”

Beside him, Jonathon let out another low whistle. This one filled with something like pity. “Claire’s sister was what…two, three years younger than her. That would have made her—”

But Matt had already seen the Courtney’s date of birth on the certificate and done the math. “Fifteen,” he supplied. “She would have been fifteen when she got pregnant.”

Matt felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under him…for the second time in as many days. He didn’t think of himself as a particularly stubborn person, but he didn’t like having his convictions blown all to hell.

Worse still was knowing how badly he’d misjudged Claire.

What if Claire was just exactly as sweet and loyal as he’d always thought she was? What if she hadn’t lied to him about Kyle?

The girl he’d known then hadn’t exactly seemed the
type to flake out on him and run off in the middle of her first semester of college. That had never fit with his image of her. He’d always assumed that he was just that bad a judge of character. But she
was
precisely the type of girl to drop out of school to return home to help out her pregnant younger sister.

That still didn’t explain why she’d lied about it. But one thing was certain. He was tired of Claire jerking him around. This had to end now.

C
laire knew things were bad when she burned the third batch of doughnuts. All morning long, she’d tried to function. Tried to work past her malaise. But somehow the world seemed to be moving at double time while she was stuck in slow motion. Her short order cook, Jazz, handled the bulk of the morning crowd and eventually called Molly to come in early and take over waitressing.

Claire hid in the kitchen, trying to bake. And failing. How had it come to this? She could make doughnuts in her sleep. Jeez, since she had to get up at four to make them, most mornings she actually did make doughnuts in her sleep. So how had Matt messed her up so badly she couldn’t even do this one simple thing?

Holding a burned doughnut in her hands, she felt her tears well up in her throat. She nearly laughed. After
all that had happened, a doughnut was going to bring her down?

But instead of laughing, she leaned against the refrigerator and slowly sank to the floor, clutching the doughnut, struggling with her tears, hating the mess her life had become.

When Jazz found Claire still sitting there fifteen minutes later, the former marine slowly backed out of the kitchen. A few minutes later Molly came in. She sat down beside Claire so both of their backs were against the refrigerator. Molly linked their fingers and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Men are pigs,” she muttered.

Molly’s words sprouted a fresh batch of tears. “It’s not Matt’s fault.”

“I meant Jazz!” Molly said fiercely. “After working here for four years, he finds you crying in the kitchen and all he does is come find me? Men are emotionally retarded.”

Claire felt a hysterical burst of laughter bubbling up inside. “I don’t blame him. I don’t particularly want to be with me right now, either.”

“You know what he said? He found me in the dining room and said, ‘Dude, she burned the doughnuts and now she’s crying.’ When I asked why, he said, ‘Huh?’” Molly gave her hand another squeeze. “Seriously. That’s his big insight into the female heart. ‘Huh?’ Do you think they’re all that stupid?”

This time, Claire really did laugh, the sound was part strangled exasperation and part humor. “Today? Yes. Today I really do think they’re all that stupid.”

Molly nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Claire thought about it for a minute. She didn’t want
to talk about Matt. Not even a little. She just shook her head.

Molly nodded, reaching across to take the charred doughnut from Claire’s other hand. “Well, no one should have to deal with burned doughnuts and stupid men in one day. You should go home. Rewatch
The Notebook
or something.”

“You know I never leave the diner before noon,” Claire protested.

Molly ignored her. “Eat ice cream and dig around in your garden. Spoil yourself.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Kyle wasn’t my son?”

Claire looked up to see Matt hovering on her front porch like an overzealous door-to-door salesman. The scene yesterday had been bad enough. The scene in the diner, somehow even worse. Now, she was wishing she’d stayed at work. Crying over doughnuts was better than facing Matt.

She’d barely slept last night, but instead had lain awake tossing and turning so much she’d felt like one of those hot dogs you see on a movie theater hot dog roaster, rotating on a spit, gravity causing it to flip every few seconds.

And now, he had to be here today, too? Why couldn’t she get away from him?

Instead of answering his question, she walked past him and snarled, “I’ve had a really long day. So if you’ve just come here to harass me again, I’m warning you, I may call the cops and have you arrested.” She paused, considering how that would go. Probably the police would show up, act all starstruck and ask for Matt’s autograph instead of arresting him. Or maybe they’d
just fawn over his Batmobile. “Or maybe I should zap you with my pepper spray myself.”

The good news was, at least she didn’t feel like crying anymore.

He stared at her, seemingly unimpressed by her exhaustion-induced rambling and asked a second time, “Why didn’t you tell me Kyle wasn’t my son?”

She slid her key into the dead bolt and turned it with a jerk. “I
did
tell you. Why didn’t you listen?”

Her voice cracked as she hurled the accusation at him, making her sound pathetically desperate. How she still had any scraps of pride left, she didn’t know, but apparently she did.

Forcing her gaze away from his, she hung her purse on the coat tree by the front door and slipped out of her jacket. Suddenly, she was aware of how she must look. Her attire was completely normal for her, and Matt had seen it countless times in the weeks he’d been here. Functional jeans and a bright pink T-shirt bearing the Cutie Pies logo. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that had been slick and serviceable this morning, but had no doubt frizzed into a halo. And she smelled like scorched chocolate.

He looked rumpled, but sexy in designer jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the tail out. His clothes managed to look both ordinary and expensive all at the same time.

Just once she wished they could meet on even ground. But, of course, that wasn’t possible. Between them, there could be no even ground. No equanimity.

They weren’t equals. Not in position or wealth or power. He had all of it, she had none. Only a fool would forget that. Twice in her life she’d been very foolish, but she wouldn’t be again.

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. After a several moments of silence, he took a step toward her. “Claire, I’m sorry.”

The words sounded torn from him. His expression a mixture of chagrin and self-deprecation.

Something about the way he was quietly fidgeting nearly made her chuckle. She knew she should be furious with him. And she was. Except just now she was too exhausted to muster the energy to blast him with the anger he deserved. She wasn’t just tired physically, but emotionally, as well. She felt like all the fire had been extinguished from her soul.

So instead of yelling at him, instead of throwing his lame apology back in his face, she said, “God, you always hated admitting you were wrong about anything.” Then, she was struck by a memory that really did make her laugh. “Remember the night we sat in that pizza place arguing for hours about which happened first, the French Revolution or the American Revolution. You thought the French Revolution happened first and nothing I said would convince you otherwise.”

His cautious gaze shifted to amused. “That’s not a mistake I would make now.”

She shrugged. “Of course not. Twelve years ago it was a world without free WiFi in every coffee shop. Now your iPhone is never more than two feet away from you. You’d look up the facts before entering the argument. No need to ever be wrong again, right?”

Moving with deliberate slowness, he pulled his iPhone from his front pocket, placed it on the windowsill by the front door and walked to the opposite side of the room.

“The mistake I won’t make again is not trusting your opinion. Besides, I never was very good at history.”

More nervous laughter bubbled out. “Now that really is funny.”

He slanted her a confused look. “It is?”

Another peal of uncontrolled laughter burst forth. “Don’t you get it? You. Not good at history. Isn’t that precisely the problem here? You, not understanding the history.”

“I suppose so.” He smiled, but there was no humor there.

The tight, tense gesture killed her inappropriate laughter. She just nodded.

He stalked closer to her. “Okay, Claire. I’ll own to that. I
don’t
understand the history between us. Why don’t you explain it? Why don’t you just tell me, once and for all, what really happened between us twelve years ago?”

“I guess I thought you’d figured it out yourself. That’s why you came back, isn’t it?”

He nodded, his expression suddenly fierce. “But I want to hear you say it.”

“If you know Kyle wasn’t mine…wasn’t ours, then you know he’s my sister’s child.”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve guessed the truth. That’s why I dropped out of school. That’s why I left the Bay Area. I never even wanted to go to New York. I was coming home to take care of Courtney.”

“Why?”

She jerked her gaze to his. “Because she’s my sister and she was fifteen and pregnant. I had to help her.”

“Fine,” he said, but his jaw was still set at that stubborn angle. “But why break up with me? Why not just explain what was going on? I would have helped.”
The admission sounded torn from him. “I would have done anything for you.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” Emotion clogged her throat, making it almost impossible to speak. But she forced the words out. He deserved at least this. “That’s why I
didn’t
tell you. I was afraid you’d offer to come back home with me. And I was terrified I wouldn’t be strong enough to tell you no. I couldn’t let you leave Stanford. FMJ was just starting to take off. Jonathon and Ford needed you there. And you needed to be there with them.”

“I could have—”

“I know.” She cut him off. She simply couldn’t bear to stand here and listen to all the things that he might have done to help her.

She stood up with a jerk and crossed the room, pacing away her energy. “I’m sure there are lots of things you could have done. If only I’d told you, you could have rescued my sister, lightened my burden, moved mountains and negotiated world peace. You think I haven’t played that ‘what if’ game with myself a thousand times over the past decade? Probably ten thousand times is more like it.”

He turned away, staring out her wide picture window into the street beyond her yard. His shoulders were slumped and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his mood impossible to read.

So she kept talking, voicing the concerns and doubts that had built up inside her for over a decade. “But the truth is, it’s just as likely that you would have done everything in your power to help me and sacrificed your own future to save mine. Maybe you would have stood by and watched your friends go on to achieve phenomenal success and then eventually you would have
resented me. Or worse, FMJ would have floundered without you. Then I would have ruined four lives instead of just one.”

He spoke without looking over at her. “You should have told me. It should have been my decision to make.”

“Maybe. But I know you, Matt.” Saying that aloud tore at something inside her, because she wasn’t nearly as confident in that statement as she wanted to be. At eighteen, she’d been sure she knew him at least as well as she knew herself. How many times over the past twelve years had she doubted that? Every time she read some bit of gossip linking his name to a model’s she’d doubted it. And yet, the deepest moments at night, in the darkest, quietest parts of her soul, she’d still believed it. “At least, I know who you were then. If I’d told you, there wouldn’t have been a decision to make. You would have done anything for me. You just said so yourself. Don’t you see? I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t do this to deceive you. I did it to protect you.”

She heard the pleading quality of her voice. After all this time, he could still make her beg. Maybe he would have done anything for her, but the same was certainly true. It embarrassed her how much she wanted him to understand. Why was she so desperate? She didn’t really believe that explaining herself might change things between them, did she?

Oh, God. She did.

It was there inside her. Buried under that need to make him understand. Hope.

She pushed it ruthlessly aside. She was done wanting things for herself.

“What exactly was leaving me supposed to protect me from?” His gaze seemed to burn a hole in her very
soul. She felt it deep in her bones. There was no hiding from that look.

“I did it to protect you. Not because I didn’t love you enough, but because I loved you too much. I couldn’t let you leave FMJ.”

“Okay, so you didn’t want me to drop out of FMJ to help you with your sister. But why not come back to me? When Kyle was born in February. Why not come back to me then?”

She averted her eyes, but he’d already seen the truth in her gaze.

“Right,” he said. “Those photos of me dancing with Marena.” He shook his head, a gesture part frustration and part rueful. “God, you didn’t trust me at all.”

“It wasn’t about trust. It took me years to get Courtney on her feet.”

“It shouldn’t have been your job alone.”

“Maybe not. But it was.”

“Your grandparents—”

“They were why she was in that mess to begin with. They insisted she tell them who the father was so they could force him to marry her. She refused and they kicked her out of the house. When she called me—”

Claire broke off, unable to finish the thought as she relived that panic. Her sister had been on her own for three nights before she broke down and called Claire. She’d been hitchhiking to the Bay Area. At six months pregnant.

Claire drew in a long slow breath, trying to fight back the panic that still washed over her every time she thought of all the things that could have happened to her sister.

“Growing up in my grandparents’ house, after my mom left…well, I didn’t have a lot of respect for them
to begin with. They’d never been able to control Mom when she was younger. I guess they thought they needed to be even stricter with us to make up for it. So it was always Courtney and me against the world. She was determined not to give in to them. I had no choice but to support her decision.”

Matt’s eyebrows were raised in silent question. As if he didn’t want to interrupt her story, but also couldn’t quite believe what she was telling him.

“Look, I know how it sounds,” she said defensively. “She was fifteen. Too young to make that kind of decision on her own. Maybe she should have trusted them more. Maybe I should have. But you don’t know what they were like. Rigid and unyielding.” She met his gaze, hoping he’d see the truth of her words in her eyes. “They were going to force the father to marry her. Can you imagine? This guy who had slept with her and dumped her, this guy who let her get kicked out of her home and didn’t do anything to help her. Can you imagine what it would have been like for her to
marry
him? I can’t blame her for not telling them who he was. She didn’t even tell me who the father was. But because she’d defied them, they wouldn’t let her come home. Even after she’d had the baby. Not that I would have sent her to them anyway. Besides, by then, I’d already gone to my Aunt Doris and begged for a job.”