“Where does the money come in?” he asked with no hesitation.
“I don’t want money,” she repeated on an exasperated sigh. Was that so hard for him to understand? “I want freedom and peace of mind and my...this...Dylan.” She swallowed as she said his name. “I want Dylan.” Safe, close, happy. That’s what she wanted. “Honestly, that’s all I’ve ever wanted since the day a cop showed up at my door and told me Carrie was dead.”
He had the decency to at least feign sympathy. “Sorry, but...” He reached for the notebook, tugging it from her fingers. “Let me see that. Let me—”
Something slipped out of the pages, fluttering to the sand. He stooped down and snagged it as she did the same, their heads tapping lightly. He got the picture before she did, but Liza had a second to see it was the photo of Dylan she’d slipped into the back of the journal.
She reached for it, instantly protective, even of his photo. “That’s—”
“Me,” he finished, staring at it, still crouched down.
“No, I took that...” Her voice faded as she realized what he was saying. “Yeah, he looks like you. So much for an innovative and complex scam for money, huh?”
Staring at the photo, he let his backside drop onto the sand to sit. “He’s an Ivory,” he whispered, awe and disbelief and recognition making his voice thick.
She plopped down next to him. “What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you?”
“That changes everything.”
Her heart plummeted. “How?”
“I have to...” He struggled with the words, and her brain raced to fill in the blank. Meet him? Take him? Claim him? What did he have to do now that he didn’t want to do years ago when Carrie told him she was pregnant?
He exhaled. “I have to see that journal. Somewhere completely private.”
“We can walk on the beach.”
He shook his head and pointed his thumb at the baseball game behind him. “They’ll come after me. Where do you live?”
“Too far and...” She didn’t want him there. “No, let’s go inside and sit at a table or in the lobby.”
He gave her a funny look, slowly shaking his head as he stood, still looking at the picture. “You don’t understand. I can’t do that. People know me. They take pictures. They approach me. Let’s just...” He gestured for her to follow him. “I have an idea.”
But she didn’t move, looking up at him, feeling so small and helpless and frustrated and scared. “Are you going to take him from me?” she managed to ask.
He reached down and took her hand, his silence almost worse than if he’d said yes.
Chapter Two
Blackmail would have been better, Nate thought as he maneuvered his Aston Martin through the narrow streets of Mimosa Key, headed for the harbor where he had a shot at relative privacy. She’d agreed to come along, clinging to her precious notebook.
Blackmail he could handle. The family was used to that sort of thing. But a four-year-old child whose mother—with a name he’d never heard in his life—was dead and left nothing but a journal? This was big. This was problematic. This was life-changing, and not in the way he wanted his life to change.
But...
He’s an Ivory.
The family sure had some powerful, unstoppable genes, and Nate had spent enough time with cousins to know an Ivory when he saw an Ivory. And mistakes happen, obviously, so nothing was impossible.
But no one told him! He never left anyone penniless and pregnant.
A sensation he couldn’t name, didn’t understand, and already hated welled up in him. A bunch of them, to be fair. Anger, fear, frustration, and disbelief coiled around his gut. What if he had inadvertently done something like that? What if this claim was real?
Next to him, Liza had situated herself as close to the opposite side of the sports car as she could be without actually riding outside. Silent, she stared straight ahead, gnawing her lower lip and clutching that cheap notebook like it was the crown jewels.
Well, in some ways, it was. Maybe it held information that could get her a lot of money. That had to be her game, with the strategy of acting like it wasn’t. Hell, at this point, he hoped that was her game, despite her vehement denials.
He’d far prefer a little friendly extortion to fatherhood.
Who was this woman claiming to have had a relationship with him? He broke the silence after about five minutes. “Carrie...Cassidy, did you say?”
“Her real name was Careen. Does that help?”
Not a bit. “I have absolutely no recollection of meeting a woman named Carrie or Careen or Cassidy, let alone sleeping with her. Let alone spending months with her. I don’t spend months with my best friends, let alone...women.”
“So I’ve heard. And read.”
He slid her another look, trying to see past the intriguing eyes and waves of thick, dark hair to the villainess underneath. But all he saw was a great-looking woman chewing a hole in her lower lip, her arms wrapped around her chest protectively, popping some luscious cleavage out of her T-shirt.
He returned his attention to the road. He would not be diving into that particular weakness of his anytime soon. “So tell me everything about this so-called Carrie.”
She let go of that lower lip, whipping around, eyes flashing like the Sri Lankan green sapphires that decorated the backsplash of his master bath.
“So-called?” She flung the words back at him. “Carrie Cassidy was a living, breathing, lovely young woman who died far too young. And she’s the mother of your child, so show some respect, for God’s sake.”
“All right, all right.” Once again, he rooted around his memory banks, many of those vaults pickled by substances he’d recently sworn off. “Where’d I meet her? When and how?”
“In Key West, about five years ago.”
Five years ago he’d been twenty-five, living off a generous trust fund, ridiculously wild, a bona fide jet-setter who went from party to party on any continent, with any socialite, without a moment’s concern about tomorrow. He did not, however, stick his dick anywhere without a condom. He might be reckless, but he wasn’t dumb, and he’d heard enough lectures from brothers and cousins.
So, had he been in Key West that year? That was possible, even probable. He went there on a regular basis. Had he had sex with a girl there? Likely enough. But hadn’t she said something about being with her for months?