“Of course he can,” she argued, temper spiking, desperation growing. “Pets are allowed in my building. We’ll get a little dog as soon as he’s old enough. A poodle, maybe.”
He barked out a sharp laugh. “A poodle? What the hell kind of dog is that for a growing boy?”
“What do you want him to have, a pit bull?”
“The herd dogs. They’re well-trained—he’ll love’em. We’ve got a new litter due in a few weeks, too. He’ll have a puppy to grow up with and he’ll love that, too.”
He probably would, but that wasn’t the point either, Maggie thought, surrendering to the fires inside her, letting her temper boil until she wouldn’t have been surprised to feel steam coming out of her own ears.
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“Damn straight it is. If Jonas is my son, I won’t be separated from him.”
“You never even wanted children, remember?” She was shouting now and didn’t give a damn who heard her. The rain hammered the windows, the wind rattled the glass and Maggie felt as if she were in the center of the storm. This was a fight she was determined to win. She wouldn’t give ground.
“Of course I did!” Justice’s shout was even louder than hers. “I lied to you because I thought I couldn’t have kids.”
Dumbfounded, Maggie just stared at him for a second or two. A heartbeat passed, then another, as her brain clicked through information and presented her with a really infuriating picture. Eventually that temper kicked back in and all hell was cut loose.
“You lied to me?” she demanded. “Deliberately let me believe you just didn’t want kids when you knew you couldn’t have them at all? Why would you do that?”
She rushed him and pushed at his chest with both hands, so furious she could hardly breathe, let alone shout, yet somehow she managed. “You let me walk away from you rather than tell me the truth? What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t want you to know,” he said, capturing both of her wrists and holding them tightly. His gaze pierced into hers, and Maggie saw shame and anger and regret all tangled up together in his eyes. “I didn’t want anyone to know. You think I wanted to tell you I was less than a man?”
Maggie just blinked at him. She couldn’t believe this. Couldn’t get her mind around it at all. “Are you a Neanderthal? Being able to father a child is not a measure of your manhood, you big dolt!”
“To me it is.”
She saw the truth of that statement on his face, and it didn’t calm her down any. Yanking her hands free of his grip, she wheeled around and started pacing the circumference of the room in fast, furious steps.
“All this time, we’ve been apart because you thought you were sterile?” She sent him a quick look and saw her words hit home.
His mouth tightened, his jaw clenched and every muscle in his body looked to be rigid, unforgiving. He didn’t accept weakness, and of course that’s how he would have seen himself. She knew that about him if nothing else. So, yes, she could understand that he would have thought it better to get a divorce than to confess to his wife that he was less than he thought he should be.
That’s what she got for marrying a man whose pride was his major motivator. How typical of Justice. Then she stopped dead, studied her husband and hit him with what she’d just realized.
“It’s your damn pride, isn’t it?” she murmured, never taking her eyes off him. “That’s what’s at the bottom of all this. Why you didn’t fight for me. Why you let me go. For the sake of your damn pride.”
“Nothing wrong with pride, Maggie,” he told her in a voice that just barely carried over the sound of the storm raging outside.
“Unless you hold that pride more precious than anything else. Because that’s what you did, Justice. Rather than admit to me you couldn’t have children, you let our marriage end.” The slap of that truth hurt her deeply. He’d chosen his own image of himself over their marriage. Over their love. “That was easier for you than losing your pride.”
“You’re the one who walked.”
“So you keep reminding me,” she said, moving back toward him now with slow, sure steps. “But you could have kept me, Justice. You could have stopped me with two words. Please stay. That’s all you had to say and you know it. Hell, you admitted to me just the other day that you would have liked to say it. But you couldn’t do it.”
She shook her head as she stared up into dark blue eyes that suddenly looked as cold and deep as a storm-tossed ocean. “I loved you enough that I would have stayed with you if I thought you wanted me to. Instead you pulled away and closed yourself off and I had nothing. No children. No husband. So why the hell would I stay?”
He flinched and looked uncomfortable, but that was fleeting. In a heartbeat, he was back to being his stone-faced, in-control self.
“This is useless, Maggie.” He pushed one hand through his hair, cast a quick look at the window and the storm beyond, then shifted his gaze back to her. “What’s past is past. We can’t change it. But know this. If Jonas is my son, I’m not going to give him up. If that boy is a King, he’s going to be raised by Kings.”
He left her then, walking quietly away without a backward glance, and when he was gone, Maggie felt cold right down to the bone. That icy pit in the bottom of her stomach was still there and now tangled with knots of nerves.
Everything Justice had just said had also been motivated by his pride, his pride in his child, and while she might ordinarily cheer for that, right now all it meant to her was that Justice would be a fierce opponent.
As that thought flew through her mind, Maggie realized that with his money and his family’s power behind him, he might very well roll right over her and win custody if it ever went to court. Then what would she do?
She couldn’t lose her son.
Everything in her went cold and still. Fear rocketed through her system, successfully dousing the fires of her temper.
This was so much more dangerous than she’d ever thought.
“I’ll run away. I swear I will,” Maggie said into the phone a half hour later. “I’ll take Jonas and disappear.”
“Calm down, sweetie,” Matrice urged her. “Now just tell me what happened without the hysterics, okay?”
Sitting on her bed, watching her son stare out the window at the play of the storm outside, Maggie went over her whole fight with Justice. She told her elder sister everything, sparing neither of them, and by the time she was finished talking, she had to admit she felt better already, just for the spewing factor.