“He’s an idiot,” Simon muttered, then added, “and so was I. I didn’t want to tell you any of this, but you had the right to know.”
“Oh,” she said sadly, “now I had the right to know.”
He gritted his teeth and still managed to say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“No,” she agreed, “probably not. It was just a byproduct of you going after what you wanted. In a way, I’m not surprised. I knew when I first met you that you were like him. Like my father. Both of you only know about business and using people.”
He took a step toward her, but stopped when she moved back, instinctively. How could he argue with that simple truth? Maybe, he told himself, he was even worse than her father. He had actually seen Tula for who she really was and had lied to her, used her, anyway.
Simon thought back to his meeting with Jacob Hawthorne. He had seen firsthand just what kind of man the old pirate was. And unless he made some changes in his own life, Simon knew he would end up just as cold and ruthless and empty as Jacob was.
Choosing his words carefully, he said, “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I’m not the man I was when you first came here. More, I don’t want to be that man.”
“Simon,” she said softly, shaking her head.
“Let me finish.” He took a breath, and said, “There are a lot of things I should say to you, but maybe I don’t have the right anymore. So instead, I think the only way to prove to you that I’m not who you think I am, is to let you go.”
“What?”
“Hell,” he laughed shortly, shoving one hand through his hair with enough strength to yank it all out. “It’s the only decent thing to do.” He looked into her eyes. “We both know I’m ready to take care of Nathan. I’ll hire the best nanny in the country to help me out. And you can go home. Get away from here. From me. It’s the right thing to do.”
Tula felt the world tip out from under her feet. She swayed under the blow of the unexpected slap. Bad enough to hear that the man she loved had only been pretending to care so that he could use her against the father that didn’t give a damn about her anyway. Bad enough to know that her hopes and dreams had just been shattered at her feet.
Now, she was being sent away. From the baby. From Simon.
For her own good.
Pain was a living, breathing entity, and it roared from inside her as it settled in, making a permanent home in the black emptiness where her heart used to be. Hurt, humiliated and just plain tired of being used by the very people in her life she should have been able to count on, Tula sighed.
“Don’t you see, Simon?” she whispered sadly. “Even in this, you’re still acting like my father.”
“No,” he argued, but she cut him off because she just didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say.
“Letting me go isn’t about me. It’s about you. About how you feel about what you did. About assuaging some sense of honor you believe you’ve lost.”
“Tula, that’s not—”
“What if I didn’t want to go?” she asked, watching him. “What then?”
Naturally, he didn’t have an answer for her. But then, it didn’t matter, because Tula wasn’t waiting for one. It was too late for them and she knew it. She had to go, whether leaving would rip her heart to pieces or not.
Softly, she said, “Nathan’s asleep upstairs. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll leave now, before he wakes up. I don’t think I can say goodbye to him.”
“Tula, damn it, at least let me—”
“You’ve done enough, Simon,” she told him, turning for the stairs. “Have your lawyer contact me. I’ll sign whatever papers are necessary to turn over custody of Nathan to you. And Simon,” she added, “promise me you’ll love him enough for both of us.”
Over the next few days, Simon and Nathan were miserable together.
Nothing was the same. Simon couldn’t work—he didn’t give a damn about mergers or acquisitions or the price of the company stock. He hated having Mick telling him I told you so every five minutes. The memory of Tula in his house was so strong that her absence made the whole place seem cavernous and as empty as a black hole.
He and his son were lost without the only woman either of them wanted.
Nathan cried continuously for the only mother he remembered. Simon comforted him, but it was a hollow effort since he knew exactly how the baby felt. And there was no comfort for either of them as long as Tula wasn’t there.
Simon hadn’t even hired a nanny. He didn’t want some other woman holding Nathan. He wanted Tula back home. With them. Where she belonged. Every day without her was emptier than the one before. His dreams were filled with images of her and his arms ached to hold her.
He had fallen in love with the one woman who probably couldn’t stand the sight of him. He had had a family, damn it, and he wanted it back. Yes, he had been a first-class idiot. A prize moron. But Tula had a heart big enough, he hoped, to forgive even him.
If she hadn’t promised to do this signing, Tula didn’t know if she would have had the nerve to return to the city. Used to be she avoided San Francisco because there were memories of her father here. Now it was so much more.
Nathan and Simon were only blocks from this bookstore. They were in that Victorian that she’d come to love and think of as her own. They were no doubt settling into life with a nanny and she wondered if either of them missed her as desperately as she missed them.
She sat cross-legged in the middle of the “reading rug” at the bookstore and looked at the shining, expectant faces surrounding her. Parents stood on the periphery, watching their children, enjoying their excitement. And Tula knew that she couldn’t simply walk away from Simon and Nathan.
Yes, Simon had hurt her. Desperately. But he had told her everything, hadn’t he? It couldn’t have been easy for him to admit to what he had done. It said something that he’d eventually been honest with her.
Through her pain, through her misery, one truth had rung clear over the last few days. Despite what had happened, she still loved Simon. And when the book signing was over, she was going to see him. She would just show up at the house and tell Simon Bradley that she loved him. Maybe he wouldn’t care. And maybe, if she took a chance, they could start fresh and rebuild their family.
With that thought in mind, she smiled at the kids and asked, “Are you ready to hear about the Lonely Bunny and how he found a friend?”