“Isabella.” He bit out the words. “She isn’t mine.”
“That’s impossible.” But even as she said the words, dread began to build in her stomach.
She looked up at him, but his expression—which was normally so cold—was thunderous.
“I don’t understand.”
He held up a sheaf of papers. “These are the test results from Isabella’s paternity test. I’m not her father.”
“But…I was so certain. I was so sure.”
Her protests did little to soften his expression. He reached down, snatched up her shirt from the floor and tossed it on the bed. “Get dressed and get out of my bed.”
Before she could respond, he stormed out, slamming the door to his bedroom. For a long minute, she just sat there in bed, staring at the yellow cotton T-shirt crumpled on the bed, her mind reeling and her stomach roiling.
How in the world had she made such a mess of things?
And could Dex really be right?
There was only one way to find out. She tugged the shirt over her head and stumbled from the bed. She found her jeans in a ball on the floor, but had to dig under the covers for her panties.
Her cheeks flushed as she pulled them on, unable to block the memories of the night before. The things she done with him…the things he’d made her feel…
And she had never even gotten to tell him the truth. Last night, in the heat of passion, she was sure she’d have plenty of time to explain first thing in the morning. Telling him the truth wouldn’t have made her lies any easier to bear, but surely it would have made this situation a little better.
Before facing Dex, she snuck into the adjoining bathroom and splashed water on her face. She stared for a moment at her reflection. Her skin was pale and splotchy from shock. Her eyes red from lack of sleep. The short chunky haircut stood out in rumpled spikes.
Anxiety sat heavily upon her shoulders. Her emotions felt like they’d been cut out of her heart and trampled by a herd of elephants.
Turning her back on her reflection, she left the sanctuary of Dex’s bedroom to face him. She found him in the living room of the guesthouse, with his forearm pressed against the window frame, staring out into the yard.
“Let me explain,” she began.
But the look he shot her when he turned around sucked the words from her mouth. Oh, God. How could she explain this? Where could she begin?
“You don’t need to explain. It’s pretty obvious what happened.”
“It is?”
“Obviously you had no idea who the father was. You just thought you could get the most money out of me.”
“No. God, no. It was nothing like that. I thought she was yours. I swear I did. I didn’t think she could be anyone else’s.”
“That’s not precisely true is it?” He strode toward her, and without thinking she backed away from the threat. “‘What if she’s not yours?’ Those were your exact words when you were trying to get me to give her back to you.”
“I may have said that, but I didn’t really believe it. I believed she was yours. I was just grasping at straws because I was desperate to get Isabella back. Even when I said it, I believed she was yours.”
“But you knew it was a possibility that she wasn’t.”
“I—” She felt like she was drowning, struggling to resurface, to get on top of the conversation. But nothing she said would bring her head above water long enough for her to catch her breath. “I suppose I always knew it was a possibility that she wasn’t yours. That there could have been someone else.”
“Could have been?”
And then her mind, which had been desperately flailing about for something to latch on to, found the life preserver she’d been searching her. “But you said yourself she had to be yours. You said she had your father’s eyes.”
He let out a bitter, angry chuckle. “She does have my father’s eyes. That’s because Isabella is my brother’s daughter.”
Sixteen
“W hat?” Her question came out as a high-pitched squeak. “Your brother’s? Are you serious?”
Dex’s mouth was compressed into a thin, humorless line.Well, apparently this wasn’t his idea of a bad joke.
“Your brother? Your brother, Derek?”
In response, he merely handed her the papers he’d been holding.
It took her a long moment to read and make sense of what she was looking at. A detailed and rather extensive test to determine Isabella’s paternity with two possible candidates, Dex and Derek. The letter briefly explained that because the two possible fathers were brothers, Isabella shared genetic markers with both of them. However, the test was conclusive. Derek was her father.
No, the joke was on her. And if anyone was laughing it was Jewel.
Jewel who, apparently, had slept with both Dex and Derek the month Isabella was conceived. It wasn’t hard to piece together what happened. Jewel had had a crush on Derek. Despite Raina’s insistence that he would never sleep with an employee, he obviously had slept with Jewel. When she’d been fired shortly thereafter, Jewel must have slept with Dex as revenge. Her way of proving to herself that Derek meant nothing to her. A few weeks later she’d found herself pregnant with no way of knowing which brother was the father.
Lucy’s knees wobbled and gave out, forcing her to sink to the edge of the sofa as the enormity of the situation washed over her.
“I knew she’d slept with you.” She was surprised to find herself speaking aloud. But what the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I swear I had no idea she’d slept with anyone else. Let alone your brother.”
For an instant, Dex’s icy anger flickered with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
She sucked in a deep breath, pressed her hands to her knees and stood. That was the traditional way to face a firing squad, wasn’t it?
“I know you’re mad.” He opened his mouth as if to cut her off, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Maybe even furious. But just let me explain.”
“I think you’d better.”
“I never slept with Derek.”
He pointed to the sheaf of papers. “This rather expensive, scientific test says you did.”
“I didn’t sleep with him. I’m not Isabella’s mother. I’m her aunt.” A frown creased his forehead. Again, she held up her hands, though whether she did it to stave off his questions or as a sign of surrender, she wasn’t sure. “My sister, Jewel, is her mother.”
He gave a bark of bitter laughter. “I never slept with your sister.”
She sighed, running her hand down her face. “She’s my twin sister.”
“Your twin?”
“Yes. My twin. The night you met my sister, Jewel, fifteen months ago, I was there at the bar. I knew she picked you up. I knew you slept with her. When she turned up pregnant a few months later, I just assumed you were the father.”
“And decided to come looking for me?”
“No! It wasn’t like that. You have to understand about Jewel. She means well, but she’s flighty. Impatient. Impractical. But when she was pregnant with Isabella, she was different. For the first time in her life, she took something seriously. When she said she wanted to raise Isabella, that she was going to turn her life around, I believed her. Obviously, I encouraged her to contact you, to let you know you were going to be a father.”
“Of course you did.”
She ignored his comment and his sarcasm. It wasn’t as if she’d done much to earn his trust. “But she refused. I can now see why. She said she wanted to do this on her own. And the first couple of months of Isabella’s life, she did. But lately, she’s been increasingly erratic. She and Isabella have lived with me since before Isabella was born. I love Isabella like she’s my own daughter.”
“Obviously.”
“I’d even contacted a lawyer to get full custody of Isabella. And then one morning, I woke up and found them both gone.”
“Two weeks ago.”
She nodded. “I’m sure you can imagine how I felt. I wanted to believe she’d just gone out for the day, but the more I looked around the condo, the more worried I became. I couldn’t tell if she’d taken any of her own clothes, but her makeup was gone. All her toiletries. When I realized Jewel had left Isabella at this house, I just assumed it was because you were the father.”
She paused, sat down on the sofa again and rested her head in her hands. How could she explain? How could she possibly make him understand what her thought process had been like in those few panicky hours when she hadn’t known whether or not Isabella was okay?
“You have to understand.” She looked up at Dex, her expression pleading. “My first concern was for Isabella. I wanted to get her back. And I knew I could pass for Jewel if I changed my hair.” She searched his face for any sign of softening. She saw none, so she stumbled ahead in her explanation. “I knew if I could just convince you that I was Jewel, that I was the woman you’d slept with, you’d believe I was Isabella’s mother and you’d let me take her.”
“And it never occurred to you that I might want to keep her? That I might care that I had a daughter?”
“I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know anything other than what I’d read in the papers. That you were the playboy rebel. Irresponsible.”
His expression tightened, undoubtedly annoyed at the snap judgment she’d made about him.
She forced herself to her feet. If she was going to have to defend her decision, she was going to do it face-to-face. “I had no reason to assume you’d be a better parent than Jewel had. I knew her. She’s my sister and I love her. But she abandoned Isabella. For all I knew, you wouldn’t do better.”
“Surely even I could do better than leaving a baby on the doorstep of a stranger.”
His tone, heavy with sarcasm, only proved her arguments weren’t swaying him. “Look.” Her tone was sharp with anxiety and frustration. He wouldn’t give her an inch. “You know how much I love Isabella. You know I’d do anything to protect her.”