“She’smydaughter.” Jasper’s words were hard and angry.
“And yet, somehow, I’m her dad.”
“No.”
No?
Just…no?
Noah tamped down all his arguments. He wasn’t going to fight his brother, the only family he had left. He had Charlotte now, and he’d need to be content with that.
The answer should have brought a level of peace, but all he felt was hollow.
“I’m going to come home.” The hardness in Jasper’s voice had shifted. Now he sounded almost desperate. “I am, I swear. I want to be there for her. I just have to take care of?—”
“What? What could possibly be more important?—?”
“I can’t talk about it, but as soon as I finish?—”
“Then something else will come up, and something else. She’s four years old, Jaz, and you haven’t spent more than, what? A week with her? I’m raising her. Iloveher.”
“I’m doing my best.”
Fury had his body trembling, his hands gripping the wheel so tightly they hurt. He eased up on the gas when he realized he was going twenty over the speed limit. The last thing he needed was to wreck on these winding roads.
He didn’t know what to say. There were no words to explain to his useless brother everything he was missing, everything he was messing up.
He was almost to the dance studio. And he was done with this conversation.
“You know what, Jaz? Your best sucks.” He pressed the button to end the call and pulled into the parking lot.
The dance studio was located in a converted Victorian home with a wraparound porch painted ballet-slipper pink. The lot was filled with minivans and SUVs—mom vehicles that made his black BMW stand out like a tuxedo at a barbecue.
His heart was still thumping after the confrontation. Confrontations, plural. One with his wastrel brother, and before that, with his…
Stalker.
It was the only word that made sense.
He parked and sat, watching parents and children emerge from cars with dance bags slung over shoulders and water bottles in hand. Through the large front windows, he could see small figures in leotards and tutus moving around inside.
His frustration eased slightly. Charlotte was in there, face bright with the joy that still surprised him every time he witnessed it. When she’d first come to live with him, her smiles had been rare, tentative things. He’d started coaxing her, proving she could trust him, and she’d become comfortable with him.
Certainly not her father, who’d done nothing for her but dump her with Noah.
Lord, help me forgive him. Help him figure it out. Charlotte needs a real father, and soon.
Because if it wasn’t going to be Noah, then her heart was going to break all over again when Jasper took her away.
She’d flourished in the last few months. Her new nanny deserved some of the credit for her transformation.
Delaney.
Even thinking her name sent an unwelcome jolt of attraction through his system. And then dark fear.
Lena had seen them together. They hadn’t done anything untoward, but the woman wasn’t exactly sane. She wouldn’t tell people about Noah and the nanny, would she?
One more supposed scandal and the Tidewater board would fully shift to their new option. He’d been stupid to join Delaney—Miss Wright!—outside. Stupid to let even a hint of anything pass between them where someone might have seen.
