I nodded.
Eilidh pulled my head to her chest. “I understand,” she whispered tearfully. “It’s okay, Fyfe. It’s okay. She’s yours. No one can take her from you. She belongs to you. Always.”
Twenty-One
EILIDH
More than once, I’d heard Fyfe say he’d never have kids, and even as I watched him cuddle and play with Harley—calling her that adorable nickname “Scooter”—I believed him. He wasn’t interested in being responsible for someone else or committing to a woman or child.
Yet, I’d understood with complete clarity why when, for the first time, I’d witnessed Fyfe cry, all because he was relieved Millie was his biological daughter.
He had no real family.
But now Millie was his.
No one could take that from him.
It was in his control to be a good father to her.
I knew he would be. I knew by the way Fyfe had taken to looking after his adorable baby daughter without complaint from the moment he’d found her on his doorstep. He didn’t complain about the lack of sleep or how his formerly pristine home was now a mess of baby things. Not once did he mention how his future had flipped on its head.
Fyfe’s true nature had won out with Millie. Deep down, Fyfe was what I always knew he could be: a nurturer, a protector. Hewas just terrified to be that man because the one person who was supposed to love him the most had abandoned him.
However, the way he was with Millie …
Despite our less than pleasant history, I was proud of Fyfe Moray.
“I think you’re a moron,” my brother had told me bluntly when I called to let him know Fyfe had received the DNA results. When Lewis asked me if Fyfe would hire a nanny now, I’d informed him I was going to continue watching Millie until Fyfe figured out permanent childcare. Calling me a moron was Lewis’s response.
“Excuse me?” I’d huffed.
“Look, I love you and I think it’s amazing you want to help Fyfe adjust to his new reality as a father, but this is masochistic, Eilidh. Why would you continue to put yourself in his orbit after he rejected you?”
“I’m over it,” I’d replied. “I’m dating Cameron.”
Lewis sighed. Heavily. “You don’t get over the person you love that quickly.”
“I’m not you.”
“Fine. Then I guess you never really loved Fyfe if it’s that easy.”
I’d sputtered in outrage.
“Either or, Eils. You’re a grown-up. I can’t protect you from everything. But please, be smart and don’t let yourself get hurt any more than you already have been.”
I promised him I wouldn’t, but the conversation with Lewis kept coming back to me throughout the next few days. Fyfe had just taken on an important client, he was adamant about finding whoever planted the cameras in my apartment, and he was exhausting all resources to locate Millie’s mother so he could come to a legal custody arrangement. I knew he was afraid Pamela would return and try to take his daughter from him.
The thought of Fyfe sharing a child with another woman was still disconcerting, but it wasn’t my business anymore.
“You seem preoccupied.” Cameron leaned across the table to touch my hand.
I blinked rapidly, guilt flushing through me. Thank goodness I wasn’t a blusher. “Oh, sorry. Um, it’s just been … crazy lately.”
I was totally zoned out of our date.
Cameron had invited me to his place for dinner. It was our sixth date, and I knew it was time to progress from making out to sex. I wanted to. I was attracted to Cameron. It certainly wasn’t fair to him that he worked busy hours at the doctors’ surgery but had made time to cook a delicious meal (coq au vin—the name certainly suggested he expected sex) and here I was, thinking about anything but the handsome man before me.
Shit.
