I’m shell shocked. I don’t think I can breathe.
“I hate kids.”
I don’t mean to say it out loud and Juliet goes a little white.
“Why am I doing this?”
“Gran bullied you into Christmas decorations,” she says softly. “Let me go talk to her. I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.” She’s about to go get Gran and I stop her.
“No. I can do this. We’re going to have one and I have to get used to being around them. I remember the look in one little boy’s eyes when he asked me for a teddy bear. That was all he wanted. He had a house and they weren’t on the list of families that needed alternative housing. All he wanted was a stuffed bear. I bought one for him at the drug store on the way home from dropping you and Gran off yesterday. I gave it to him before the church service when the other kids got their gifts.”
“I wondered where the bear came from.” She gives me a sweet smile.
“The look on that little boy’s face when he got his bear … I wondered, would our child ever look at me like that?”
“I’m sure he will,” she says with encouragement.
I rake a hand through my hair, laugh without humor.
Juliet’s hand flutters against her stomach instinctively, and I feel something crack inside me. I want to be enough for them but every instinct screams I’ll ruin them.
So I tell her. “I don’t know if I can be a father. I don’t know if I deserve to be.”
Her eyes soften, but her gaze is steady. “Then don’t be. Not until you’re ready. This baby will have me and Gran, no matter what.”
I know her response is meant to be reassuring, but it guts me. I want to say I’ll try. I want to promise her the world. For the first time in my life, I want more than money, more than power. I want her and our family, God help me, I’m terrified.
I drop my gaze to her belly and place my hand on it. Juliet’s hand, small and warm, slides over mine. I glance up, and she’s watching me with those eyes that undo me every damn time. No judgment. No disgust. Just compassion. The very thing I’ve spent a lifetime refusing.
“You’re not a bad man, Marcel,” she whispers. “You’re just scared and that’s okay to admit. I’m scared too.”
I huff a bitter laugh. “Scared men make terrible fathers.”
Her fingers squeeze mine. “Scared men make honest ones.”
It’s such a simple thing, but it lands like a hammer. No contracts, no threats, no demands, just her quiet certainty. She believes in me. Me, the man who runs people’s emotions over. I want to tell her she’s wrong and warn her to get away from me. I should advise her not to stake her future on the enemy. But instead, I cover her hand with my other one, caging it between mine like I’m afraid she’ll slip away.
“You make it sound so easy,” I murmur.
“It won’t be easy,” she admits, tilting her head. “But it’ll be worth it.”
And in that moment I feel something loosen in my chest. She’s still here, she hasn’t asked for a dime of my money, so it’s not because I’m a billionaire. She’s not conniving and trying to find ways to trap me—she says she wants a year before we decide to marry.I lean forward and kiss her lips then whisper the only thing I can manage without falling apart completely.
“Don’t give up on me.”
This brings tears to her eyes and she takes my face into her palms and her smile brightens the room.
“I won’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Juliet
The mansion looks like a gingerbread house exploded inside. Scarlett and Beckett’s four little ones, plus Griffin and Selena’s son, have turned the great room into their personal workshop. Glitter, construction paper, ribbons, pipe cleaners, half-eaten sugar cookies—everything is everywhere. I don’t think Marcel’s silk rugs will ever recover as there is no way all the glitter will come out. He just laughs, with a Scotch in hand, as Beckett teases him about having “A headstart on the future, especially if you have a girl.”
I sit cross-legged on the floor with the kids, carefully tying yarn loops through hand-cut snowflakes and paper angels. The kids chatter nonstop, their little voices rising like music, sticky fingers smudging frosting on my sweater as they lean in to show me their masterpieces.
Scarlett and Selena join me, both laughing as they sneak bites of the cookie-decorating supplies. “Quality control,” Selena says with a wink.
