Beau returned the smile. “I’m going to have a baby sister. I promise she won’t have to worry about a thing fromthe day she’s born into this world.” Hell, he was worth more than half a billion dollars. He would see the child had everything she ever wanted.
Missy’s lips trembled. She turned her head and started softly crying.
Josie scooted out of the booth. “I think she’s had enough for today. This is all very hard on her and I don’t want her getting overly tired.” She reached for her daughter’s hand. “Let’s go home, honey. You’ll feel better after a nap.”
Missy grasped her mother’s hand and awkwardly managed to climb out of the booth. Missy lived with Josie, who had taken over the apartment upstairs as well as the café when Evelyn had moved into a retirement home.
Beau got up, too. Taking the girl’s slender hands, he leaned over and brushed a kiss on her cheek.
“You both have my number. If you need anything, call me. Okay?”
Missy swallowed. “Okay.”
“Thank you, Beau,” Josie said. “I should have called you sooner. I should have known you’d help us.”
“Like I said, you don’t have to worry. I’ll have my assistant send you a check right away. You’ll have money to take care of expenses and buy the things you need. After that, I’ll have a draft sent to Missy every month.”
Josie’s eyes teared up. “I didn’t know how I was going to manage the bills all by myself. Thank you again, Beau. So much.”
He just nodded. “Keep me up-to-date on her condition.”
“I will,” Josie said.
Beau watched the women head for the door, the bell ringing as Josie shoved it open and they walked out of the café to the outside staircase.
Leaving money on the table for his coffee, he followedthe women out the door, his temper slowly climbing toward the point it had been when he’d first received the call.
His father should be the one handling Missy’s pregnancy. He’d had months to step up and do the right thing. Beau didn’t trust that he ever would.
As he crossed the sidewalk and opened the door of his dark blue Ferrari, his temper cranked up another notch. By the time the car was roaring along the road on the way to his father’s house, his fury was simmering toward the boiling point.
Unconsciously his foot pressed harder on the gas, urging the car down the two-lane road at well over eighty miles an hour. With too many speeding tickets in Howler County already, he forced himself to slow down.
Making the turn into Country Club Estates, he turned again two streets later and slid to a stop in front of the house, sending a shower of dust and leaves into the air. The white, two-story home he’d been raised in oozed Southern charm, the row of columns out front mimicking an old-style plantation.
Climbing out of the Ferrari, one of his favorite cars, he pounded up the front steps and crossed the porch. The housekeeper had always had Mondays and Tuesdays off, so he used his key to let himself into the high-ceilinged entry.
On this chilly, end-of-January day, the ceiling fans, usually rotating throughout the five-thousand-square-foot residence, hadn’t been turned on, leaving the interior quiet except for the ticking of the ornate grandfather clock in the living room.
“Dad! It’s Beau! Where are you?” When he didn’t get an answer, he strode down the hall to the study, turned the knob without bothering to knock, and walked into the elegant wood-paneled interior.
“Well, look who’s here.” Recently retired state senatorStewart Beaumont Reese, dressed in his usual dark suit, white shirt, and tie, didn’t get up from behind his big rosewood desk. “You should have phoned. I might not have been home.”
Beau’s pulse was beating too fast. He worked to keep the anger out of his voice. “I was already in town on business—yourbusiness, as it turns out.”
The two of them looked amazingly alike, with the same blue eyes and black hair, the senator’s now silvered at the temples. Both of them were tall and broad-shouldered, Stewart only an inch shorter than Beau’s six-foot-three-inch frame.
They looked alike, but they had nothing else in common—and they had never been close. Far from it. Their relationship had been hostile from the day Beau was old enough to talk back to his dad.
Stewart rose from behind his desk. “You were in town onmybusiness? Since when have you had anything to do withmybusiness?”
Beau took a steadying breath and forced his back teeth to unclench. “Since you knocked up a nineteen-year-old girl. Jesus, Dad. It’s not like you don’t have women falling all over you. You had to pick a kid?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Beau’s temper, already nearing the edge, erupted. “Goddamn it!” Walking up to the desk, he leaned over the top and got right in his father’s face. “You’ve got a baby on the way! I’ve got the DNA test in my pocket to prove it! How could you ignore something like that!”
“What’s going on here?”
