She snorts. “Still the same. Sparkling?”
I force myself to keep my temper. “I have regular.” I get a glass from the cupboard.
She sighs as if it aggrieves her but nods. I pour her a glass of water from the bottle in the fridge and pass it to her.
She fluffs her hair. “Don’t look at me like that.” She gives a brittle laugh.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some kind of monster.”
I try to stuff down my anger, but I can’t help retorting, “Claire, you dropped a bombshell on me that I was a dad after lying about who Belle’s father was for years, then you left her here with no prior notice, when she barely knew me. And now you’ve dragged us both back to LA the week of Christmas to meet with lawyers and forced us to cancel all our plans. You can try to jerk me around all you want. I can handle it. But Belle is just a little girl. I won’t see her get hurt.”
“So who is Poppy?”
I don’t answer.
“All Belle could talk about is Poppy this, Poppy that.”
“She was the…” I start to say “the nanny,” but I trail off because that doesn’t sound right. She was so much more. “She was a friend.”
“Don’t play dumb with me. She was Belle’s nanny. I read the tabloid. She’s the one you’re screwing.”
“If you know who she is, why ask?” I run a hand through my hair. “Leave Poppy out of it.”
“I would,” Claire says. “But Belle can’t seem to,” she snaps. Then she sighs. “Listen. I’m never going to be the mother of the year. I wasn’t cut out to be a mom, and Belle was a mistake.”
“She wasn’t a damn mistake.”
“An accident, then. Whatever you want to call it. Everything was fine. We’d broken up. We were never compatible.”
“You mean I wasn’t flashy enough for you, even if you liked that I was a celebrity.”
She shrugs. “You and I both know we had nothing in common. I was already dating Howard by the time I found out about Belle. She could have been his. It wasn’t until she was older and started to look like a mini-you that I realized the truth.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is that I didn’t purposely mislead you, even if I had my suspicions. I eventually came and told you about Belle.”
“You took your time with that. And only after Howard divorced you and demanded a DNA test. You left Belle here with no warning for either of us and no notice about when you would come back.”
“Yeah, well, I thought you two could get to know each other. No time like the present. Charles travels a lot for business. He wants a woman who can go with him. Our au pair quit. It seemed like the perfect solution.”
“So why are you here then?”
“Because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants and you had to mess with the nannies. I didn’t think you were the type, Ronan, but youarea man. If the tabloids hadn’t dragged Belle and me into it, everything would have been fine. Charles is old money, the kind that considers that sort of celebrity culture a little tasteless. He told me I needed to deal with this situation.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to work this out without our vulture lawyers getting everything. It’s the least you can do after causing this scandal. If you’re generous enough, in return, you can have primary custody of Belle. She seems happy with you, and believe it or not, I do want what’s best for her. We can work out the visitation rights. Summers, holidays.”
“You would give me Belle?” I ask, not daring to believe it.
“I had a long talk with her today, and it’s no secret she’d prefer to live with you over going to a boarding school, which was always my plan for her. You may think I’m heartless, but I went off to boarding school at her age. However, if she’d rather live with you, that works for me as well. It saves me money and makes things simpler since Charles has no interest in raising someone else’s child.”
“And what do you want?” I know this won’t be free.
“I want three things. First, I want money of my own. I learned the hard way after Howard that a woman needs her own money and can’t rely on a man. I also want flexible visiting rights. And I want to control the PR narrative—I won’t be painted as the bad mom who gave up her child. You’ll be the asshole who practically stole my kid away with your movie-star money and power. And no more scandals, nanny or otherwise. I don’t want Charles to have any reason to regret being with me. Do you want your daughter?”
