CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dylan had been counting the minutes until he could be with Grace again.
If Mason was still napping, he figured they’d barely get the front door closed before her clothes were off and he was inside of her. Later, after they’d spent the rest of the day playing with Mason and then put him to bed for the night, they’d move to a slow seduction. One in which pleasure would spiral out for hours and hours.
But the second Grace opened the door, despite how incredibly beautiful she looked in her dress, all those fantasies disappeared. She didn’t say anything, just stepped aside to let him in. When she closed and locked the door, her hands were shaking.
“What’s wrong? Is it Mason? Is he sick?”
“No. Mason’s fine.” She put her hand on Dylan’s arm before he could run into the bedroom to check for himself. “He’s perfect.”
Relief swamped him a beat before he realized that she wasn’t speaking to him as though they were lovers. Or even friends. Instead, that wall she’d had up during their first interview was back. And she’d taken her hand off his arm too fast when she should have been pulling him closer instead.
“Talk to me, Grace. I can see that you’re upset. What happened?”
Her face crumpled for a second before he watched her visibly work to pull herself together. “I was going through my calendar, looking at my deadlines, when I realized...” She looked up at him, the emotion in her eyes piercing straight through him. “I thought I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” The thought of Grace carrying his child rocked his world so much that it took him a few seconds to take it in. “We’re going to have a baby?” He hadn’t seen this happening, but he was happy. Couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
“No.”
He was halfway to pulling her into his arms. “Wait. I thought you said—”
“I took a test. Two, actually. They’re both negative. I’m never usually late, but maybe the stress of everything lately has made my system go off schedule.”
Dylan knew he needed to control his disappointment, but he’d never lied to Grace before and wouldn’t do it now. “Ever since I met you and Mason, I’ve wanted you in my life. I’ve thought about being his father a hundred times, but I never thought past that. Hadn’t thought about you and I making our own baby together. But when you said that you thought you were pregnant, when I thought that it meant you were...” He drew her against him the way he’d been about to just moments before. “It was the best news I’d ever heard.”
“How?” She looked utterly confused. “How could it be?”
“You make great kids, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“But we haven’t known each other that long. I mean, I know we’ve had fun—”
“Yes, we’ve had fun. And I hope we always will. But what we are, what we have, is so much deeper, so much bigger and stronger, than just having fun.”
She didn’t pull away, but she wasn’t putting her arms around him, either. “When I realized I was late, when I thought that I was pregnant again from out of the blue, I thought I had ruined everything. That you’d think this is what I do—I pretend to protest that I’m not easy, then go around sleeping with every successful guy I interview in order to reel them in.”
He took her face in his hands. “I would never think that. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other, how long we’ve been dating. I knew you were the one the second I saw you. Both of you. You’re it for me, Grace. And,” he added with a grin, “if you wanted to try to change the results on the pregnancy test for next time, I’m all for it.”
But instead of the answering smile he hoped for, she still looked as serious as he’d ever seen her. “What else is wrong? It’s not just thinking you were pregnant, is it?”
She took a deep breath, one that shook in her chest. “The party I went to last week for Mia at Tatiana’s set—some pictures leaked from it. I don’t know who could have taken them, maybe one of the wait staff? All I know is that there was one of me and Mason.”
“Your ex,” Dylan instantly guessed. He had to work to keep his hands from fisting at the thought of the bastard coming after her and the baby. But it didn’t work. Couldn’t work when the fear that something bad might happen to them was the worst feeling he’d ever known. “He saw the picture, didn’t he?”
“I was freaking out thinking I might be pregnant when I heard the doorbell ring and thought you were back early. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him standing there. Not just because he’d managed to track us down so easily, but because I couldn’t believe he had decided he wanted Mason after all.”
Fury continued to rise swift and hot within Dylan as he said, “He doesn’t deserve one damned minute with Mason.”
“That’s what I told him—that the second he told me to get rid of the baby, he ceased to be his father. Richard thought I was going to be afraid of him. He thought I’d just give in. He thought I was still the na?ve girl who had fallen for him without looking deeper than the fancy dates, the pretty words. But he was wrong.”
Looking at Grace, listening to her paint a picture of the showdown, Dylan could see exactly what her ex had faced: the fearless fire in her eyes, the determination to stand strong in every line of her face and body.
“He never knew you at all. Never knew one damned thing about you. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. And when it comes to your son, you’ll do anything to protect him. Only a massive idiot wouldn’t understand that—or someone who is too self-involved to pay attention to anyone else.”
“I still don’t know how I didn’t realize that about him, that all he cared about was himself. What he wanted. His own image. Taking whatever he wanted from whomever he wanted without ever giving anything back, while convincing himself that he was a great man because he gave away family money that he never had a hand in earning.”
Dylan was glad, frankly, to hear the anger in her voice after what she’d had to face today. Anger would help keep her strong for the time being. And it was a hell of a lot better than being afraid.
“He knew his parents had tried to pay me off, of course. Knew all about their untraceable checks, because mine wasn’t the first they’d had to hand out, as Rafe discovered when he investigated him. But Richard didn’t know everything, couldn’t have known I recorded my entire conversation with them.”
Despite everything, Dylan couldn’t hold back his smile at how clever she was. “You recorded them?”
“I was doing some transcription from an interview that day they came to see me. They didn’t see the recorder in my left hand. The former senator’s voice is extremely recognizable. So I knew that if I ever had to protect myself from them, the recording would do it.”
“I love you, Grace. So damned much, it blows my mind.” He kissed her then, partly because he could never resist her beautiful mouth and partly because he needed to reassure himself that no harm had come to her. “You scared the crap out of him, didn’t you?”
“I’m pretty sure I did. And I’m going to hire the best child custody attorney to make sure that they scare him, too. I’ve been saving up for this. I have a legal defense fund ready to go.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t head him off at the pass, Grace,” Dylan told her. “Lord, I wish I had. My brothers and I, we were going to meet tomorrow to figure out what to do to make sure something like this never happened. But we were too late, and you ended up having to face him alone.” And he’d spend the rest of his life making this up to her. “Rafe deals with broken families all the time, so he’ll know who the best custody lawyer is to make sure you and Mason never have any problems with the Bentleys, no matter what they might try to pull in the future. I’ll call him right now, have him shoot you to the top of his firm’s priority list.”
She had closed her eyes for a moment, and he could see how pale, how shaken she still was. He was rubbing his hands down her arms, when she opened her eyes and looked into his.
“Thank you, but this time I need to do it myself. All by myself.”
“You’re one of us now—”
“No, I’m not,” she said in a voice that was becoming more and more shaky by the word. “I can’t do this.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I thought I could, but I can’t.” The tears began to spill. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”