“You’re a father? Oh my . . . Are you in a relationship already?” She attempted to stand, but he reached for her arm and pulled her, kicking and fighting, back against him.
“No, I’m not. And trust me, while I’m not proud of this story, I’ve done nothing wrong here except have sex with the wrong woman nine months ago. So please, stop struggling and listen.”
Pixie stopped. “I’m listening.”
Dred hated the look of hurt etched across her features. In the space of an hour, he’d sent her soaring and crashing. He was an asshole. “My mom had some issues. My childhood sucked beyond belief because of it. So I’ve never wanted kids because of the way I was raised, and because the lifestyle I lead can be very unpredictable.”
Pixie paled at his comments. Shit. He wasn’t sure what had caused it. Did his story appall her? Did she want kids of her own? Fuck. Why hadn’t that occurred to him?
“Anyway, I’ve always taken precautions, and . . . I . . . erm, well I always used my own. But I got caught out by the oldest trick in the fucking book. And now I have a kid.” He sat up in the bed, kicking himself for bringing his dirty fucked-up mess to Pixie’s bedroom. Her perfect white sheets suddenly seemed too clean for his skin.
“Shit, Pixie,” he said softly, his throat raw. “She’s not just a kid. She’s the tiniest, cutest little thing called Petal.”
“And the mother?” Pixie sat up and joined him.
“A bitch who tricked me. I found out the baby was mine the day you flew home. That was the phone call.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s the irony of it, Pix. I don’t know. But I have lawyers working on it. And social workers, because Amanda didn’t stop using while she was pregnant. Petal was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.” He shook his head and dropped it to his knees. “My daughter was born addicted to drugs.” His voice broke on the words.
“Oh. God,” Pixie gasped. “I’m so sorry, Dred.” She moved to her knees, and put her arms around his shoulders, the move comforting.
“This isn’t how I saw our relationship starting, Pix,” he whispered. “It isn’t even how I saw today going when I got on that plane this morning. But I don’t want those kinds of secrets between us. Do you?”
Chapter Eleven
The clock next to the bed flipped from 3:59 to 4:00 a.m. Pixie watched it change as she had every minute for the last hour.
The alarm was set for five, Dred’s private jet was taking him back to Toronto at six thirty, but sleep was elusive.
Her back was pressed tight to Dred’s chest, his arms wrapped around her waist. Thoughts shot around her head faster than the rhythm to one of Dred’s songs. He had a child. He didn’t want secrets. He hated Amanda for taking drugs while pregnant. Why she hadn’t come clean and confessed to him then and there she wasn’t sure, but she suspected it might be something to do with the look of absolute disgust when he’d talked about his mother, and the mother of his child. If the idea of taking drugs was so abhorrent to him, she could only imagine what would happen when she told him some of the sordid things she’d been expected to observe or take part in.
Yet in the same breath, the idea of him leaving and going back to Toronto ripped her in two. She wished he lived closer, perhaps did something a little more normal than being an international rock god. But then he wouldn’t be Dred.
She slipped out of bed and went into her sewing room, the one she hadn’t asked for but Lia had provided anyway. It was a bone of contention between them. Her backpack sat on the desk. She opened it and withdrew the envelope containing the five hundred dollars had Arnie asked for.
Was she really going to give him some of her hard-earned cash? And what would happen when she ran out? Because he’d keep coming back. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable while she clutched at straws for other solutions. What would happen if she told him it was all she had, but that he was welcome to it if he walked away permanently?
It was na?ve. Her head was swimming with possible options, but they all ended with him telling the police she killed Brewster.
She slipped the envelope back into the bag.
“What’s got you up so early?” Dred’s naked frame filled the doorway.
“You know I have a roommate, right?” she whispered.
Dred looked down, as did she, at his very erect penis. Dred shrugged and Pixie felt her cheeks warm. He walked toward her and wrapped his arms around her. “I want to lose myself deep in that perfect * of yours,” he grumbled, pulling her to him. “Come back to bed and play with me before I have to get on that godforsaken plane.”
“You mean that godforsaken private jet, which you will be on all alone, travelling in the height of luxury, that cost you a small fortune?”
Dred buried himself against her neck. “Yeah. That one,” he mumbled.
Pixie allowed herself to be lured back to bed.