Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires, #2)(14)

He was still holding my chin up so he could see my eyes, and I hated it. I didn’t want to be vulnerable to this man, and I knew I couldn’t completely hide my fear of losing Maya.

I stared back at him, unwilling to give in, but I was definitely weakening.

If Aiden could really be the father Maya never had, if he could really love her, I didn’t want to take that away from her. But I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, either.

“That would be a start,” Aiden agreed grudgingly. “I’ll send a crew to help you move tomorrow morning. All you’ll really need is your personal stuff.”

“I can’t just move in one day,” I protested.

“There isn’t much I can’t make happen anymore, Skye. And I want to spend time with Maya. I think I’ve waited long enough.”

The rougher and rawer tone of his voice touched me like his anger hadn’t. There was a longing in his words that made my chest ache.

It was hard to reconcile the billionaire that Aiden was now with the struggling blue-collar man he’d been when he was younger.

Now he was an enigma I truly didn’t know.

But my body still reacted, just the same as it had all those years ago, to his close proximity to me.

I squirmed until I got my freedom, and put several feet of distance between us.

“Fine,” I told him breathlessly. “We’ll be here in the morning.”

“I say we tell Maya that there was a misunderstanding, and that I never knew she was my daughter. It’s pretty much the truth.”

I lifted a brow. “And you think that’s really going to fly? You don’t know your daughter yet. She’s going to ask questions. Plenty of them. She’s gifted with language—writing and reading. And she’s more mature than most kids.”

“Then we’ll answer them as honestly as possible. We’ll let her know that she’s important, and that you wanted her to be safe.”

I was relieved and slightly touched that he wasn’t going to try to blame me for what happened. At least not to my daughter’s face.

“She knows that I made some mistakes,” I explained. “I’ve always been as honest as I could with her. She was smart enough to know that being in the Marino family wasn’t normal.”

“Then let’s give her normal, Skye,” he rumbled.

God, I wanted that for my daughter so badly that the ache I’d been feeling turned into a physical pain in my stomach. My daughter had always been way too serious for her age. Even though I’d tried to give her all the love I had, she’d still been in a bad atmosphere for way too long. A place where nobody had even acknowledged her existence except me.

I nodded as I said, “We’ll be here in the morning.”

I didn’t want my daughter part time. I was going to have to give Aiden a chance to know her, but I wanted to be with her, too. So if that meant I had to move into Aiden’s home, I’d do it.

It wasn’t like I was going to miss our tiny apartment. It was always clean, but it was more than a little drab, no matter what I tried to do to make it brighter.

“I’ll pick you up around nine,” he insisted. “I’ll send a truck with a crew to get your stuff around eight thirty.”

“I wish I knew if we were doing the right thing,” I mused aloud before I could censor my words.

“She’ll be fine, Skye. I’ll make sure she’s always okay,” he affirmed.

I searched his eyes, and found a committed determination that actually helped me relax.

His comments made me feel safe.

For so long, I’d been the only one who had been there for Maya no matter what. There was some kind of relief in knowing I wasn’t all alone in those goals anymore.

“What are we going to tell your family?” I asked hesitantly.

“The truth,” he drawled. “I think they’ll all be ecstatic about having Maya in the family. It’s not like the Sinclairs are exactly hesitant to have more relatives.”

I shot him a small smile because I knew the Sinclair family had grown significantly over the last few years. It had exploded with growth once Aiden and his siblings had discovered that they had a slew of half-siblings and cousins on the East Coast.

I strode to the table and picked up my purse. “I need to go. Maya is with a sitter.”

He grabbed me by the upper arm to stop me. “You work a lot. You look exhausted, Skye. Is that really what you want? Is the Weston Café what you really want?”

I easily shrugged out of his hold on me. “Does it matter? It’s my way of supporting Maya.”

It had been a hell of a long time since anybody had asked me what I wanted, and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. The café was an icon in Citrus Beach, but working long hours there, and spending so much time away from Maya, had never been my choice.

I did it to survive.

“If you’re marrying me, your choices will become unlimited,” he said huskily.

“It’s my security,” I tried to explain. “It brings in some income.”

“I plan to take my daughter to see the world,” he warned. “If you want to be with her, you’ll need to find a manager, and more staff. Honestly, that dinosaur could use a serious makeover. The painting made it look better, but the building is old. It must need repairs. Maybe you need to think about turning it into something you can love by doing a complete remodel. I’d invest in you and your ideas. But you aren’t going to need to be involved in the day-to-day stuff.”