Baby for the Billionaire(134)
“Did I?” But her gaze flickered away.
“You lied to me by omission, Victoria.” He bore down on her. “How dare you take the baby to day care without consulting me? We hold joint custody, remember … or are you trying to get me angry enough to apply to court to have that revoked?”
She looked shaken. “You can’t do that.”
“I can—and I will if you persist in this stupidity. What’s important here is Dylan’s well-being.”
“Everything I’ve done has been in Dylan’s interests.”
“No, it isn’t.” His rage boiled over. “You’re only looking after your interests—your damned career that’s so important to you. Not caring for a grieving baby!” He shook his head. “God, but you make me sick!”
She went white. “I—”
He couldn’t let that air of deceptive feminine fragility sway him. “Spare me from ambitious women who walk over everyone to get what they want.”
A sprinkling of freckles he’d never noticed before stood out in sharp relief against her pallor. “I would never jeopardize Dylan for my career—”
“Never?” he said softly. “That’s why you took a young baby to a nursery full of other children where he could pick up viruses?”
“Chuck said—”
“That it was unlikely, not that it was impossible.” He leaned closer until his nose was up against hers. “Do you think that’s what Suzy wanted for her baby?”
She stumbled back. “Suzy enrolled Dylan in that center. I’ve done nothing Suzy would not have done herself.”
That caused him to hesitate, but only for an instant. Dylan was his son. When he thought what might have happened … Damn, he’d never be able to trust her with Dylan again. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” he snarled.
She remained mute.
Of everything, it was the not calling that enraged him most. She was so pigheaded, so stubborn she would’ve let the baby come to harm before she called him.
His baby.
What had once been a favor to a devastated friend, a random donation of sperm, had turned into the most important thing in his life. Dylan was more precious than anything in the world. And she hadn’t bothered to tell him that his baby was sick. The baby he’d entrusted her with against his own better judgment.
A surge of sheer instinctive paternal possessiveness shook him as he stalked closer. “It was an unforgivable mistake not to call me.”
Pinned against the wall, she faced him. The glaze of shock had receded and her eyes shot sparks at him. “You would’ve taken Dylan away from me.”
“Oh, for …” He broke off before the force of the crude curse erupted.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Recognizing how real her dread was, Connor stepped back and leashed the anger that vibrated through his large frame. “This has gone far enough. I’m taking the baby with me.”
“No.” There was raw pain in the sound. “You can’t!”
“You’ll find that I can.”
Victoria’s head came up. Her cheeks were stained with hectic color, a vivid contrast to her previous bleached paleness. “No. Michael and Suzy wanted us to share custody. I can only see one way that this can work.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m coming to live with you, too.”
Connor gave her an incredulous stare. The silence reverberated with tension. Then he said, “Fine. You can come, too!”
Seven
Victoria walked into Connor’s palatial home for the first time the next evening, not sure of what she would find.
What she didn’t expect was to see Connor lying on his back on the thick carpet in the living room, bouncing above him a bathed, ecstatic Dylan. She hesitated in the doorway and watched as Dylan squealed in delight and Connor whooped.
A long-forgotten sense of being the outsider swept her, of being the kid with the mother who slept all day while her father blew in and out of town like tumbleweed.
Then Connor caught sight of her, and flashed her a dizzying smile. “Look, Dylan, there’s Victoria.”
She dropped her leather laptop case and took a step forward. Dylan stretched his arms toward her. She swung him up and buried her nose against his neck. He smelled clean, of baby powder and calamine lotion. He made soft snuffling sounds and her heart melted.