Baby for the Billionaire(154)

That Victoria was nothing like Dana.

And she was different—he knew she genuinely cared for Dylan, whereas Dana had only ever raised the topic of children as a precursor to a discussion about marriage.

Victoria wasn’t manipulative … she wouldn’t sleep with him to get a partnership, or beg for a baby when all she wanted was a ring on her finger.

But she did share the same ruthless, single-minded ambition that had driven his ex-lover. And he couldn’t help resenting the fact that Victoria would always put work first.

He’d been a victim of—and survived—that vicious circle once. He had no intention of being devastated a second time. And this time it wasn’t only his heart at risk. This time there was Dylan—his own son—to consider, too.

He wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow Victoria to be so cavalier about her responsibility to his baby. His baby.

But now was not the time to get into that. Let her go to work. He wasn’t about to blurt it all out in a moment of anger. He’d held off telling her that Dylan was his baby this long because she’d been so worried that he intended to take Dylan away from her. He could wait a little longer. Once he’d cooled down he would confront her with his relationship to Dylan—and with what he’d decided to do about it.

It was time for Victoria to learn who called the shots.

“Do what you want,” he bit out and swung away.

She shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uneasy. “What are you going to do?”

“What I’d planned.” He gave her a look of scorching contempt. “I’m taking Connor to the beach. We’ll spend a day doing what families do.”

He watched as her eyes darkened and a not-very-nice sense of victory swelled him. She’d made her choice.

And so had he.





Eleven




Over the next week and a half Victoria avoided Connor.

The tightening tension gave her a sense of sitting on the lip of a volcano about to erupt.

Outwardly Connor was civil, and he still read to Dylan every night while she fed the baby his final bottle of the day. But they’d barely spoken since that fateful Sunday morning.

When she met his eyes she could glimpse the gathering turbulence in the darkening storm of gray. There was a confrontation coming and, like the coward she was, she avoided him by using the best excuse she had—work.

As soon as Dylan had eaten breakfast she kissed him goodbye and left him in Anne’s capable hands. She came home after a work day and desperately avoided Connor in the evenings—with the exception of Dylan’s bedtime. Afterward she retreated to her room—and her laptop.

The crumbling of their truce did little to ease the tension that was building day by day between them.

It all came to a head when Victoria arrived home late one night to find Dylan already asleep—and a glowering Connor waiting for her in the living room, every light blazing.

She came to a halt and set her laptop bag down on one of the leather couches.

Standing there, his legs apart, in a beautifully tailored black business suit and pale-blue shirt sans tie, with his shoes still an impossibly glossy black at the end of a day, he looked formidable. Unreachable. It was impossible to tell whether he felt anything for her at all. Except the anger and annoyance that the harsh overhead lighting revealed so clearly.

“Dylan needs a mother.”

Startled by his words, she continued to stare at him.

What did he mean? Anxiety—never far away where Dylan was concerned—pooled in her stomach. Dylan already had a mother.

But she’d never told him.…

Had she been too reticent? Was the omission intended to protect Suzy’s memory going to cost her dearly?

“Nothing to say?”

The glare he directed at her held anger and frustration and something that was dark and dangerous.

“I had to stay later than—”

“I have a business. I work long hours—but I still have time for Dylan. This is the third time you’re late this week—and it’s only Wednesday. And last week you were late almost every night, too.”

He’d been counting. But instead of making her feel like she was winning this battle of wills between them, a wretched anguish speared her. He didn’t think her fit to be a mother.

Her shoulders sagged. Served her right, she supposed. Tonight had been a genuine emergency—the rest of the time she’d been avoiding Connor. She’d been stopping for dinner on the way home so that she didn’t have to eat with him and endure the awful estrangement between them, arriving home in time for Dylan’s bath and bedtime story. She’d desperately missed out on the extra time with Dylan. But what choice did she have?