Black Ties and Lullabies, page 9
“Do you really think so little of me?”
She paused, looking away. “Sometimes I don’t know what to think of you.”
“Most of my enemies don’t.”
She whipped back around. “Damn it, I’m not your enemy!”
“Then stop acting like one. Do we really have to drag lawyers into this?”
“I’m just trying to handle this situation in a way that’s best for both of us.”
“By shutting me out completely?”
“Come on, Bridges. I’m doing you a favor. You’ve said time and time again that you’ll never marry, much less have a family, and you like it that way. Do you really want to be a father?”
No. He didn’t. Or at least he hadn’t up to now. But he’d also never been faced with a situation like this.
“If you’re so sure I want nothing to do with this child you say I’ve fathered,” Jeremy said, “then why all the legalities?”
“You’re a businessman. If there’s something you want, do you rely on a handshake, or do you get it in writing?”
“If I sign these papers, what do you plan to tell this child about his father?”
“That I don’t know who he is. And not only will my child not know, nobody else will, either. I’ll leave it blank on the birth certificate, and I won’t tell a solitary soul. The truth will go with me to the grave.”
The baby will never even know who you are.
For a moment, Jeremy felt a stab of anguish. A child growing up in this world without a father was a very specific kind of hell no kid should ever have to experience.
But was this child really his?
If she thought he was the father, she should at least be demanding some kind of shared custody. But she wasn’t asking him to sign papers to ensure he did something. She was asking him to sign papers to ensure he did nothing.
Which meant she was telling the truth.
He picked up the papers. Looked at them but didn’t see them. Page after page of legalese that could have been written in Chinese for all he comprehended it right now. He flipped to the last page. Saw the signature line. His name typed beneath it. Even those words seemed to blur until he was having a hard time reading them clearly.
He needed time. Time to think about this. Time to come to terms with the situation.
“I’ll give you my decision tomorrow.”
Bernie blinked. “What? Why not now?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“I don’t get it. What is there to decide? I’m not asking for money. I’m not asking you to take any physical responsibility for a child. I’m not asking you for anything. So why not just sign the papers and be done with it?”
“I may very well do that. Tomorrow.”
“Why the delay? So you can run it past your attorney?”
“Again, that’s no concern of yours.” He stood up and held out the papers to her. “I’ll be in touch.”
She stared at him dumbly. “You’re such a control freak.”
“What?”
“I could hand you the keys to heaven, and you’d tell me you need time to consider whether you should take them or not.”
“You’re probably right about that. But it changes nothing. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
She yanked the papers out of his hand. Without another word, she left his office, shutting the door behind her so hard that the glasses on his bar clinked together.
Jeremy circled around his desk and sat down, feeling weirdly dizzy and disoriented. Fatherhood. Just the possibility of it rattled him like nothing else. But Bernie wanted him to go away. To have nothing to do with this baby. To be out of the picture for good. He had millions, and she wanted nothing. Instead, she was telling him what a dismal failure he’d be as a father and doing everything she could to make sure he never even laid eyes on his own child.
He knew what Bernie wanted. The question was, what did he want?
His office door opened. He spun his chair around to see Phil walk in with two members of the acquisition team in his wake.
“Ms. Keyes said you were free now,” Phil said, then tilted his head quizzically. “Is this a bad time?”
“Can I see you alone for a minute?” Jeremy asked.
Phil turned to the other men and told them he’d give them a call when they were ready to meet. They left, closing the door behind them.
“What’s up?” Phil said, plopping down in a chair in front of Jeremy’s desk. “Did we hit a snag with the acquisition?”
“No,” he said, tapping a pen against his desktop. “It has nothing to do with business.”
“Then it has to do with Bernie.”
Jeremy jerked his head up. “What?”
“She was leaving as I was coming in. And she didn’t look too happy. You have the same look on your face. What’s the matter?”
Jeremy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re not going to believe it.”
“Believe what?”
The very thought of it was so mind-boggling he could barely get the words out. “Bernie just told me…” He paused, then finally just spat it out. “It looks as if I’m going to be a father.”
For at least the count of five, Phil’s expression remained blank. “What?”
“She’s pregnant.”
Phil blinked. “Come again?”
“Good God, Phil. Do I have to explain the birds and bees to you?”
Phil slumped back in his chair. “You’re kidding me. You? With Bernie?”
Okay. So that reaction wasn’t unexpected. Jeremy knew Bernie wasn’t exactly the kind of woman the world was used to seeing him with. But how could Phil ever understand what those few scorching minutes with her had been like? How they’d blasted away the memory of the dozens of women who’d come before her? How was he supposed to explain that when he didn’t even understand it himself?
“So…” Phil said. “You two are having a baby.” He said the words haltingly, as if just the act of passing them over his tongue was a chore.
“Not exactly,” Jeremy said. “Bernie has other thoughts on the matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wants me to sign my rights away. Walk away as if this had never happened.”
Once again, Phil looked stunned. “Wait a minute. That makes no sense. She wants nothing?”
“That’s right.”
Phil blinked. “But you have millions. Why wouldn’t she—”
“Because she doesn’t want my money. She just wants to make sure I have no contact with the baby.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks I’d make a lousy father.”
“That’s crap.”
Phil’s quick response took Jeremy by surprise. “Come on, Phil. Do you really believe I’d have any chance at all of being a decent father?”
“Of course.”
Jeremy tossed the pen to the desktop. “You’re bullshitting me. I hate that.”
“No, I’m not. Being a father would be no different than anything else you’ve ever done. Any time you ever decided you wanted to do something, pretty soon you were better at it than anyone else.”
“This isn’t writing software code. What the hell do I know about parenthood?”
“Look, Jeremy. I know where you come from. I know why you shy away from anything that looks like a family. God knows you have good reason for that. But sometimes things happen for a reason, you know? Maybe this is the universe’s way of giving you what you really need rather than what you think you want.”
Jeremy twisted his mouth with irritation. “Do you have to be so damned philosophical?”
Phil shrugged. “I minored in philosophy. Remember?”
“Accounting and philosophy. God. What made you do that?”
Phil gave him a sly smile. “Interior design classes were full?”
Jeremy shook his head. “You were so weird back then.” He made a scoffing noise. “Hell, what am I saying? You’re weird now.”
“And yet you put the financial future of your company in my hands.”
“Only proves what an idiot I am.” He paused. “I sure as hell was that night with Bernie.”
“There’s something you’re not talking about here.”
“What’s that?”
“How do you feel about her?”
Jeremy’s heart skipped. “I don’t feel any way at all. There’s nothing between us.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
But he wasn’t. Not completely. If he was so sure she meant nothing to him, why the hell couldn’t he get her out of his mind?
“Okay,” Phil said. “It’s clear what Bernie wants. The question is, what do you want?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard for me even to imagine what it would be like. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a kid.”
“Take him to ballgames. Give him a mitt to catch foul balls. Let him eat hot dogs until he throws up.”
“What if it’s a girl?” Jeremy said.
“Take her to ballgames. Give her a mitt to catch foul balls. Let her eat hot dogs until she throws up.”
“No ballet recitals? Barbie dolls? Tea parties?”
“Maybe. But this is the twenty-first century. Sexism isn’t allowed.”
Jeremy rested his head in his hands for a moment, feeling overwhelmed at the very thought of it. A child had always been number one on his list of things he had no clue how to deal with.
“It’s simple, really,” Phil said. “Just do all the stuff with a kid you wish your father had done with you.”
His father. The moment an image of that man entered Jeremy’s mind, all he wanted to do was drive it away again.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Phil said. “You’re thinking about how your own father sucked as a father, so you can’t imagine going there yourself.”
Jeremy rubbed his temples. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
Jeremy sighed heavily, wishing he could protest, but he had the most sickening feeling Phil was right. Part of him was still that scared, angry kid who’d had only one example of fatherhood to follow. A bad one.
He remembered a time thirty years ago when he’d spent one lonely night after another huddled in bed, fantasizing that his father wasn’t a shiftless alcoholic who sometimes didn’t even bother to come home at night. Instead he was a rich guy with a big house and shiny new cars who took him to ballgames and for rides in his jet and to Disney World, who smiled all the time and said yes to everything. Then Jeremy would wake the next morning to the squalor of his real life and his father at the breakfast table. The old man’s face would be gray and unshaven, his eyes hangover-bleary, his voice harsh and gravelly as he snapped at his son for whatever small transgressions he chose to focus on that day to keep from facing the despair of his own life.
The older Jeremy got, the more the childish fantasies gave way to nothing more than the desire for his father to dry out, get a job, and recognize that he had a son. But that never happened. Instead, day in and day out, Jeremy lived with the anguish of having a runaway mother and a father who couldn’t have cared less about him.
“Yeah, maybe that’s part of it,” Jeremy said.
“Well, get it out of your head. You’re not your old man. Not by a long shot.”
Intellectually, Jeremy knew that. Emotionally, though, Bernie’s opinion of him hit way too close to home. He just didn’t know if he had it in him to be a decent father to a child of his own.
“You want me to tell you a secret about raising kids?” Phil said.
He had two kids of his own, so Jeremy was inclined to listen.
“Just be there.”
Just be there? “It can’t be as simple as that.”
“Okay. I lied. There’s also the diaper-changing when they’re babies and the door-slamming when they’re teenagers. But I think you get my point.”
He did. If he had ever looked up at a school event and simply seen his father’s face, it would have meant everything to him.
Maybe Bernie was wrong. Maybe there was something worse than a bad father, and that was a father who didn’t bother to show up at all.
He felt a shiver of awareness, a sense that maybe Phil was right. Maybe the universe knew what the hell it was doing no matter how crazy it looked. And the more he thought about it, the more his determination grew.
The baby Bernie was carrying was his, which meant he had a stake in this, too. And if she thought he was going to sign away rights to his own child, she needed to think again. He might not have a clue how to be a father, but facing that uncertainty wasn’t nearly as intolerable as knowing that someday a child of his would be wandering through this world thinking his father just didn’t give a damn. In that moment, he made a decision, as resolutely as anything he’d ever felt in his life.
Whether Bernie liked it or not, they were having a baby together.
Chapter 10
When Bernie heard the knock on her apartment door, she looked out the peephole, her heart thudding with anticipation. Sure enough, Jeremy was standing at her door. She had no idea why he hadn’t signed the papers on the spot yesterday, but with luck, in the next few minutes they’d be putting this matter to rest once and for all.
She opened the door to find him wearing his usual scruffy jeans and faded Polo shirt. Any other man wearing those things might look unkempt. Not Jeremy. He’d once entertained some business associates in a sky box at a football game wearing a pair of cargo shorts, a Cowboys T-shirt, and flip-flops. She’d watched silently from the corner, thinking the only way he could have looked more handsome was if he took off his clothes altogether.
“Bridges. What a surprise.”
“Surprise? Didn’t I say we’d talk today?”
“I assumed you’d summon me to your office.”
“I was in the neighborhood.” He glanced back over his shoulder with an expression of disgust. “Okay, so that’s a lie.”
Don’t bite back. Just keep things friendly until you can get his name on the dotted line.
“Is Max with you?” she said, stepping back to allow Jeremy to enter.
“I took this trip on my own.”
“That’s not wise.”
“Concerned about me?”
“Old habits are hard to break.”
“This is private business, so I came alone. Where are the papers?”
Thank God. This was going to be easier than she had thought.
She walked over to pick them up. “I’m glad you’ve decided to sign,” she said, turning back and handing them to him. “It really is better for both of us. I know the last thing you want is to be saddled with a…” She paused, watching as he turned the papers sideways.
“What are you doing?”
He ripped them in half. Bernie’s mouth fell open. “What the hell are you doing?”
Then he tore those pieces in half.
“Bridges!”
He handed her the decimated contract. She stared down at the jagged pieces in total disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Not last time I checked.”
“Well, you haven’t accomplished anything,” she said. “I have another copy.”
“Great. Hand it to me. I’ll tear it up, too.”
She tossed the pieces of paper down on her dining room table. “Why are you doing this?”
“I told you I’d make up my mind in twenty-four hours.” He nodded toward the torn-up contract. “There’s my decision.”
She glared at him. “A simple no would have sufficed.”
“I doubt that. If I hadn’t torn it up, you’d still be trying to shove it in front of me.”
“That’s right. I would. Because the best thing for both of us is for you to go away and pretend all this never happened.”
“But it did happen, and both of us are going to have to live with it.”
A swirl of nausea kicked up in Bernie’s stomach, and not just because of the morning sickness that had plagued her like a bad case of the flu that wouldn’t go away. This couldn’t be happening. She knew Jeremy. She knew his biggest fear had to be that he’d get a woman pregnant and have to deal with the consequences. So why was he being so obstinate?
“You just can’t stand for anyone to tell you you can’t have something,” she said hotly. “Even something you don’t want.”
“Who says I don’t want it? I never really thought about having a baby, but you know, I’m not getting any younger. So why not?”
“Damn it, Bridges! You could find a dozen women in the next hour who would have your baby! Don’t take mine.”
“Ours.”
That single word said she was tied to him forever, and she hated the sound of it.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You know you don’t want to be a father.”
Jeremy’s expression darkened. “Stop making assumptions about what I want. You’ll be wrong every time.”
Bernie searched his face for any sign of insincerity, but she didn’t see it. Still, it was so incomprehensible to her that he’d want anything to do with fatherhood, so completely at odds with the life he’d so deliberately built for himself, that she found it impossible to believe him.
Maybe it was time to find out just how serious he was about being involved with this baby.
“You know what?” she told him. “You’re right. You’re the father. You should have input.”
“I’m glad you see it my way.”
“But any involvement you have comes with conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“You’re not just going to sit in that big house of yours and play dictator. And you’re not going to be one of those men who just throws money at his kid as if that’s all a kid needs. You have to give to get. If your name is on the birth certificate, you’re going to be a father in every sense of the word.”
His smug expression vanished. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, I have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I expect you to be there.”
He blinked with disbelief. “You want me to come to your doctor’s exam?”
“All good fathers do.”
“I should think you’d want your privacy.”
