Page 73 of Tame Me

CHAPTER SEVEN

Talia

THERE’SSUCHSAVAGERYin his whisper I step back but I can’t help looking at them again. He’s still studying Lukas, intently absorbing every detail as if he’s never seen a baby before. I’m unable to move—literally arrested by the sight of my son and his father finally together. Lukas looks tiny as Dain carefully cradles him. There’s such a ‘them’ about this moment—an intimacy I’m intruding on. This should have happened three months ago. It should have happened the day Lukas was born.

Loss hits me, yearning and, yes, remorse. Each blow knocks the breath from my body. The regret isn’t only for the delay in this, but the realisation thatwe’renot a family. My son doesn’t have that. I don’t have that—a partner to offer not just support and security but love.

I remember the day of Lukas’s birth. I missed Dain—I wanted to hold his hand through the delivery. I haven’t let myself think about that since. But I cried, alone—and scared.

He’s angry with me. He’s right to be. I ran away from the conflict—the rejection—just as my mother always did. I already know I wouldn’t fit into his world. Wealthy people like him live on a planet that has no place for me except as an employee. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms, repeatedly by one of the rich jerks my mother fell for and by his daughter, who I thought was my friend. But I was merely her charity case.

I turn away, angry with him too. For never replying. Never returning to Queenstown. For having other priorities in his life. But we were only ever supposed to have been a moment and it’s unreasonable of me to have wanted otherwise.

I pack quickly. I’m used to taking only what I can carry so I’m pretty minimalist. It’s the extra things for Lukas that slow me—his nappies and clothes, his few toys, his bassinet and bedding.

‘You don’t have a pram?’

I shove a toy into my backpack and answer shortly. ‘I use a sling for now.’

I would’ve loved a pram or buggy to take him on walks but there’s no way I could get a pram up the stairs and there’s nowhere to store it in the café. Besides which, I couldn’t afford it. It’s less than five minutes before everything is stowed.

Dain carefully passes Lukas back to me. ‘I need to make a couple of arrangements.’

It’s a relief that he puts his intense focus onto his phone. He taps several messages before making a call.

‘Do you have a car seat for him?’ He interrupts his flow to ask me.

I nod, I was loaned one. I’m glad Romy isn’t on shift at the café, so I don’t have to explain anything to her in person. I’ll leave a message for her in a bit.

Ten minutes later I carry Lukas and my backpack downstairs. Dain carries Lukas’s bag and his bassinet. On the pavement, a driver waiting beside a gleaming black car hastens forward to assist. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back. Again, that’s something that’s all too familiar.

Bitterness wells and I blink back tears. I’m used to upheaval like this and I’m a survivor, but I didn’t want Lukas to experience it ever. I want him to have stability andsecurity. So I have to work this out with Dain.

I’ve never forgotten that night and part of me is still deeply attracted to him—the hormonal, basic breeding instinct part. You’d think it would have been satisfied already. Yep, I’m a fool. It’s not that I don’t think relationships can ever last but a guy like Dain—rich and entitled—isn’t a commitment king. Yet I went with him anyway—blinded by looks and charisma and the impetuousness sparked by that stormy night. And if it had been for just that one wild night I might’ve got away with it, but for my precious child.

It’s a twenty-minute, awkward-silence-filled drive out of town.

I frown. ‘I thought we were going to a hotel?’

Instead we pull up at a stunning mansion on a large section. Established trees shield it from the road, yet once we’re inside I clock the amazing views of the vast landscape.

‘This place belongs to a friend,’ he says.

‘Does she hire it out?’

‘What?’ He looks blank. ‘No.’

I could kick myself. She’s wealthy—another world where you can have a holiday home bigger than most people’s houses and keep it empty most of the year round. I’ve no reason or right to be jealous yet the feeling rising within me is nothing but ugly. I make myself say something polite. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘We’ll have privacy here,’ he says crisply.

He cares so very much about privacy. I wonder what happened to make him value it so acutely. Is it simply the pressure of being a high-net-worth individual? That poor-rich-boy thing? That isn’t happening to Lukas.

There was an image of Dain and his grandfather on the history section of the company website. Nothing of his parents. Dain looked about eleven in the photo.

‘You don’t need anything else for Lukas?’ he asks as he carries in the bags. ‘I thought there were all kinds of things babies needed, but this doesn’t seem like much.’

Shame burns. I don’t have the money for anything more than the basics.

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