Page 5 of Skylar

She wore a navy pencil skirt that reached her knees and had paired it with a lilac colored short-sleeved silk blouse that looked stunning with her dark hair and eyes. Hair that was sleekly pulled back from her face, and eyes that were made up to highlight them.

All in all, she looked like a businesswoman, and it made him think she might be there in a professional capacity. Whatever that could be.

Her expression remained serene as she stepped closer to his desk. “Thank you for fitting me into your schedule.”

“I had no idea it was you,” he said, the words coming out more harshly than he’d intended.

“Would you have agreed to see me if you had?” she asked, coming to a stop behind one of the chairs opposite him.

He considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Emotion flitted across her face at his honest response, but Aiden couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

“It was important that I talk to you, so I couldn’t take the chance that you wouldn’t.”

“Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what’s going on?” he said, gesturing to the chair she stood behind.

He waited until she’d taken a seat, gracefully lowering herself into the chair, then crossing her legs, before he settled back into his own chair.

“I would rather not be here,” she said. “But I’ve been given no choice.”

“Has something happened to Cole?”

“No. This has to do with our… daughter.”

Shock locked Aiden’s breath in his lungs as he stared at his ex-girlfriend. Theirdaughter? He was glad he was sitting down because he wasn’t sure that his legs would have held him up if he’d still been standing.

“Ourwhat?”

Skylar’s chin lifted and her shoulders pulled back. “You may have told me that I needed to get rid ofit, but I chose to ignore your terrible directive. Seven months after that horrible day, I gave birth to a baby girl.”

“You reallywerepregnant?”

“What?” Skylar frowned at him, her eyes flashing with anger. “You thought I waslying?”

Aiden shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first woman who tried to hold on to an ex through a fake pregnancy.”

Skylar’s anger deepened, her brows drawing together over her furious brown eyes. “Maybe, but you knew I wasn’t that type of person.”

“Did I?” he asked. “You’d never gone through a breakup before, and you made it very clear that you didn’t want things to end between us.”

“Yes, because I thought I loved you,” she said, anger heavy in her words. “But I also wouldn’t have lowered myself to faking a pregnancy in order to keep you when it was clear that you didn’t love me. Would you have told me to get rid of it if you’d known that I reallywaspregnant?”

“No.” He hesitated. “I’d like to think I would have stepped up.”

“Personally, I don’t think you would have stepped up,” she said. “You seem to think you would have known if I was telling the truth, only clearly you didn’t because Iwastelling the truth. You didn’t want me, and you certainly didn’t want a baby, which would have stopped you from finding someone better than me.”

Aiden did his best to firm his expression under the onslaught of her angry words.

Over the years since that conversation he’d had with Skylar following their breakup, he’d done his best not to think about what he’d said. In fact, he’d tried his utmost to not dwell on anything that had taken place between him and Skylar—good or bad.

“Are you here for money?” he asked, figuring there could be no other reason.

He hadn’t thought Skylar could reach another level of anger. But it looked like they’d entered the highest level. Or at least he hoped it was the highest level.

The placid expression she’d arrived with was completely gone. Burned away by the anger she aimed at him. Anger she was probably entitled to, but he didn’t plan to let her know that. At least, not yet.

“No. I’m not here for money.” She spit the words at him. “You made it clear you had no interest in being a father, and I respected that. The last thing I wanted for her was to have a father in her life who had wished her dead, even if you weren’t convinced that she was real. You didn’t want her, and you didn’t want me.”

---