Page 12 of Back in the Texan's Bed
His next move.
What was he planning? Custody? Taking Ben from her? With the full weight of the Edmond name and the power of their money and connections behind him, he could. He might—
No.
The objection slammed into her head, and she fisted her fingers. No, she wouldn’t allow him to rip her baby from her arms. Not when Ross had been the first one to walk away, to abandon them both.
She shoved away from the wall, resolve gelling inside her, fortifying her.
She was no longer that lonely, needy girl who’d left Royal and nearly begged him not to turn his back on her and their baby. Motherhood had made her a warrior.
If Ross wanted a battle, then a battle was what he would get.
Four
He had a son.
Ross stared at the paternity report that had been emailed to him a couple of hours earlier. For what could’ve been the hundredth time, he scanned it, his gaze settling on the line at the bottom that changed his life forever.
“The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the tested child. The probability of paternity is 99.9998 percent.”
His pulse roared in his head, the thunderous crash of sound a sonorous backdrop for the seething cauldron of emotion boiling over in his chest. Shock. Fear. Pain. Joy.
God, so much joy.
Until the moment three days ago when he’d stared down into a tiny face that could’ve been a replica of his twenty-five years ago... Until he’d met familiar brown eyes brimming with curiosity and shyness... Until then, children had been a “someday” notion that bore no place in his hedonistic life. But the moment Ross met his son, someday had become now, in an instant.
He’d wanted those brown eyes to reflect delight and love when they looked at him. Wanted those arms to lift to him in a show of faith and confidence.
Ross just longed to call that beautiful boy son. To claim him as his own. And to be claimed as father in return.
The intensity of that need burned so fiercely that his skin and bones almost couldn’t contain the strength and power of that yearning.
His gaze scanned the report once more, passing over the name at the top. Benjamin Jarrett.Ben.
For some reason, he hadn’t been able to say his son’s name aloud at Charlotte’s home. As if it were some kind of talisman that would make this too real. Real, only to be stolen from him with greedy, vicious hands.
But not now. Not with these paternity test results.
“Ben,” he whispered, finally giving his newest but deepest hope voice, a name.
Even as a now recognizable and intimate anger stirred within him like a flickering, dancing flame. He’d been denied the first two years of his son’s life, and Charlotte had denied their son his last name. She hadn’t even given Ben that—given Ross that.
Did she really hate him that much? His fingers curled into a fist on top of his desk, the skin over his knuckles blanching before he deliberately relaxed his hand, extending each finger one by one. He inhaled, held the air in his lungs, then slowly released it, attempting to blow a cooling breath over his rage.
It didn’t matter if she hated him or not. Or what her trumped-up reasons were.Shehad chosen to leave Royal.Shehad chosen not to tell him she was pregnant.Shehad chosen to rob him of his son. Every step of the way, Charlotte had made the decisions for all three of them, uncaring of the repercussions. Ben deserved both of them—a motheranda father.
And Ross was through letting her have all the power in their lives.
His desk phone intercom buzzed, interrupting his thoughts. “Ross.” His assistant’s voice echoed through the console speaker. “There’s a Charlotte Jarrett here to see you.”
Pressing the button, he ordered, “Send her in, please.”
Rising from his office chair, he rounded the desk. Grim satisfaction thrummed within him. As soon as he received the paternity report, he’d texted Charlotte and asked her to come by his office so they could speak.
Those dots had bubbled for a while before she actually replied. But she’d agreed, and now that she stood on the other side of his office door, the anticipation of getting answers, of demanding his rights as a father to their baby coiled inside him like an agitated rattlesnake ready to strike.
The knock came a second before the door opened, revealing his assistant and Charlotte. But all he saw washer. It was that goddamn superpower of hers, that ability to dominate a man’s attention so all else faded to blurred nothingness. Today she wore a short black leather jacket in deference to the February morning. A simple but formfitting white shirt emphasized the full curves of her breasts, and dark blue skinny jeans clung to her sensual, rounded hips and thick thighs. Camel-colored ankle boots elongated legs that already seemed to stretch for eternity.
