Page 14 of Back in the Texan's Bed
“What the hell are you talking about...that I didn’t want him in the first place?” he growled, latching on to the last accusation because trying to unpack the others lanced him to the core. Was that how she really saw him? A self-indulgent player who didn’t give a damn about anything but the next good time and his dick? Was that the real reason she’d kept Ben from him? The pain bloomed in his chest, radiating outward in a toxic, blazing red mushroom. “You said that before, and I call bullshit. Because it implies that you gave me a choice. When you didn’t, Charlotte. You stole two years of my son’s life from me that I can never get back,” he finished, voice hoarse with fury, hurt...grief.
He’d missed his son’s first smile. His first word. His first step. Ross knew nothing about Ben. Not his favorite food or toy. Not how cranky he could be when he was tired. Not his laugh.
The hole that yawned wide inside him spread big enough for him to plummet into and never hit the bottom.
“Are you serious, Ross?” She speared him with a look of such disgust it rolled over his skin, polluting him. “Is this the game you’re going to play? You don’t remember telling me to get rid of our son?” She snorted. “Plausible deniability doesn’t become you. Neither does playing dumb.”
He almost lashed out with a reply designed to strike and hurt. But then her words penetrated his skull.You don’t remember telling me to get rid of our son?The question ricocheted inside his head, and he almost stumbled back from the vileness of it. The acidic horror that crowded into his throat and spilled onto his tongue.
“Charlotte, please,” he rasped. When she parted her lips, no doubt to blast him with more contempt, he held up a hand, palm out. “Just...pretend I don’t know, and tell me. What do you mean I told you to get rid of Ben?”
She glared at him, her chest rising and falling on loud, staccato bursts of breath. For a moment he didn’t believe she would grant him that. But then she shook her head, huffing out a hard chuckle. “This is crazy,” she muttered but then waved a hand. “Fine. Where should I start this trip down memory lane?”
“The beginning. And leave nothing out.”
“Right.” Another abbreviated laugh that wasn’t a laugh, and she said, “A few weeks after I left Royal, I realized I was late. I called you. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” he ground out. How could he forget? For four weeks, his pulse had leaped every time his phone rang. Only for his stomach to drop and his anger to rise when it turned out not to be her. So when her name had appeared on his screen, and her voice had caressed his ear, taunting him with its sultriness and sweetness that he could no longer have, he hadn’t been welcoming. Hadn’t been kind. “You mentioned nothing about being pregnant.”
“No, but I tried. You didn’t give me a chance to, because you had to go. A date that you couldn’t be late for,” she reminded him.
He’d lied; his ass had been planted on the couch in his sitting room at the ranch while he treated himself to his father’s eighteen-year-old scotch. But his pride hadn’t allowed him to admit that to her. He’d made up the date so she didn’t know he hadn’t been with a woman since she’d left him.
“Here’s how you should’ve gone about that, Charlotte. ‘Before you go, Ross, I’m pregnant.’ Which, I repeat, youdidn’tdo.”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied, an edge honing her tone until it could slice clean through his sarcasm. “But I did try again. And when the call went straight to voice mail, I tried the ranch. The housekeeper told me you weren’t home, but before I could hang up, she transferred me to Rusty. He demanded to know why I was attempting to contact you when I’d quit. I think...” She faltered, and this time, she did wrap her arms around herself and her gaze slid over his shoulder to the large window behind him. “I was so stunned that I just blurted out the truth about the pregnancy. He ordered me to get rid of the baby. That his son, anEdmond, would not end up raising a child with ‘the help.’” Her lips twisted into a grim caricature of a smile, and his fingertips itched to rub those lips, smudge that ill-fitting smile from her mouth like faded lipstick. “He also told me he knew about our...relationship. Courtesy of you. And you’d assured him that you were done with me.”
“That’s a lie,” he snarled, and her gaze jerked back to him. “I’ve never said anything to my father about us. I’ve never told anyone.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she murmured, and those four words sent a slick, sour glide into his stomach.
“Dammit, Charlotte,” he said, thrusting a hand through his dark blond hair, gripping the strands tight. “That’s not how I meant it. I—”
“It was a long time ago, Ross,” she interrupted, then flicked a hand. “And whether or not he lied about that, he didn’t about you moving on, did he?” She didn’t wait for his answer but continued, “Anyway, he promised to have you contact me, but not before warning me that if I didn’t go through with the termination of the pregnancy and breathed a word of it to anyone, he’d ruin me. And he wouldn’t stop with just me, but he’d harm my parents, as well. I believed him.”
“I can’t believe...” But yeah...he did. His father would’ve been—was still—capable of doing all she’d relayed. He wouldn’t have been above threatening an ex-employee to protect the precious Edmond name.
“Don’t bother, Ross,” she murmured, that bitter note making a reappearance. “You might be able to deny knowing about the phone call with Rusty, but you can’t ignore the letter.”
The letter. What letter?
Maybe she glimpsed the confusion in his eyes, because she scoffed, tipping her head back and muttering something toward the ceiling. Then she tugged her bag open and rummaged inside. Seconds later, she emerged with a worn, brown leather wallet. Opening it, she removed a folded piece of paper from the billfold and, crossing the short distance between them, slammed it onto his chest.
On reflex, he lifted his hand, covered hers. And that small contact—the first time he touched her in three years—nearly knocked him on his ass. Pleasure crashed into him, an anvil that had his fingers clasping hers, as if she were the one thing anchoring him to this world. His fingers flexed, starting to tighten around hers, needing to trap the burn from her palm that seemed to sear straight through to his skin.
But she snatched her hand back, retreating a step, leaving him clutching the paper. She cupped her palm, rubbing a thumb over it. Then, noticing that he caught the betraying action, she dropped her arms to her side.
“Do you want to read that aloud, Ross?” she asked, the rough silk of her voice a stroke over his chest, abdomen...lower. “Maybe it will jog your faulty memory.”
He studied her closed-off expression but couldn’t forget that telling gesture of hers...as if she were trying to erase the imprint of his touch. Not until the pointy edges of the paper bit into his fist did he glance down and slowly unfold it.
“Charlotte, you were intended to be a fling, not the mother of my child. Get rid of it. Use the enclosed check to pay for the procedure and your trouble. Then move on with your life, because I’ve moved on with mine. Russell Edmond Jr.,”she recited the letter as he read it. “Russell Edmond Jr.,” she repeated on a chuckle. “Like I no longer had the right to call you Ross. Nice touch.”
Shock blasted him in an icy deluge. He damn near shattered with it.
“No,” he breathed, rereading the paper for a second time. A third. Though typed, it was his signature. Whatlookedlike his signature. Because he damn sure hadn’t written this, signed it or mailed it. “How...”
He knew the how. His father. Rusty had never mentioned a call with Charlotte, and he’d sent the letter, forged it.
