Page 48 of Desiring Boss Daddy (Cascade Mountain)

“You don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is your friends and family love you. We support you, and we’re going to pull out all the stops to make sure Collins stays with you.” Jason pulled me into a quick hug before releasing me. “Just trust me. Let us take care of this for you so you can keep taking care of her and having an amazing life.”

* * *

On the dayof the mediation, I didn’t know where I was supposed to be. For perhaps the very first time in my entire life, I didn’t know where I belonged. The idea of going into the office made me want to vomit, but so did the idea of staying at home, entertaining my daughter, and trying not to look too hard at Heather, who was checking on me in the precious few moments she wasn’t on her laptop.

I needed to be alone somewhere—somewhere I could weather the anguish and uncertainty without people watching me. Maybe I would have more privacy at work.

Everyone was trying to go about their regularly scheduled lives except for me, I realized. I was waiting for some big change, some revelation that would strip away everything I had come to know.

I was waiting for the worst instead of hoping for the best, like everyone else. It was my own fatal flaw.

“Don’t you have anywhere to be?” Heather asked me as gently as possible while she and Lauren indulged Collins in everything from art projects drowned in glitter to multicolored manicures and pedicures. Collins, of course, wanted to be back in the preschool with the friends she had been promised, so she was impatient with the delay in everything—the setback her biological mother had created. But we were all careful to ensure she didn’t know who was causing this.

“I’ll go to the office and make sure everything is going all right,” I announced, standing. I wasn’t much use here, riling everyone up and making them worry. “Then, I’ll pick up dinner.”

“What’s for dinner?” Lauren asked, trying to peel a sticker off her nail. Good luck. My housekeeper had been trying to peel stickers off of various surfaces around the house for ages. Why did Collins fall in love with the messiest crafts?

“Pizza!” Collins declared. It was her favorite food, especially if it was loaded with pineapples.

“We’ll see,” I said, deciding that at the very least, I would get a pizza for her wherever I chose to go get dinner. I could never say no to Collins or deny her anything. If that made me a bad parent worthy of the custody battle Josie was waging, then so be it. I had to trust in my team to see us all through this.

I strode outside, expecting to see my regular driver. Instead, another man was waiting for me.

“New hire?” I asked him, ducking into the backseat of the car before confirming. He seated himself. “Substitute, sir. Where to?”

He drove well enough to the office, where I had no problems with anything that had gone on over the course of the week I’d been away.

Later, I would console myself with the fact that I had been drinking and was somewhat thankful that at least someone was available to drive for me—someone I was supposed to have trusted.

But when I returned to the back of the car after exiting the office, there was someone else waiting for me—someone who alerted me to the size of the error I’d made.

“Hey, lover.” It was a purr that haunted my dreams, and its presence signaled a nightmare. Yet, when my actual ears registered the pitch and timbre of the voice of the woman I had a child with, I couldn’t quite cope with it. I was frozen to my seat—susceptible to everything, incapable of escaping, or even of thinking to escape.

Then the car took off, and it was too late to throw myself bodily from the backseat or to toss Josie, who was sitting across from me in nothing but lingerie, out of the car. I made a move to open the window between the backseat and the front seat, but Josie’s hand covered it.

“Don’t make a scene,” she purred. “Don’t you miss this?”

She spread her legs wide open in front of me before crossing them again and pursing her lips at me. “Come on, I know I’ve held up well.”

The sight I would’ve once revered as provocative provoked me in a new way. I didn’t want her here. I didn’t even have an ounce of attraction toward her anymore, and I couldn’t figure out why she was here. Not when she had been so adamant about the police backing up her claims.

Heather had been the only one to mitigate that potential disaster.

“How did you get in here?” I asked her. I wasn’t afraid of her, and I wasn’t afraid for myself. I was only afraid of what she could do to Collins and Heather—the people I loved.

“Money talks,” she said, straddling me and brandishing her cellphone. “I bribed your driver.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to know I’m always going to be here.” She kissed me, and I spat her tongue out of my mouth. “You value what we made together. We could continue that.”

“We had a child together,” I said. “We’re not a manufacturing plant.”

“We could be. Our children would rule the world.”

“Your world,” I told her. “Your delusion. No one would follow you or believe in you. Everyone would know you for exactly what you are, which is insane.”

“You are so fucking stubborn.” She punctuated each syllable with a kiss. “One of these days, you’re going to figure out I was the one who was right and that I was the one who had it all figured out. Heather Rainey? Who the fuck is that? You’re delusional.”

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