Читать книгу Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift: Unwrapping the Playboy - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 9

Like a traffic cop, Kullen held up his hand, stopping her before she went off in another direction.

“Back up. Why does Elizabeth Dalton want your son?” The flamboyant socialite took to the spotlight like the proverbial moth to the flame, but this sounded a little bizarre even for her. “Exactly what right does she have to him?”

As he waited for an explanation, he watched the wariness entering Lilli’s eyes. How many times had he seen that before? Eight years ago it had taken him weeks to get her to trust him, to realize that all he wanted was for her to be happy.

She pressed her lips together before saying, “I’d rather not go into all the details right now.”

There were those damn walls again. Isolating her. Keeping him out.

But this time it was different. This time it wasn’t personal. She’d sought him out in his professional capacity. She wanted his help as a lawyer, and as such he needed to establish some ground rules for them.

“If I’m going to be any use at all to you, Lilli,” he said, cupping her elbow and ever so subtly guiding her back to his desk, “I’m going to have to know everything.” He pulled out the chair for her but Lilli remained standing, in silent, stubborn defiance of his request. “Any lawyer will need all the details in order to properly represent you and your case.”

Her case.

That made it sound so austere, so clinical. It wasn’t a case, she silently insisted. It was a boy. A beautiful, sweet-tempered, innocent, blond-haired little boy. A little boy who was her reason for getting up in the morning, for her very existence. And she would die to protect him, to keep him safe and out of Elizabeth Dalton’s clutches.

Lilli was still silent. Kullen sighed, attempting another approach. He sat down. “All right, I’ll fill in the blanks. Stop me if I’m wrong. Elizabeth’s son is the boy’s father.”

He paused a moment for her to contradict him, even though he was certain that, given the circumstances, she couldn’t. Lilli sat down, but the uncomfortable silence continued.

“And now, out of the blue,” Kullen went on, “he and his mother want custody of the boy.”

Lilli looked down at her hands. “Not ‘he,’ just his mother,” she corrected woodenly.

Kullen went with the tide. “Okay, so the boy’s father doesn’t want him—”

“His father didn’t want him,” she said tersely, changing the tense that he’d used.

Kullen paused. “Did something happen to make Dalton change his mind?”

“No,” Lilli answered. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears, stripped of emotion. It was the only way, even after all this time, that she could bring herself to talk about the man who had so savagely changed her life. “He’s dead.”

The moment she mentioned Dalton’s death, Kullen vaguely recalled hearing a sound bite on the news one evening summarizing Erik Dalton’s shallow life. If he remembered correctly, that was about six months ago. Thinking, he tried to summon up the details of the incident.

“It was a skiing accident, wasn’t it?” he asked.

Lilli shook her head. “Boating,” she corrected, then added, “From what I heard, he liked people thinking of him as some kind of a daredevil.” She used the impersonal pronoun he, unable to make herself even say Erik Dalton’s name.

Kullen continued studying her. There was so much she wasn’t saying, he thought. “And that daredevil image didn’t include being a father,” he guessed.

Lilli could feel hateful, disparaging words rising to her lips. She’d never hated anyone, but she hated Erik Dalton with the last fiber of her being. But she had always been a truthful person and, in all fairness, in this particular situation Dalton didn’t technically deserve to be called a self-centered scum.

She shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. “I never gave him the chance to turn that role down.”

Damn it, Lilli, I loved you. I would have put the world at your feet if you’d married me. Was this why you left? To run into this soulless jerk’s Armani-covered arms?

Kullen struggled to keep the anger out of his voice but he couldn’t help asking, “Exactly what was it that you did give him?”

Here come the tears again, she thought, fighting to will them back. Despite her mental pep talk to the contrary, she felt terribly vulnerable and exposed. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but she did.

Maybe it had to do with seeing Kullen after all these years.

Even so, Lilli absolutely refused to allow herself to cry, refused to come across as some helpless little waif, the hapless victim of a spoiled, overly privileged, rich narcissist who thought he was entitled to everything and anything he wanted.

“A note,” she replied. “I wrote him a note when Jonathan was born, telling him that I thought he had a right to know that he had a son. I also told him that I didn’t want anything from him. I intended to raise Jonathan on my own.”

She couldn’t read Kullen’s expression and waited for him to say something.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t what she expected to hear. “That was rather foolish, don’t you think?” he asked. “By having nothing to do with Dalton, you were denying your son a life of privilege.”

His assumption made her angry. “No,” she contradicted firmly, “I was protecting my son and giving him a life filled with love.” She fisted her hands in her lap.

“I want Jonathan to be someone, to make something of himself and give a little back to the world. I want his life to count,” she told him with passion. “I didn’t want him to learn how to use people, how to treat them all as if they were beneath him.”

His eyes never left hers. “Still, Jonathan could have had every need seen to. He can still have that,” he pointed out.

Lilli watched him for a moment, heartsick and disappointed. Who was this person? The Kullen Manetti she remembered had a nobility about him. During one of their study sessions, he’d confided that he wanted to fight for the underdog. His father expected him to join his firm, but the thought of doing that left him feeling empty. After graduation he intended to go to work for a nonprofit organization, helping people who had nowhere else to turn.

Obviously somewhere along the line, he’d changed. He still looked like Kullen, but he no longer was that man.

Gripping the armrests on either side of her, Lilli pushed herself up to her feet again. “I guess you’re not the one to help me after all.” She steeled herself. “Sorry I wasted your time.”

“You’re repeating yourself,” he told her mildly. “I’ll be the one who tells you if my time’s being wasted.” She looked at him, perplexed. “Right now, I’m just playing devil’s advocate,” he continued.

“I don’t need a devil’s advocate,” she informed him tersely. “If anything, I need an angel, because I am up against the devil in this. Elizabeth Dalton has a battalion of razor-sharp lawyers on her side.” She might as well be up-front with him. “I can’t afford a battalion of lawyers.”

“I’m guessing,” he said kindly, “that you don’t have the kind of money it takes to hire one lawyer.”

She wanted to protest his assumption, but couldn’t. He was right and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Squaring her shoulders, she avoided looking into his eyes. If she saw pity there, it would destroy her. “I was hoping that I could pay the bill in installments.”

Kullen took no delight in watching her squirm, physically or mentally. “The firm takes a few cases pro bono—”

Her head shot up. “I’m not asking for charity,” she informed him, offended by the suggestion.

He knew he had to tread lightly in order not to crush her self-esteem—or insult her. “Nobody says you were. It’s up to our accountant to decide whether or not taking a certain case is the right thing to do. Doing a pro bono case helps with the tax forms,” he quickly interjected to keep her from protesting again. “It makes us look good. And from what I hear, the firm hasn’t taken on a pro bono case this year. When you come right down to it, you might actually be doing us a favor,” he told her.

Lilli sincerely doubted that. But she was desperate and she did need someone with legal expertise in her corner. She had no time to waltz around semantics. She needed to engage a lawyer soon if she had any hope of keeping her son.

So for now, she played along and pretended that she believed this fabricated story of his. “All right, if you put it that way—”

He smiled. “I do.”

She had to remember not to look at him when he smiled like that. Otherwise, she ran the risk of melting right in front of him. That mischievous, boyish smile of his always got to her, managed to get through her armor. He’d won her heart with that smile.

If only things could have been different….

But they weren’t, she reminded herself firmly. She had to deal in reality, not fantasies. The reality was that Elizabeth Dalton wanted to take her son away from her—and would, unless Lilli could fight her off. She felt like David, facing Goliath, and she needed a lot more than a slingshot and some rocks. She needed Kullen.

“Okay.” Releasing her grip on the armrests, Lilli sank down into the chair again. But she was still far from relaxed. Until this ordeal was over, she doubted she would ever relax again. “What do you need from me?” she asked, ready to tell Kullen as much as she was able.

So many things I can’t even begin to enumerate them. “To begin with, I’m going to need the boy’s birth certificate,” he told her.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess why Kullen wanted to see it. He wanted to see the name in black-and-white. “I left the space blank.”

So, she hadn’t lost the ability to read his mind. “You didn’t list the boy’s father?”

Lilli shook her head. “No.”

Was she ashamed to put the man’s name down? Or had the pharmaceutical heir threatened her with something to make her leave the space blank?

“Why?”

Why did Kullen have to dig like this? Her reasons didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Dalton’s mother wanted to take Jonathan away.

But because Kullen was waiting and wanted an answer, she gave him one.

“I wanted nothing to do with Erik Dalton. Besides, Jonathan might have Dalton DNA, but he was—and is—my son. I loved him, I wanted him. And I was going to make a home for him. And that’s what I have been doing for the last seven years.”

“Any idea why Mrs. Dalton is suddenly suing for custody after seven years? Did you get in contact with her?” He watched her expression to see her reaction as he asked the question.

“To tell her how sorry I was for her loss?” Lilli guessed. “No, I didn’t.” She realized that Kullen might have thought she had done it for another reason. “To tell her that she had a grandson? Again, no.”

He wasn’t ready to lay this line of questioning to rest yet. “Did you send photographs to her son while he was alive, showing your son’s progress?”

“No. After I sent him the note telling him that he had a son I never wrote or had any contact with him again.”

He studied her carefully. Would he be able to tell if she was lying to him? He was no longer sure. “Then he never wrote back or tried to get in contact with you later on?”

“No,” she said with feeling. “He could have cared less about being a father. If anything, I’m sure he was relieved that I didn’t want him in Jonathan’s life in any manner, shape or form.”

But that left a very loose end. Leaning back in his chair, Kullen continued to study her as he asked, “Then how do you explain how Mrs. Dalton found out about Jonathan?” He gave her a way out. “Or don’t you know?”

Lilli laughed shortly. “Oh, I know. She said she was going through Erik’s things about a month after the funeral and she found my note telling him about the baby.”

“So he kept the note.”

He made it sound as if that proved there was some sentiment involved. Erik Dalton hadn’t had a good bone in his body. If there had been one, it would have fled, horrified. “If he consciously kept the note, it was probably to use as a bargaining chip at some future date in case he needed it.”

“Bargaining chip?” Kullen repeated. “Who would he be bargaining with?”

That was easy. “His mother. Seems she’s very big on continuing the family line.”

Now it was making sense. “And now that her only son is gone, she’s set her sights on her grandson.” It wasn’t a guess.

Lilli sighed as she pressed her lips together. “That’s about it.”

Since he’d got her talking, he pressed his advantage. The more information he had, the better he could serve her. “What happened after she found the note?” he asked.

The events were indelibly etched on her brain. And she would forever regret taking pity on the woman. Her mistake had been to put herself in the woman’s place and feel sorry for her.

“Mrs. Dalton called and asked if she could see Jonathan. She wanted me to bring him to the house so that she could meet him.”

He knew the answer before he asked, but he asked anyway. “And did you?”

Hindsight was completely useless—because there was no going back to rectify things. “In light of what she’d just been through, I thought turning her down would have been unnecessarily cruel.”

Lilli McCall really was too good to be true, Kullen thought. Careful, she ran out on you once—and obviously straight into the arms of her rich lover. Being played for a fool once is more than enough.

“So you went to see her with Jonathan,” he concluded for her.

Lilli suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. Sighing wasn’t going to help, either. She had to do something, get aggressive and fight this woman on her own terms. “So I went with Jonathan.”

He’d started making notes to keep the events in their proper chronology. “And then what?”

“At first she seemed very nice. Her eyes literally lit up when she saw Jonathan. She said it was uncanny how much he looked like her own son at that age. That seeing Jonathan took her back, made her remember the past.” Lilli’s mouth hardened. “And then she talked about what she could do for Jonathan, how different his life would be if he lived with her. She started making plans as if I wasn’t even standing in the room. That’s when I panicked,” she confessed.

He didn’t blame her. Elizabeth Dalton was a statuesque, imposing woman who, he’d heard, enjoyed intimidating people. “How did the visit end?”

“Not well. Elizabeth asked me to leave Jonathan with her. I said no.” She lifted one shoulder in a semi-shrug. “She doesn’t like hearing that word.”

He just bet she didn’t. It probably surprised the hell out of her when someone as soft-spoken as Lilli stood up to her.

“She’s undoubtedly not used to hearing it,” he said. “So what happened after that?”

“The next afternoon, one of her lawyers got in contact with me. A very prim and proper little man who offered me money in exchange for giving up custody of my son. Offering me money,” she repeated with disgust. “As if Jonathan was some kind of a toy or inanimate commodity that was for sale.” Impassioned, her voice rose with each word. “Elizabeth Dalton ruined her son, I’m not going to let her ruin mine.”

He made a few more notes on the page, then turned to a fresh one. “I guess they’re right,” he observed.

“About what?” she wanted to know.

“That no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Do you think that if I hadn’t taken Jonathan over to meet her—?”

He cut her short by shaking his head. He put her mind at rest. This was not her fault. None of it. “Even if you hadn’t taken your son to meet his grandmother, I have a feeling the outcome would have been the same once she found out about Jonathan. And you’re right in your assessment. Elizabeth Dalton likes to pride herself on getting whatever she sets her mind to.”

Lilli could feel her stomach growing queasy. “Should I be worried?”

He gauged his answer slowly. “If you’re asking me if you should be getting your passports ready in order to flee the country, no. There’s no need to resort to drastic measures.” He took a guess at her next question and answered it before she could ask. “Do I think winning is going to be a piece of cake? No, I don’t. In general, a mother’s rights trump anything else that might be raised in a court of law.”

“In general,” she echoed. “But in this case?”

He wished he could tell her she had nothing to worry about. But he couldn’t, and she needed to be prepared. “In this case, Elizabeth Dalton has a lot of powerful friends. If she and her squadron of lawyers decide to win by fair means or foul, I want you to realize we’re going to have one hell of a fight on our hands.”

There was only one thing that she wanted to know. “Will we win?”

He didn’t deal in rainbows and fairy dust. He knew he should be prudent and cautiously tell her to be prepared for anything, because in this case they were up against a force of nature. A force of nature who numbered more than one judge in her inner circle of influential friends.

But he knew Lilli didn’t need cautious words. She needed hope. He couldn’t take that from her, couldn’t just dash any shred of hope she might have against the rocks of reality. No matter how much she’d hurt him, he couldn’t bring himself to be cruel to her.

So he gave her the most confident smile he had in his arsenal and nodded.

“Yes, Virginia,” he said, paraphrasing the famous line in the legendary Christmas story, “we’re going to win. It’s not going to be easy, or quick,” he predicted, “but we are going to win.”

Overwhelmed, Lilli hadn’t realized until just this moment how close she was to a complete meltdown. She was only a hair’s breadth away. The sense of relief, of hope, was huge. This time, she allowed the tears to flow. They slid fast and furiously down her cheeks, and registered in direct contrast to the smile that curved her lips.

“Thank you,” she cried, looking at him through eyes that had all but completely welled up. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned her. “You can save that for when the case is finally over and we walk out of the courthouse victorious.”

She knew he was right. That this was far too early in the game to allow her emotions to get the better of her. Knew that they had a hard and very possibly long fight ahead of them.

But she couldn’t help herself. She’d felt alone and isolated for far too long.

And she had missed him.

In one unguarded moment, Lilli let her feelings bubble up and get the better of her. She threw her arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” she cried again, burying her face against his shoulder.

He felt her breath along his neck.

His stomach tightened in anticipation.