Suspect. Jasmine Cresswell
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thought wearily. She dropped her gaze. No doubt Liam would interpret her silence as an admission that she and Jason had been arguing last night. Unfortunately, his interpretation would be correct. Their disagreement had been about Jason’s political ambitions and how best to achieve them, certainly not about Sophie.
“Jason never regretted his decision to welcome Sophie as his daughter,” Chloe said finally. “She was a source of joy to both of us. I have no way to convince you of that, but it’s the simple truth.”
“Did Jason know I was the man who’d impregnated his wife?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you. How come he never confronted me? Why didn’t he demand an explanation as to why I slept with his wife?”
Chloe met Liam’s derisory gaze head on and a ripple of anger floated across the surface of her despair. “The truth is he considered the precise identity of our daughter’s biological father somewhat irrelevant. As long as you didn’t know the truth, he had no interest in confronting you.”
Her barb found its target and Liam’s mouth tightened. “As the man trapped into impregnating you, I can’t say that I agree with your husband’s point of view. I consider the fact that I have a child to be extremely important and I’m furious that you kept the information hidden from me.”
“I couldn’t tell you about Sophie,” she said, realizing there was almost no hope that Liam would understand why she’d felt compelled to remain silent. “If Jason was willing to accept Sophie as his daughter, I felt I owed him the courtesy of not telling anyone how she’d been conceived.”
“Not even the lucky father?” Liam’s voice vibrated with irony.
She shook her head. “Not even you. Perhaps especially not you.”
“I’m sure you agonized over the ethics of the situation.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Especially when I decided to end the marriage and came to you for help with a divorce.”
“Let’s talk about that for a moment. Why did you choose—” The intercom buzzed again and Liam snatched the phone. “Yes?”
Chloe couldn’t hear the receptionist’s part of the conversation, but Liam responded by saying he’d be right there.
He hung up. “I have to end this conversation, Mrs. Hamilton. My client has been waiting for fifteen minutes—”
“For heaven’s sake, would you stop calling me Mrs. Hamilton!” she snapped. “My name, as you very well know, is Chloe. I think our acquaintance has reached a stage of intimacy where it’s okay for you to use it!”
“Nothing about our acquaintance has anything to do with intimacy,” he replied angrily.
“Whatever.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall, too exhausted to fight anymore. She stood up, struggling to regain at least a vestige of her old pride and determination. “I should leave. This has been a mistake and, as you keep reminding me, you have important clients waiting.” She turned to go, suddenly chilled by the air-conditioning. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold air and realized as she did so that she was still wearing the scruffy T-shirt that she’d grabbed first thing this morning when the police sergeant sent her upstairs to shower and change out of her blood-soaked robe. Apparently she’d been in such a state of mental turmoil when she prepared to leave the house that she’d changed into decent slacks but forgotten to put on the silk blouse that went with them. Good grief, she must look like a demented bag lady. Chloe felt a wave of embarrassment sweep over her.
With all that was going on right now, it was crazy to come unglued because her outfit was less than perfect, but somehow the knowledge that she was wearing a worn out T-shirt was the last straw. She hated the fact that she had been so overwhelmed by the police interrogation that she couldn’t even dress herself properly. She was annoyed by the fact that she wanted Liam’s approval, or at least his acceptance. Why did she care if he disapproved of her? He was an accidental sperm donor, nothing more. Still, if she’d looked a bit more elegant, maybe he’d have worked a bit harder to hide his contempt. Tears threatened to overflow, and she blinked them away, pride coming to her rescue when everything else failed. She wasn’t going to give in to self-pity, not in front of Liam, who so clearly had no interest in joining her sob party.
He walked around from behind his desk and came to stand between her and the door. She was relieved when he gave no sign that he realized how close she was to breaking down.
“Obviously there are a lot of things we still need to talk about,” he said. “I can’t spend any more time with you right now and I have to be in court right after lunch. Can you be back here at four?”
She hesitated for a moment. “If the police don’t arrest me, I’ll be here.”
“Go to the movies,” he said. “Pick a theater in a nice, family-oriented suburb. Movie theaters are great places to hide from cops.” He tapped briefly on a side door she hadn’t noticed before and a female voice responded.
He opened the door. “Hey, Helen, I have a client coming through if you don’t mind.” He turned back to Chloe. “This leads to my paralegal’s office. If you go out this way, you can access the main corridor directly. It’s probably better if you avoid exiting through the reception area. I think you and my next client probably know each other.”
“Thank you.” She walked towards Helen’s office, numb enough to follow his instructions without question.
“Chloe.”
She stopped and swung around to look at him, grateful for his small concession of using her name. “Yes?”
“Where is…your daughter…right now?”
“My sister came and picked her up early this morning. She took Sophie back to her house in Conifer.”
“How long can you leave…Sophie…there?”
“As far as my sister is concerned, forever. As far as Sophie is concerned—at least until bedtime. My sister has two preschoolers of her own, and Sophie loves to play with her cousins.”
He gave a quick nod to acknowledge her answer. “Then I’ll expect to see you here this afternoon at four. Try not to get arrested in the meantime, okay?”
Three
He had a child. Sophie was his daughter. Chloe Hamilton was the mother of his child. His daughter was three and a half years old.
However many ways he found to express the simple facts, Liam still couldn’t wrap his mind around the crazy notion that he was a father. A father, for God’s sake! If ever there was one role that he’d been determined never to take on, fatherhood would have to be it.
Among the worst of the unpleasant emotions accompanying the discovery that he had a child was the shame of knowing he’d behaved no better than his own father, the late, not-very-lamented Ron Raven. Ron had impregnated Avery Fairfax twenty-seven years ago, when his legal wife, Ellie, was already pregnant. Then Ron had solved the dilemma of two women simultaneously pregnant with his child by marrying Avery—without bothering to divorce Ellie first.
Ever since he learned about his father’s bigamy, Liam had derived a morbid satisfaction from heaping scorn on his father’s head for the idiocy of contracting a fake marriage. He’d harped on Ron’s carelessness in causing the pregnancy that had precipitated it. Now it seemed that he had been as careless as his father. Juggle the pieces of the Liam-Chloe-Jason triangle, toss them up in the air and you could watch them fall to the ground in a pattern humiliatingly close to the Ellie-Ron-Avery triangle. Like father, like son wasn’t a cliché he’d ever wanted to live up to, Liam reflected cynically, but it seemed he’d done just that.
Court, thank God, was over for the day, and he’d managed to focus on the Cellinis’ civil war, euphemistically described as their divorce petition, long enough