Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift: Unwrapping the Playboy. Marie Ferrarella
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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