“Are you quite all right?” Alistair asked once he’d also sat down and was leaning into her, peering at her, his own face beyond angry and she was glad there were no paperweights in the room or there would have been hell to pay.
She nodded, undone by the whole scene and wanting nothing more than to leave. To go back home, to Tash and Fazire, and recoup, recharge and fight some other day.
Worse still, her head was beginning to ache and she felt more than slightly queasy and she had the terrible feeling that a migraine was coming over her.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she begged, her voice so small it was tiny.
She had no idea her voice betrayed to the two men in the room she knew a very short time many years ago, one she had come to care about deeply, one she had adored more than life, that she was now just a mere shadow of the former Lily Jacobs.
At her words Alistair fully lost his temper and his head jerked around toward the others.
“Right. Then. I suppose after that scene I don’t have to go into detail about the financial situation all that left Ms. Jacobs in. There was not a great deal of wealth in her family, Lily had attended Oxford on a scholarship and had been working in pubs and shops since her arrival in England. Due to the pregnancy, she was unable to work, had a mortgage that went unpaid for months and was nearly thrown out of her home. She was not entitled to National Health Service so the birth and subsequent hospitalisation were all private and cost a fortune. She was forced, even though she didn’t wish it, to sell her family home in Indiana but death duties and a bad exchange rate meant that money was practically gone before it got to the country. She –”
Nate’s solicitor interrupted Alistair wearily, sensing they’d lost the upper hand they’d been so certain of when they’d entered the room. “Just tell us what you want.”
Alistair didn’t hesitate. “We want five hundred thousand pounds for back child maintenance for the last seven years. We want two thousand pounds a month starting now. Mr. McAllister can see his daughter one weekend a month, two weeks during summer holidays and alternating school holidays. Ms. Jacobs wants Natasha every Christmas. The first meeting of Mr. McAllister and Natasha will be supervised by either Maxine Grant or Lily’s long-time family friend, Fazire.”
Alistair was on a roll, he was asking for more than they agreed. If Lily wasn’t already wound up by all that had happened, she would have spun like a top at what he was currently demanding.
But he was interrupted.
“Give it to her.” This was Nate’s deep voice cutting in and Lily’s head jerked to him.
He was staring at her. Staring at her so intensely she felt his eyes like they were a physical touch on her skin.
“I’m sorry?” Alistair asked, nonplussed at being disturbed in his postulation.
“Give it to her. Have the money transferred to her account by the end of the day.” As he said this, Nate’s head moved to look at his solicitor and it was clear it was an order.
“But, Mr. McAllister –” his solicitor threw in.
“The five hundred thousand?” Alistair was, Lily saw, thrilled.
“A million,” Lily’s head jerked back to Nate and her mouth dropped open in shock.
“A million pounds?” Alistair was nearly bouncing in his chair.
“Yes, a million pounds…” Nate stated and Alistair was about to shoot to the moon when Nate continued, “for each year Natasha has been alive.”
Lily blinked, her shock so profound a stampede of buffaloes could have stormed through the room and she wouldn’t have moved. If Alistair had done a back flip out of his seat, Lily would not have been surprised.
“Seven million pounds?” Alistair was now, simply, agog. Lily didn’t know anyone who had seven million pounds much less could transfer it into another bank account “by the end of the day”.
“Yes,” Nate said flatly.
Lily couldn’t look at Nate, her eyes moved to Victor and he was staring at her in a way, in a way…
In the way he used to look at her.
She had no time to process Victor’s look as Alistair pressed, “Do you agree to the visitation schedule?”
“No,” Nate noted implacably.
Lily, already stunned, became so still a single touch would have sent a crack running through her body. She had known it was too good to be true.
“I’m sorry?” Alistair parroted his earlier question.
“I want full custody,” Nate declared.
It was Lily’s turn to shoot out of her chair. At his words, all the shock and numbness fled and the fight came crashing back into her.
“What?” she shrieked.
Nate rose too, albeit slowly. He faced her, his eyes looking directly into hers, the expression on his face carefully controlled.
“I want full custody of my daughter,” he told her calmly.
“You can’t have it!” Lily shouted, not at all calmly and forgetting her promise to Alistair not to say anything.
“She’s moving to London to live with me,” Nate stated.
“No!” Lily yelled.
Nate went on. “And you are too.”
“What?” This time it came out as a high-pitched scream.
“What?” Alistair shouted, also jumping up from his chair.
Victor, not to be left seated, also got up.
Eyes never leaving Lily, Nate announced, “You’re moving to London.”
“I am not,” Lily returned.
“You and Natasha are moving in with me. You and I are getting married in two months.”
“What?” Lily screamed again.
“This is insane,” Alistair threw in.
Nate’s gaze sliced to Alistair and he repeated, “Lily and I will be married. She and Natasha are moving to London, moving in with me.”
Lily leaned forward and put her hands on the table. This was too much, just too damned much. She’d had enough.
“You forget, I tried that before and it… did… not… work!” Lily flung at him.
Nate’s carefully controlled face flinched.
“Lily –” Victor said softly.
She interrupted whatever Victor was going to say. “No! No, no, no!” Lily pushed away from the conference table and looked at Alistair. “I’m leaving,” she declared flatly.
Alistair was visibly grinding his teeth. If there was a paperweight close by, at that moment she would have gladly handed it to him and showed him where to aim.
He stopped grinding long enough to grunt, “Go.”
She grabbed her bag where it was sitting on the table, whirled and headed smartly for the door, not looking back.
She was brought to an abrupt halt with a strong hand on her upper arm.
She winced uncontrollably in pain when the hard fingers closed around her bruised arm and she turned and looked at the familiar, strong, long-fingered hand then at Nate who was standing behind her.
He watched her wince at his touch and something anguished flashed through his eyes.
“Take your hand off my client,” Alistair, seething, was walking swiftly toward them.
Nate ignored him.
“I want to meet my daughter,” he told Lily.
“Fine,” Lily snapped, wanting nothing but escape. Her head was beginning to pound.
“I want to meet her tomorrow,” Nate demanded.
“Fine!” Lily clipped.
“I want you there,” he pushed.
“Fine!”
“Lily, don’t say another word,” Alistair warned from beside them.
“You’ll be there tomorrow,” Nate ordered, it should have been a query but it was a command.
“Yes!” she cried. She would have said anything to get away.
She wrenched her arm free as Alistair said her name sharply in frustration.
She didn’t pay attention.
She turned away from Nate and ran away as fast as her high heels would carry her.
Chapter Fourteen
Nate & Vict
or, Nate & Laura
For the first fifteen minutes of the ride back to London, the two passengers in the back of the Rolls Royce were completely silent, each lost in their own tormented thoughts.
Then the silence was broken.
“Nathaniel –” Victor began.
“Don’t,” Nate’s voice cracked like a whip.
Victor held his breath for a moment.
There was not a single man on earth he would allow to speak to him that way except Nathaniel.
Especially now.
Victor sighed, looked out the window and instead of seeing the rolling pastureland, his vision filled with Lily.
Jesus, fucking, God, he thought. Laura couldn’t tell him not to curse so blasphemously in his thoughts and more than likely, if she’d witnessed the nightmare in that conference room, she’d have a few curses of her own.
The minute Victor walked in the room, seeing Lily so close and cosy with her lawyer, looking so beautiful, stylish and serene, he’d wanted to tear her head off.
Ten minutes later he’d had the crazy, sudden, unprecedented urge to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness.
She’d named her child Natasha, for Nathaniel.
She’d named her child after him, Victor, she’d given her baby, Nathaniel’s baby, Victor’s name.
And she’d nearly died doing it.
And after ten minutes more, Victor had been too broken to know what to do and that was a feeling he’d not felt for decades.
He was broken because she was broken. Broken because the bright, vivacious girl who had walked innocently into his home eight years before had been all but destroyed.
That suit she wore was camouflage, making it not so easy to see all that had been the glorious Lily was lost. The longer the attorneys talked the more she retreated, the further she got from them, from anyone and especially from Nate. She was so thin, so pale, she actually looked at the end in physical pain.
All because of Victor’s two, spoiled-rotten, dead-rotten children.
He was to blame for this. Victor.
His past sins had come home to roost.
“Nathaniel, we have to talk,” he tried again.
Nate’s head slowly turned from the window he was staring unseeingly out of and his eyes focussed on Victor. At the look in his son’s eyes, Victor immediately had nothing to say.
Then Nate spoke.
“Eight years,” he said.
Victor closed his eyes in pain.
“They cost us eight years,” Victor heard Nathaniel say.
Victor opened his eyes again. “I’ll take care of Danielle and Jeffrey,” he vowed.
And he most definitely would.
A muscle in Nate’s jaw jumped and he turned his head back to his contemplation of the scenery.
Victor went on. “Son, I swear to you, they’ll wish they were never born.”
And he meant it. They were his children by blood but they were his children no more.
Neither Nate nor Victor for a second questioned that Jeff and Danielle had done exactly what Lily’s attorney had said they’d done. The whole time Laura ranted and raved and Victor cursed and shouted after Lily disappeared, they didn’t say a word.
It wasn’t as if Lily had a great offer to go shopping in Milan that she couldn’t resist and that’s why she left Nate. She was at home in Indiana grieving the loss of both of her parents. Then at twenty-two years of age, grieving, also pregnant, she came back to Nate only to be told he was dead.
And his children knew and neither of them said one single word.
Not only that, they’d participated in this terrible deception. Jeff likely took the note and Danielle…
Victor shook off his thoughts. He’d deal with them later.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.
Nate sat silent.
Victor continued. “Nathaniel, you saw her. She’s –”
“I saw her,” Nate bit off, his voice eloquently stating, without a great many words, exactly what he’d seen and exactly how it affected him.
“You have to…” Victor started but didn’t finish. How did one go about piecing together a shattered person?
Victor thought that Nathaniel could do anything he put his mind to doing. He believed this with everything he was.
However, this was going to be his son’s mightiest challenge.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked again.
Nate took in a deep breath and then slowly let it out.
He turned to Victor and looked him directly in the eyes.
“I’m going to put my family back together.”
* * * * *
Nate stood at the floor to ceiling windows that made up the entire wall to the vast living room in his penthouse apartment.
As he drank from a tumbler that was filled with two cubes of ice and a lot of vodka and smoked what would be one of his final cigarettes (Lily didn’t like his smoking and he was not about to smoke in front of his seven year old daughter), he watched the sun set on London.
Lily had come back to him.
He tried to make this his only thought. Any of the others that were determined to crowd in his head were too painful to bear.
Like her pale, lifeless face, her fidgeting hands, her once-curvaceous, now nearly-too-thin body.
Like the fact that his brother and sister had connived, lied and stole away eight years of their happiness.
Like her horrible voice saying, “Let’s just get this over with.”
Like her haunted look when Nate’s attorney had suggested that the news of her parent’s death would be “entertaining”.
Like her flinching at feeling his hand on her arm.
Like her once expressive eyes now blank and looking through him like he wasn’t there.
Like the fact that he’d purposefully, with great relish, got her pregnant which nearly caused her to die.
Like her telling him, “You told me you’d always take care of me.”
Like the fact that he made promises to her, promises he didn’t keep, promises he didn’t even attempt to keep.
Like her whispering, “You told me you’d never let me go.”
On this final thought, he turned swiftly from the window and threw the tumbler of vodka across the room so savagely his arm was a blur. The tumbler exploded on the wall well across the room, dead centre of an exorbitantly expensive painting.
And then he heard a small, fearful noise and his head came around.
Laura was standing just inside the front door.
She was wearing a stylish dove grey skirt and a soft blue blouse. Both of these were crinkled and in disarray. Her face showed she’d been crying, it was mottled and red, her makeup smudged and worn.
She looked ravaged.
Nate turned fully to her. “How did you get here?”
“I have a key,” she explained unnecessarily for of course he knew she had a key.
“That’s not what I meant, tell me you didn’t drive in that state.”
She didn’t answer for a moment and they stood there, mother and son, the colossal expanse of his living room separating them physically; something else entirely separating them emotionally.
Then she smiled but it was a terrible, sad smile.
“Of course, my Nathaniel, after what happened to you today, you’d worry about me driving.” She shook her head. “I took a taxi.”
Nathaniel made no response; instead he leaned toward a table near him and put out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray.
Laura kept watching him then she said softly, “Victor called the children to the house. He’s disowned them. He sacked Jeffrey. He cut off Danielle’s allowance. They both only have their trust funds of which, Victor tells me, they’ve already used a significant portion.”
Nathaniel kept his silence. There was nothing to say except that it was all too late and everyone knew that fact quite painfully well enough already.
“He did this with my blessing,” she whi
spered. “I can’t say, I can’t explain how sorry…”
She didn’t finish and he watched her swallow convulsively, fighting back the tears.
“I now have only one son,” she finished, her voice aching.
The pain on her face was wretched, unlike anything Nate had ever seen before. She was watching him closely, waiting for a reaction but he didn’t move.
She seemed to come to some conclusion. She nodded slowly and then started to turn to leave.
That was when Nate spoke. “And a granddaughter.”
Her head snapped around and she stared at her son.
Nate went on. “And, if I can convince her, a daughter-in-law.”
“Oh Nate.” She used his shortened name for the first time in their acquaintance and flew across the room, throwing herself at him and bursting into tears. “I’m a terrible mother,” she wailed as his arms closed around her, “terrible.”
Nate’s held her more tightly.
“You aren’t a terrible mother,” he murmured.
“I lost the first one, my first baby boy.” She raised her tearful eyes to him. “I promised God if I had any babies, I’d do anything. I’d make them so happy. I’d give them everything they wanted. And look! Look what I created!”
She buried her face in his chest and Nate dropped his cheek to rest on the top of her head.
There was nothing to say to take away her pain, no words which would assuage her guilt. So he offered her none.
Against his chest, she muttered, “I knew it when it was too late. I knew I’d ruined them but there was nothing I could do. Then God gave me a second chance,” she lifted her head, dislodging his and he stared down at her, “you.”
“Laura…” At that, he didn’t know what to say.
“I want to come with you tomorrow.”
Nate knew exactly what he was going to say to that. “Laura, no.”
Her arms squeezed him tightly. “You can’t go there alone. I won’t let you go alone. And I have to face Lily, I have to…” she stopped then immediately started again, “I want to meet my granddaughter.”
Nate shook his head. “Lily isn’t –”
“I know,” she interrupted, her warm eyes beginning to fill with fresh tears, “Victor told me. Nathaniel, she has to know we…” Laura hesitated and then went on, “she has to know she isn’t alone anymore.”