Chapter 1
Grayson
I was halfway to O’Hare to board my damn private jet before I remembered the showing of Anton’s house. Damn it. That was today as well. I could blow it off. Let someone else deal with it. After all, that was Mr. Angier’s job. To sell off Anton’s house. What did it matter if I was there to sell it off or someone else? Who gave a shit about the rickety floor and the dusty walls and the bullshit furniture that looked as if it had been made two hundred years ago? Mr. Angier could show the house just fine without me. I could go back to Napa Valley, get back to my vineyard and my wines and draw up all the necessary contracts to nail Michelle to the damn wall.
Then, my mind went back to that old car in the garage. The Chevy I’d wrecked. The one I’d been working on for days.
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
I whipped a U-turn in the middle of the road and sped back towards Stillsville. I owed it to Anton. He was who I owed this shit to. I owed it to him to see his estate through like he wanted me to. I owed it to him to fix up the one thing that reminded him of the disappointment I had been to him at one point in time. I owed it to Anton to give a shit about his legacy, since he gave a shit about mine.
So, I would take care of all this tonight, then I’d head back to Napa Valley and never look back. There would be nothing else tying me to Stillsville. Nothing tying me to the wretched town that attempted to destroy my life every time I set foot in it.
Except for my baby.
If that child even existed.
I gripped the steering wheel hard until my hands cramped. I didn’t want to punch it, because I knew if I did I would damage it. And it was a rental, after all. Not that I couldn’t afford to replace it a hundred times over. But I didn’t want to be flagged as a bad customer and be refused service in the future. Damn it. Michelle said she was pregnant. But this wasn’t my first pregnancy scare. Women had a tendency to become especially fertile around me. Once my money was involved. When they had figured out who I was and how much I was worth. And Michelle knew all that. I saw her face when I was describing my house in Napa Valley. Her eyes practically danced with stars in them. Stars that morphed into dollar signs.
She was probably imagining the cushy life she could lead if she could convince me she was carrying my child.
That was why I always made sure to be careful when it came to women. I always wrapped it up, and if I could I pulled out as well. But with Michelle, I never gave it a second thought. She seemed so innocent and downtrodden, and when she told me she was on the pill the look in her eye told me to believe her. That innocent, doe-eyed stare that convinced me she could do no wrong. That she could deceive and manipulate no one because of who she was and how she had been raised. She looked so innocent. So honest.
I never stood a chance with her.
And now, because I ignored my better judgment, I was in a situation that had no happy endings. The entire town thought Michelle was screwing around with Andy while taking me for a ride. And I had seen the evidence before ignoring it. All of the signs were there. Andy’s constant pursuance of her. His addressing Michelle as ‘his woman.’ The bathroom incident. Andy’s drunken confrontation.
How the hell could I have been so blind?
Now I drove straight for the hornet’s nest, speeding down the highway that dumped me back into my personal nightmare. The entire town hated me from high school, and now they thought I was a fool. An easy man to play for a good damn time. Michelle would still be there as well, since I’d told her to stay put so she could deal with my damn lawyer. But that meant she’d be at the house when I got back. There in the throes of it all as I sold it out from underneath her.
Damn it.
I wasn’t ready to see her again so soon, and I felt sick to my stomach because of it.
Calling my lawyer was a top priority, but I needed to settle the future of Anton’s house first. Then, I could draw up ironclad agreements that protected me as well as the child growing in Michelle’
s body, if it was even mine. The first rule of order was no access to anything until I knew it was mine. I sure as hell wasn’t going to start providing care to a woman carrying a child that wasn’t mine. Of course, if it did turn out to be mine, then I’d take care of her. Them. Until the child was born. But if Michelle thought for one fucking second she’d get to live in my home and ride her life out on my dime, she was sorely mistaken.
I was prepared to do the one thing I almost had to do before I figured out another child wasn’t mine.
I was prepared to buy that child off her.
It was a memory I couldn’t forget. Three other women in the past had accused me of being the father of their children. I had obtained court-ordered DNA tests for two of the women to prove they weren’t mine, especially since I hadn’t even slept with one of them. But the third threw me for a loop up until month seven of her damn pregnancy. Twins, she said. She convinced a lot of people she was carrying my twins. And she hired a lawyer to fight off my requests for a paternity test. But when she came for my money—three million dollars, to be exact—a judge finally ruled in my favor for a required paternity test. And I prepared myself to be the father of twin girls in exchange for five million dollars.
I didn’t want a gold digger like that bitch anywhere near my children.
Then, the paternity test came back and they weren’t mine at all. While I’d felt a flood of relief course through my veins, there had been a part of me preparing to become a father. To take on the life of two innocent children and raise them. I wasn’t ready to be a father then, and I sure as hell wasn’t now. But the smallest part of me that had been prepared to raise those twins walked up to the plate and cocked back to take a swing.