He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes looking confused now. “How do you know that the boy is mine?”
Jemma shrugged her shoulders. “I know.” She was sure about her son’s parentage because this gorgeous, cynical, intelligent, obviously wealthy and irritatingly arrogant man was the only man she’d ever slept with.
Damien watched her carefully, not sure what to believe. “Prove it,” he said, thinking she would pull out a birth certificate with his name on it. Which didn’t prove anything since the mother could claim anyone as the father when he was absent from the delivery room.
Jemma shook her head. “I can’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “Can’t? Or won’t?” he asked ominously.
Jemma shivered, understanding that he’d just turned dangerous, but she didn’t care. She was still reeling from disappointment with his cynicism. “Okay, I won’t. I don’t have to prove anything to you. Dylan is my son. I don’t want you in his life. I was just trying to do the right thing by telling you. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my duty. Now I have to feed the horses,” she told him and turned her back on him, heading to the barn to start filling up the buckets with oats.
She felt him behind her but ignored him. Or tried to. Damien was too big to truly disregard. And his personality wasn’t one that would allow someone to pay no attention to him.
“Is that really the only reason you called me back? To try and convince me that your son is mine?”
Jemma sighed heavily as she lifted oats. The horses would be coming in from the pasture soon, eager to get fed and she didn’t have time to deal with him now. Not with all the crazy emotions he generated within her. “Like I said, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. You can believe me or not. You can get a sample of Dylan’s hair off of his brush…” she paused, looking up for a moment, “or maybe not. He hasn’t been brushing his hair well recently. But it’s short enough that he doesn’t really have to.” She picked up another bucket, putting it into one of the stall feed bins. “Or his toothbrush, if you really need proof.”
“How do I know that this isn’t someone else’s child that you’re trying to pass off on me?”
That made her angry and she swung around. “Because you’re the only man I’ve ever slept with!” she shot back to him. Then realized what she’d just admitted and blushed again. Spinning back to her work, she dug into the oats once again. “Just go away Damien. I don’t have anything to prove to you. We were just two people that passed in the night. Dylan is mine. I love him more than life. He’s a wonderful boy and if you don’t want to claim him then that’s just better for me. My life isn’t very complicated. We get up each morning, feed the animals, go to school, Dylan comes home, we feed the animals, I train them and we go to sleep.” She grabbed one of the horse blankets that had fallen off of the shelf and restacked it. “There isn’t much variation in our days and adding you into that picture would complicate our lives a lot. So just go on about your merry way. You have a new puppy to take care of,” she said, catching one of the other little guys as he tried to wiggle his chubby body under the stall doorway. Thankfully, he didn’t mind being caught. It just meant more opportunity to lick and get some affection before he was put back into the stall.
“When?” he demanded.
Jemma stopped briefly. “When what?” she asked, then went back to loading the feed buckets.
“When did you get pregnant?”
Jemma laughed softly. “There was only one night in my life that I’ve had sex, Damien. If you’ve forgotten that night,” she said with her heart breaking all over again, “then move on.”
“When is your son’s birthday?” he asked, shifting the focus of his question slightly, trying to remember the day he’d met Jemma. He remembered everything about that night, as well as the following morning because he’d tried finding her so frantically. But he couldn’t remember the date.
“January fifteenth,” she said and dumped a bunch of oats into a black bucket.
Damien stood there, his whole body numb while his mind worked through the math. If the boy had been born in the middle of January, that would mean he had been conceived in…September. He’d met her towards the end of summer and he’d had that meeting immediately afterwards…he’d bought out the car company that month which was why he’d been pulled away and couldn’t continue searching for her. But even his security detail hadn’t been able to find anything about Jemma. It hadn’t helped that he hadn’t gotten her last name. Only a first name plus some fuzzy security camera photos.
“He’s my son?” Damien breathed, still not sure he believed her.
Jemma poured food out for the puppies, then dog chow for Momma Dog and reclosed the stall. “No. Dylan is my son. I’ve been here with him, I’ve raised him and I’m the one who gave birth to him in the hospital with only my mother there to hold my hand.” She turned to face him and something twisted inside of her as she took in the strong man with suddenly pale features who was coming to terms with something he hadn’t expected. “I’m sorry to have told you in this way. I just…I wanted very badly to let you go, to never see you again. But I had to be honest.”
“Thank you,” he replied, sitting down on one of the low shelves that held food. “A son,” he said, almost reverently. “He’s five now?” he asked.
Jemma let in the horses, giving them all an affectionate pat as they passed by her. Several of them nudged her, asking for more before they hurried into their stalls, eager for their morning treat. They ate grass out in the fields, but they all preferred the oats she gave them.
“We’ll have to get married,” he told her.
Jemma swung around, startled. “Married?” she gasped.
“Yes. We’ll have to get married. I can arrange it immediately.”
Jemma shook her head and backed away nervously. “I’m not marrying you,” she said, more than a little breathless just at the idea. “No way.” She was shaking her head and backing up, staring at him the whole time. “I’m fine right here.”
Damien rubbed a hand over his face. “No. We must be married.”
Jemma’s mind was whirling. Married to Damien? Be in his bed every night? Enjoy his arms around her, experience the mind boggling sensuality of him every night?
But then reality intruded. Damien wasn’t offering her marriage as much as he wanted to ensure Dylan’s parentage. “Don’t you want to check his DNA?”
Damien shook his head. “That could take weeks,” he said. “Of all the women I’ve known, I believe in your honesty the most.”
She couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Just a few minutes ago, you were asking me how much money I wanted to be your mistress. What happened in the last thirty minutes to change your mind?”
He smiled, his eyes lighting up. “Marriage is much more convenient, isn’t it?”
She stepped back. “Not for me!”
“Why not?”
She thought hard, trying to remember her life. “Because I don’t want to be married to you. I don’t want anything from you.”
Damien didn’t understand her. “Everyone wants something from someone,” he retorted, becoming angry now. She wasn’t making sense! Not to mention, he was offering her the one thing that he’d diligently avoided for years. She was slapping him in the face with his offer and he didn’t like that feeling at all!
Jemma couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She looked up at him curiously, almost as if he were some sort of alien being. “Is that really how you live your life, Damien?” Her voice was softer, kinder because she felt sorry for him. “Does everyone in your world want something from you?”
“Of course!” he snapped, irritated with her naiveté. “The world is not a sweet, fair place, Jemma.”
Her heart melted more than a little with his words. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. But that’s just another reason why I won’t marry you. Nor will I expose Dylan to that kind of a world.”
He was gritting his teeth but not exactly sure what he was feeling. Anger, definitely. Betrayal? No, that wasn’t exactly the right word. Confusion? Yes, and that made things worse because he wasn’t really sure what he was confused about. Nor was he used to feeling this way. Confusion was not allowed. Not in his world. Nor had he ever experienced such a feeling.
Damien realized that he really didn’t like confusion. He was used to acting quickly and decisively. He paid a fortune for experts to give him information so he could act immediately and maximize his advantage and profit. So why was this slender beauty not behaving rationally? Why was she rejecting such a profitable position as his wife?
“I thought you said that Dylan was also my son,” he came back. He knew he’d hit on the right issue when he saw her eyes widen.
Her shoulders tensed and her body stiffened. “So it’s started already, eh?”
He blinked, not understanding. “What has started?”
“You making demands. You trying to decide what’s best for Dylan.”
Damien rolled his eyes. “I’m not trying to change everything. If what you say is true, then…” he paused. The reality that he genuinely had a son suddenly hit him full force. He stopped speaking and looked up, not at any specific thing but just off in the distance, unfocused and that strange, irritating confusion dissipated while he took in the reality that he had a son. An heir!
He’d never thought of having an heir before, but the idea suddenly appealed to him. He liked the concept of raising a son to take over his business interests. He’d started from nothing, growing up a poor son of a poor farmer who broke his back trying to make a living. He’d made his first million by the time he was twenty, had settled his parents into a bigger house but his father continued to farm the land until they’d both died about four years ago.
He walked into the house, not even hearing Jemma’s call to stop. He continued to walk until he was once against standing in front of the wall where all the pictures hung. Some of them were just of Dylan, and some were of Dylan and herself, holding Dylan as a baby or during different stages of his life.
“Tell me,” he croaked out.
Jemma looked at his face, his skin taut over the cheekbones and around his eyes and she knew what he was asking. “I got pregnant that night. I know that you took precautions, so I don’t know how it happened, but I figured it out two weeks after that night.”
He looked from one picture to the other, his mind reeling with the knowledge that he had a son. “More,” he demanded, his eyes hungrily taking in the pictures.
Jemma moved to the tiny family room, pulling a photo album off of one of the bookshelves. “Here. You can see more pictures in this.”
She sat down next to him on her well-worn sofa, telling him stories about each of the pictures, describing what Dylan was doing or where they were, why she took the picture at that time as well as what was happening in Dylan’s life.
She talked about Dylan for hours, smiling at some of the topics, groaning at some of his bad behavior and, just in general, sharing her love for her son. Their son. As much as she didn’t like that, she had to accept that Damien was here. And from the way he was absorbing the information about Dylan, he might be here more often.
She stood up, suddenly realizing that she was hungry. “Do you want something for lunch?” she asked, moving nervously into her kitchen. She was fully aware of Damien following her, watching her. “I can make a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“Jemma, why…”
“And tomato soup. Grilled cheese and tomato soup are a great combination.”
He watched her flitting nervously around the kitchen. “Sounds good,” he replied after a long pause.
Jemma’s shoulders relaxed slightly and she walked quickly to the fridge to pull out the ingredients. She sliced the cheese and buttered the bread, putting it onto the hot griddle before grabbing a can of soup out of the pantry. She knew she looked frantic, but she couldn’t help herself. She was alone with Damien and he knew about Dylan. All of her secrets were out there now. And he was still so big and so gorgeous! She loved the way his dark hair was turning slightly grey at the temples. “How old are you?” she asked finally, her need to know more about this man overwhelming her suddenly.
“I’m thirty-four,” he replied. “How old are you?”
She took a deep breath. “Almost twenty-six.”
“And you raise horses.” He said it as if he knew more than that, but raising horses really summarized her life.
She opened two cans of tomato soup and poured them into a pot to heat up. “Yes. I like horses. My father taught me to ride when I was too small to even hold the reins. He loved them as well. We always had horses around.”
“But you train them and raise thoroughbreds. You have a very good reputation in the industry.”
Jemma smiled, feeling a warm glow come over her. “Thank you,” she replied, feeling like she should say something else, but not sure what else to say. “Dylan rides as well. And he helps with the chores. He’s really very responsible,” she explained with a smile. “Unless he gets into the stall with the puppies, like this morning. Then he forgets about his chores…well, he forgets everything.”
“He was pretty cute this morning.”
Jemma nodded and flipped the grilled cheese sandwiches. “He is going to miss the little girl puppy you chose.”
Damien didn’t say anything to that, knowing that he was going to figure out how to keep Dylan, Jemma and the puppy all together. It was a plan that was slowly forming in his mind while he watched her cook, admiring her adorable derriere the whole time. His niece, Adriana was a sweet girl but she was lonely. She would love to have a cousin to play with. And Jemma seemed like a very good mother. Adriana would blossom under Jemma’s care.
“How many horses do you have?” he asked as she placed a bowl of red soup in front of him and a perfectly grilled sandwich. He hadn’t had a meal this simple since he was a child, but it brought back fond memories of his parents and the fun they’d had during meal times.
“I have about a dozen horses right now, but that number goes up and down with the sales and various births.
“This is good,” he told her after biting into the creamy goodness of the grilled cheese sandwich.