I nodded. “I’ll try.” I had an appointment for my sonogram next week. Maybe I could talk to him then. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, am I allowed to be excited about becoming a grandma?”
I smiled up at her. “Yes. You’ll be the best grandma ever.”
“I will. I could be one to Maisie, too. Perhaps you can tell Dylan that as well.”
26
Dylan
When court resumed, Tessa wasn’t there, and it worried me. Was she sick? Had she run off? “Do you know where she is?” I asked my lawyer.
“She wasn’t feeling well after I gave her the papers.” He cast a glance with the same judgmental expression as he’d given me when I asked him to make them up.
“I have to protect my rights,” I defended my actions.
“Yes, you do. But that baby isn’t born yet, and you’re in the middle of a custody case. The timing is bad.”
I turned my head away and rolled my shoulders. I wasn’t going to feel bad about this.
“She’s a young woman hopelessly in love with her husband. Enough so that she married him to save his other kid. She’s in the early stages of a pregnancy, which can be tough if she’s having morning sickness. Her husband is planning to divorce her and served her legal papers while she’s here helping him fight for his other kid.”
I swallowed down the guilt.
“Seriously, Dylan. Why she came to help you I have no idea. This probably won’t be over today. Will she be here for the next hearing?”
“She will.”
He gaped at me. He was probably wondering if I was delusional or narcissistic. “Why? Is she a sadist? A glutton for punishment?”
I shot him a scathing glare. “She sticks to her commitments.”
He nodded. “At least someone does.”
“What does that mean?”
“Have you stuck to your commitment to her? You treat her like shit, and yet she keeps her word.”
I hated feeling like an asshole. She was the one who didn’t tell me about the baby, but somehow I was the bad guy? Fuck, I was. Everything he was saying was right, which made me the world’s largest asshole.
“One more thing,” he said.
“You’ve said enough,” I ground out.
“That thing about Leo cheating on his wife and Veronica’s plan to take Maisie out of the country? Tessa discovered that. She called me and the PI.”
I turned to him in confusion. “What?”
He nodded. “Apparently she brought Maisie to her visit and that’s when she saw Leo with his hand up the nanny’s dress, and found the passport for Maisie.” He pulled out his phone and opened a picture. “She even had the common sense to snap a picture.”
I looked at the photo of a passport with Maisie’s picture. “Why didn’t she tell me this?”
He looked at me incredulously. “Seriously? With the way you treat her?” He shook his head.
I thought back to the day Maisie went to Veronica’s for the weeklong visit. That was the day I learned Tessa was pregnant. I yelled at her and then hung up. She could have called me back, but I knew I wouldn’t have answered. Jesus, I was a dick.
“You don’t deserve her,” my lawyer said as he stood when the judge appeared.
Hadn’t I said that all along? I stood as well until the judge told us to be seated. I looked over at Veronica who was sitting stoically, but I could see the anger and pain etched on her face. Had she known about Leo? Was she going to stick by him? I wanted to feel bad for her, but then I remembered she’d planned to take Maisie out of the country, and all sympathy dissipated.
“I’ve reviewed the evidence from both sides on their charges. The first that Mr. and Mrs. Hyatt have a marriage of convenience in order to retain custody, and the second that the Baskins sought sole custody to take Maisie out of the country.”
“That’s not true,” Veronica blurted out. Her lawyer turned to quiet her.
“I don’t know how to prove or disprove a marriage is real or not. The social worker’s report didn’t give any indication that there was something off in the marriage. Of course, there was no indication of infidelity on Mr. Baskin’s part, although these photos suggest that’s indeed the case.”
Leo cursed under his breath.
“I don’t care what any of you do in regards to each other. I care about what you do as it impacts what is best for the child, Maisie Hyatt. To that end, the most concerning to me is the possibility of taking her out of the country.”
“Your honor, Mr. and Mrs. Baskin would be well within their rights to do so if you’d granted them sole custody,” Veronica’s lawyer said.
“You’re right, but you’ve been in my court enough to know that the chances of me granting sole custody to the Baskins is nil. Mr. Hyatt has provided a safe, loving home to Maisie since her birth, and as a single father over the last three years since Mrs. Baskin left the family. Up until the last few months, her visits with the child were far and few between.”
The iron tight grip on my heart loosened slightly at the judge’s comments. Veronica wouldn’t be getting sole custody.
“The idea that her mother would remove her indefinitely from her father, the one constant in her life, bothers me.”
Veronica opened her mouth, but her lawyer put his hand on her arm.
“As far as I can see, Mr. Hyatt has always been accommodating to visits with Mrs. Baskin, and yet it doesn’t appear she was going to provide that same accommodation to Mr. Hyatt.”
“We wouldn’t live there all the time—”
“Mrs. Baskin, you need to stay quiet,” the judge said. “It doesn’t matter how long you lived there. It’s not like Mr. Hyatt could have weekend visits if you lived in Europe.”
“I think she’s about to render a decision,” my lawyer murmured next to me.
