“I love him so much and we’ve only just met.” Her wet lashes blinked as she looked for him, the sweetest smile trembling on her lips. Javiero wanted to set his own there to steady them.
“Does he have a name?” the nurse asked.
“I thought Locke for a boy,” Scarlett said tentatively. “But you can think on it.” Her eyelids blinked heavily. “I need to tell Kiara. She’ll be anxious.”
“I’ll do it,” he promised, continuing the rhythmic caress of his thumb across her brow, bemused that she could think of anything beyond this moment. “You should rest.”
“I haven’t slept properly in months,” she admitted on a yawn. “Will you wake me if he needs me?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was fading and her eyes stayed closed on the next blink. With a small sigh, she drifted into sleep.
He straightened, and the nurse handed him the bundle that was more blanket than baby, far lighter than Javiero expected, and such a punch in his chest he had to sit down to absorb it.
The lens through which he had viewed his life had completely inverted. He was no longer a son with a father, but a father with a son. He was overcome with pride, and also responsibility and an unmistakable fear. One day this infant, who was at this moment unmarred by life, could turn on him with abhorrence and tell him to go to hell, the way he had done with Niko.
I will do better, Javiero swore compulsively even though he wasn’t sure what “better” would look like. He had only ever thought of himself as a parent in the vaguest of “someday” terms, not the immediacy of every day.
His psyche leaped on the words. He wanted every day with his son.
He wouldn’t be a father in name only, as Niko had been. An imposing stranger who enforced a handful of visits a year, someone who provoked fear and insecurity, resentment and rebellion. He would not fill his son’s ears with disparagements of his mother.
Javiero moved his gaze from the eyelashes against a delicate pink cheek to the longer, blond lashes on Scarlett.
It seemed impossible that the two of them had made this fragile miniature person. Oh, he remembered every second of the act. A stir of the infuriating attraction he’d always felt toward her teased him even now, calling up wispy memories of a lush breast in his hand and the incredible sensation of sliding into her heat. She had smelled of sunshine and crushed flower petals and had held back nothing.
At the time, it had seemed so deliciously spontaneous yet inevitable.
Given his father’s behavior, Javiero had always guarded against letting his nether regions take control. Scarlett had tested his resolve from their first meeting.
He wasn’t sure what had driven that depth of attraction. Her classic beauty, obviously, but she had worked for his father. He’d wanted to shoot the messenger as badly as he’d wanted to seduce her. He’d sent a message to his father by barely giving her the time of day, but he’d always had a sense of possibility where she was concerned, certain she would one day turn her back on Niko and come to him.
There’d been something in her self-possessed demeanor that had intrigued him. She wasn’t a doormat. Hell, no. From the first moment, he had seen she was intelligent and witty and capable of withstanding high stress. She hadn’t let him or his father’s complicated love life get under her skin.
Maybe that had been the draw. Val and the war between their mothers had always been a stain that Javiero couldn’t erase, yet Scarlett had disregarded it. Or regarded it as normal?
Either way, the far more interesting reaction was her betraying awareness of him. She’d done her best to hide it, but he’d seen it in a lingering look or a poorly disguised blush.
He had fought his own sexual tension, suspicious of her even then. When he had ultimately lost that battle, it had been a deeply humbling experience. Not only had he succumbed to his primal instincts and discovered his perfect sexual match, she had left him afterward. For his father.
He’d been ripe with self-disgust then, angry with himself for giving her the upper hand.
He had followed his mother’s suggestion that he propose to Regina as a means of moving on from Scarlett. To firmly closing off roads back to the madness he’d shared with her.
Yet here he was with her, holding the baby they’d made that day.
The baby she had kept secret out of loyalty to a man he despised—possibly to gain control of that man’s fortune.
On the other hand, her anxiety through her labor had been for the safe delivery of their baby. Her maternal connection to their son was indisputable. They would both want “every day,” so how did he proceed?
His mind leaped to marriage, the historically presumptive course of action when a couple shared a child. His mother had been after him to provide an heir and here the boy was. Did Javiero need to marry?
His libido rushed to vote in favor of every night with Scarlett, but he made himself ignore the tantalizing thought and consider the idea more dispassionately. Marriage came with no guarantee of success. His mother had married Niko in good faith and dutifully conceived Javiero, only to have Evelina emerge pregnant as well. Paloma had been so humiliated she had divorced Niko. The ensuing hostilities and financial hardship had become Javiero’s blighted childhood.
Javiero had always wondered how different his life might have been if he’d had united parents who eschewed others for the sake of providing a stable foundation for their offspring. Could he provide that for his son? Javiero would honor his vows if he was legally bound to Scarlett, and he experienced a possessive thrill at the idea of his ring on her finger—one he shied away from examining too closely.
He couldn’t trust her, he reminded himself. The deep knot of betrayed fury that he’d ignored while she’d been writhing
