“But why did you reject him in the first place?”
He shook his head as though he pitied her. “You worked for him—lived with him—for five years and never saw what a manipulative and unforgiving person he was? Val gets his streak of malice from somewhere, Scarlett.”
“And that’s the other thing I don’t understand! Why do you hate Val so much? Niko said you were competitive as children—siblings can be. I get that.” Her own sister was a constant aggravation. “But he said your mothers were the ones who poisoned you against each other and him.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.” She could see she was riling him up, but she had always been baffled by these wide channels of animosity. “He said Val was a troublemaker and was expelled from the boarding school you attended. That after Val gave up any claim to his fortune, you did the same. That’s never made sense to me. You cut off your nose to spite your face.”
“What a liar,” Javiero said through his teeth, his hand now clenching the arm of his chair as though to hold himself back from launching himself at her. “Val had the luxury of throwing Dad’s money in his face. He was making six figures wearing a hoodie and a scowl. Where would I get that sort of income at thirteen? My mother’s marriage was supposed to square off the debt my grandfather was in, but once she divorced him for his infidelity, Niko refused to pay her anything but child-support—in scrupulously equal amounts. Do you know what Niko said when my next semester came due and Val had dropped out?”
Oh, no.
“That he wanted to treat you equally,” she surmised with dread. She wanted to bury her face in her hands, hiding from what she suddenly saw as the bitter truth.
“He said Val was showing initiative and independence. The sort of maturity and business acumen that would serve him well when he inherited everything—because why would he reward the weaker son?”
“No.” Javiero was not weak in any way. He had had a steeper hill to climb and had lost his grandfather along the way. How could Niko dismiss him so cruelly? She had known him to have a ruthless streak, which she had thought of as the result of his sons’ rejection, not the source of it.
She felt sick, genuinely sick.
“I had no choice but to renounce his magnanimous offers to reinstate me as his heir. I might have proven myself in his eyes by the time you came along, having recovered and surpassed what my grandfather had amassed. I might even have been driven by Niko’s ridicule to achieve all that I did. But I have long ceased to care if he even remembered we shared DNA. I sure as hell didn’t want his money. I especially didn’t want to be beholden to him for anything. I still don’t.”
She couldn’t even defend Niko. He had mellowed as his health declined and his granddaughter came on the scene. She had watched it happen, but none of that erased his heartlessness toward his own children.
“I’m so sorry, Javiero,” she murmured.
“For what? For working for him? For showing up here and acting as though I was the one being hurtful and stubborn because I refused to go see him? Or for burdening our son with that tainted pile of cash? I don’t want you touching it, Scarlett. It will ruin all our lives. It will ruin mine all over again.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NURSE RETURNED from the shops, interrupting them. Her smile faltered, revealing she knew she had walked into a heavy discussion.
Javiero left her to badger Scarlett into a nap, going to the den to make some calls, mostly seeking privacy to regain his control. He didn’t like that he’d slipped back into ancient rage that had no place in his life anymore. The source of it was dead and he had moved on, but it was difficult when Scarlett was hanging on so tightly to the role Niko had given her.
And what the hell had he been thinking by kissing her? His ego wasn’t so fragile he needed proof a woman could still find him attractive! Rather, he had needed to know that the spark between them still existed. Not just to prove she could see past his disfigurement, but to prove to himself their passion hadn’t been completely one-sided that day.
He didn’t take much comfort from the confirmation. It only meant he had a weakness for her that she could exploit if he wasn’t careful.
The next days—and nights—were consumed by the learning curve of new parenting. They hired a nanny who was cheerful and efficient—and unable to settle Locke. Even Javiero was at his wit’s end with Locke’s long bouts of crying. He didn’t want to put the burden on Scarlett to walk him, but he was hideously relieved each time she turned up at his elbow and said, “I’ll take him.” Locke was happier when his mother held him. Javiero refused to torture his own child by separating them.
Scarlett didn’t complain, either. Like any mother, she was anxious to soothe him, but the demands of a new baby took a toll. She refused to talk about wedding arrangements, and the one time he questioned whether she ought to be working, suggesting she nap, he stepped squarely on her frayed nerves. He managed to resist engaging with her temper. Although he was a man used to getting what he wanted with a single order, he couldn’t fight a woman with dark
