blinked up at him in confusion, then a moment later she laughed. “No, no. I told you, I’m not the baby’s mother. I’m the baby’s aunt. But you’re definitely his father. Nathan has your eyes and even that stubborn chin of yours. Which does not bode well, I suppose. But stubbornness can often be a good quality, don’t you think?”
Nathan.
The imaginary baby had a name.
But that didn’t make any of this situation real.
“This is insane,” he told her. “You’re obviously after something, so why not just spill it and get it over with.”
She was muttering to herself as she walked back to his desk and Simon was forced to follow her. “I had a speech all prepared, you know. You rushed me and everything’s confused now.”
“I think you’re the only thing confused here,” Simon told her, moving to pick up his phone and call security. They could escort her out and he’d be done with this and back to work.
“I’m not confused,” she said. She read his expression and added, “I’m not crazy, either. Look, give me five minutes, okay?”
He hung up. Wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the gleam in her blue eyes. Maybe it was that tantalizing dimple that continued to show itself and disappear again. But if there was the slightest chance that what she was saying was true, then he owed it to himself to find out.
“All right,” he said, checking his watch. “Five minutes.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and said, “Here we go. Do you remember dating a woman named Sherry Taylor about a year and a half ago?”
A thin thread of apprehension slithered through Simon as he searched his memory. “Yes,” he said warily.
“Well…I’m Sherry’s cousin, Tula Barrons. Actually, Tallulah, named after my grandmother, but that’s such a hideous name that I go by Tula….”
He was hardly listening to her now. Instead his mind was focused on those nebulous memories of a woman in his past. Was it possible?
She took another steadying breath and said, “I know this is hard to take in, but while you two were together, Sherry got pregnant. She gave birth to your son six months ago, in Long Beach.”
“She what?”
“I know, I know. She should have told you,” the woman said, lifting both hands as if to say it wasn’t her fault. “I actually tried to convince her to tell you, but she said she didn’t want to intrude on your life or anything, so…”
Intrude on his life.
That was an understatement. God, he could barely remember what the woman looked like. Simon rubbed at the spot between his eyes as if somehow that might clear up the foggy memories. But all he came up with was a vague image of a woman who had been in and out of his life in about two weeks’ time.
And while he’d gone on his way without a backward glance, she’d been pregnant? With his child? And didn’t even bother to tell him?
“What? Why? How?”
“All very good questions,” she said, smiling at him again, this time in a sympathetic fashion. “I’m really sorry this is such a shock, but—”
Simon wasn’t interested in her sympathy. He wanted answers. If he really did have a son, then he needed to know everything.
“Why now?” he demanded. “Why did your cousin wait until now to tell me, and why isn’t she here herself?”
Her eyes filmed over and he had the horrifying thought that she was going to cry. Damn it. He hated when women cried. Made a man feel completely helpless. Not something he enjoyed at all. But a moment later, the woman had gotten control of her emotions and managed to stem the tide of those tears. Her eyes still glittered with them, but she refused to let them fall and Simon found, unexpectedly, that he admired her for it.
“Sherry died a couple of weeks ago,” she said softly.
Another quick jolt of surprise in a morning that felt full of them. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing it sounded lame and clichéd, but what else was there to say?
“Thanks,” she said. “It was a car accident. She died instantly.”
“Look, Ms. Barrons…”
She sighed. “If I beg, will you please call me Tula?”
“Fine. Tula,” he amended, thinking it really was the least he could do, considering. For the first time in a very long time, Simon had been caught completely off guard.
He wasn’t sure how to react. His instinct, of course, was to find this baby and if it was his son, to claim him. But all he had was this stranger’s word, along with memories that were too obscure to trust. Why in the hell would a woman get pregnant and not tell the baby’s father? Why wouldn’t she have come to him if that child really was his?
He scrubbed one hand across his jaw. “Look, I’m sorry to say, I don’t really remember much about your cousin. We weren’t together long. I don’t see why you’re so sure this baby is mine.”
“Because Sherry named you on the baby’s birth certificate.”
“She gave the baby my name and didn’t bother to tell me?” He didn’t even know what to say to that.
“I know,” she said, her tone soothing.
He didn’t want to be soothed. Or understood. “She could have put anyone’s name down,” he pointed out.
“Sherry didn’t lie.”
Simon laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement. “Is that right?”
Tula winced. “All right, fine. She lied to you, but she wouldn’t have lied to her son. She wouldn’t have lied about Nathan’s name.”
“Why should I believe that the boy is mine?”
“You did have sex with her?”
Scowling, Simon admitted, “Well, yes, I did, but—”
“And you do know how babies are made, right?”
“That’s very amusing.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” she told him. “Just honest. Look, you can do a paternity test, but I can tell you that Sherry would never have named you as Nathan’s father in her will if she wasn’t sure.”
“Her will?” The silent clang of a warning bell went off in his mind.
“Didn’t I already tell you that part?”
“No.”
She shook her head and dropped into one of the chairs angled in front of his desk. “Sorry. It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, what with Sherry’s accident and arranging the funeral and closing up her house and moving the baby up here to my house in Crystal Bay.”
Sensing that this was going to go on far longer than the original five minutes he’d allowed her, Simon walked around the edge of his desk and took a seat. At the very least, he was now in the position of power. He watched the pretty blonde and asked, “What about the will?”
Tula reached into the oversize black leather bag she had slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a large manila envelope and dropped it onto his desk. “That’s a copy of Sherry’s will. If you look, you’ll see that I’ve been named temporary guardian of Nathan. Until I’m sure that you’re ready to be the baby’s father.”
Her voice, her words, were no more than a buzz of sound in his head. He read through the will quickly, scanning until he found the provisions for the child Sherry had named as his. Custody of minor, Nathan Taylor, goes to the child’s father, Simon Bradley.
He sat back in his chair and kept rereading those