I’m so glad you brought that up.” I pushed the manila envelope across the table, and he caught it.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, scanning the paper.
“You know what it is, unless that fancy law degree didn’t teach you how to read. Sign it.”
He read it again and then put it down slowly. Then I saw it, the look that said he thought he had one up on me now that he knew what I wanted.
“What did Ella pay you to do this?”
“I’m sorry?”
“There has to be a reason. It’s been years.”
“There is. I’m adopting the twins.”
His smirk fell off his preppy face, and his gaze dropped to my hand, looking for a ring. “You marrying her?”
“I can’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Well, seeing as you’d like to adopt my kids—”
All emotion drained from my body in a familiar retreat. The sensation the same as every time I stepped into combat, preparing me to commit unforgivable atrocities.
“They’re not your kids,” I said.
“Yeah, I’d beg to differ on that, considering how many times I screwed her in the two months we were married. Small-town girl with a small-town mind just wanted a ring first.”
If Havoc had been here, she would have gone for his throat based on my tension level alone.
“You might be their biological father, but you’re sure as hell not their dad. You’ve never so much as seen them, spoken to them, or had any interaction. They. Are. Not. Your. Kids. They’re mine.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, that sweet pressure was back in my chest, the love I had for them overpowering my instinct to void my emotions.
“So what exactly is in this for me?”
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged. “Consider it a business transaction. You want something I have. What are you going to give me for it?”
“How about I tell you what I’m not going to give you?”
He sat there expectantly while I did my best to keep a level head.
Three things: Maisie. Colt. Ella. They were the reason and the only things that mattered.
“I’m not going to give you the over-two-million-dollar bill for Maisie’s cancer treatments that’s going to come due in the next year.”
He swallowed but showed no other outward sign of hearing me.
“Reason enough? Or we can just add her to your insurance, since you’re so keen on calling them yours. I’m sure that would go over really well with your dad, considering he told Ella about six months ago that he really didn’t care if Maisie lived or died as long as she left him and you the hell alone. I’m sure that would be great for business if it got out.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Not in the least. Why would I do that when you’re going to sign that release, and your little secretary outside is going to notarize it all nice and pretty?” I leaned back in the chair.
“Fine. I’ll sign it.” He ripped a pen out of the cup in the center of the table and scrawled his name across the paper. I didn’t relax. Not yet.
“Have it notarized.”
He cursed under his breath but pushed back from the table and barked for his secretary from the doorway. A twentysomething woman in a tight pencil skirt hustled over, signing the bottom of the document and stamping it before running back to her desk.
Jeff shoved the folder at me, and I looked over the document, making sure it had been signed and notarized correctly. I wasn’t doing this a second time.
“Now if there’s anything else?”
I let my smile loose. “Yeah. Get your checkbook.”
“Excuse me?” His eyes popped wide in indignation.
“Get. Your. Checkbook. You’re going to write Ella a check for six years of back support on the kids. Now.”
“The hell I am. Besides, I just started working last month. What do you want? Thirty percent of nothing?”
“Yeah, but your million-dollar trust fund kicked in the minute you attended your first class freshman year of college. So you’re going to write a lovely, fat check to Ella.”
“How did you know that?”
“Not important. You’re going to write what you owe her, or I’m going to take this document to your fiancée’s dad. What is he? A senator? And then I’m going to leak it to the press that you not only abandoned those kids, but you left their mother destitute while she struggled to afford the cancer treatments Maisie needs. How do you think that’s going to play out in the press?”