No Stranger to Scandal - By Rachel Bailey Page 0,16
who’d put himself through law school on a military scholarship and worked as an investigative lawyer in the military police until his time in the armed forces was up. Now he was a wealthy single father of a one-year-old.
She looked down at the sleeping boy, his face flushed a faint pink, remembering the trace of awkwardness she’d seen the night Hayden had set him up in the playpen. That image had worried at the edges of her mind. She moistened her lips and dared a personal question. “Has it been hard becoming his sole parent?”
Hayden’s head snapped up, surprise in his eyes. Then he leaned back on his hands and nodded wearily. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
If they were going to get into a deeper conversation, she should be looking for clues to skeletons in his professional career for her exposé, or evidence of bias, yet she couldn’t help prodding a little further into his relationship with Josh. “Did your wife do most of the care before she died?”
He coughed out a bitter laugh. “Brooke didn’t do much with him at all. Besides buy him designer clothes and show him off when she thought it would grant her social cachet.” He pulled a cotton cover over his son and placed a hand protectively on the sleeping boy’s back.
“So you looked after him?” She folded her legs up beneath her, turning to face Hayden more. This was the most personal information he’d disclosed and she was hungry for every detail, every expression.
“No,” he said, wincing. “Brooke had staff for everything, including Josh. She—” He hesitated, obviously weighing how much information to share. She waited, letting the decision be completely his, though wishing she could ease the tension that bound his body tight. “She was a socialite from a very wealthy family who expected to be pampered. When we were first together, I was happy to oblige, but it turned out that she needed more pampering than a husband alone could give.” His expression was wry, but it obviously veiled deeper emotions. “She had staff to clean the house, a chef, a personal trainer and from the day he was born, two live-in nannies for Josh, so they could work round the clock. He rarely saw his mother.”
“Oh, Hayden.” One of her father’s sisters, Evelyn, lived like that, but she could imagine nothing worse than outsourcing her life, her son, so completely.
“I should have done something, been more involved.” His voice was thick with self-recrimination, his face twisted with regret. “But Brooke said that children were her domain and she’d handle them the way she wanted. The way she’d been raised. And I hate to admit it, but I was sick of the arguments, so I let her have her way for some peace. For all our sakes, including Josh’s. Besides, I was out of my depth—I’d never been a father before—how did I know the way she’d been raised was wrong?”
“I’m assuming that was quite different from the way you were raised,” she said gently.
“You can say that again.” He gazed down at Josh for a long moment before reaching out to smooth the hair back from his son’s face. “I spent time with him when I could. Played with him at night, did things when I had a day off, but I guess part of me must have been okay with the way Brooke wanted things done or I would have changed them. Insisted.” He rubbed two fingers across the deep lines on his forehead. “I was stupid.”
“You seem to be making up for it now,” she said.
He shook his head dismissively. “There’s a long way to go before I become the type of father I want to be.”
“I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself.” She reached over and laid a hand on the warm cotton covering his forearm, wanting to bring any comfort she could. “Josh clearly loves you, and he’s happy. You’re doing something right.”
“Thanks,” he said with a half smile and glanced away. His expression was usually so serious that even a half smile seemed bright, drew her in till all she could see was him. His gaze dropped to the hand that still lay on his arm. When he looked back up to her, his coffee-brown eyes darkened, and his chest rose and fell too fast. She knew how he felt—suddenly this open park didn’t contain enough oxygen. The strong muscles under her fingers burned with heat and held her hand trapped