was true. Mostly. Instead, she found she wanted to tell this man the truth. She didn’t even really know why. Maybe, like she’d just thought, it was the liquor, or the way he’d held the baby bird so tenderly in his strong, masculine hands. But now, she realized, even more than those two things, it was that he’d come so quickly to her rescue tonight. It was the way his eyes tracked over her features like for that singular moment, his world revolved around the mystery of her thoughts. Maybe all those things combined made Scarlett relax her shoulders and tell this man—this virtual stranger—the truth when she’d divulged it to no one else except Merrilee and her mother. “Haddie’s father is Royce Reynolds.”
He tilted his head slightly, no recognition in his expression.
“Seriously? You don’t know who Royce Reynolds is?” Momentary amusement bubbled up in her chest. She’d finally told someone her “big secret” and he didn’t even know who the mega-famous superstar was. Hollywood’s golden boy. People’s Sexiest Man Alive.
“No. Who is he?”
“He’s an actor. No, more than that. He’s a star. Big time. When I was twenty, I was working for a catering company that had been hired to host this party in LA. Royce Reynolds was there and he struck up a conversation with me. He was charming. I was star-struck. I knew he had a girlfriend—they were constantly splashed across the tabloids, but . . . he mentioned they’d recently broken up and I believed him.” She took a quick sip of her drink. She liked to think she’d have declined his offer to go back to his room had she known he was lying about the breakup, but . . . well, she’d been young and dumb and giddy over his attention. And like she’d said, there had been that pull. “He invited me back to his room and one thing led to another.” His jaw tightened for a moment and then loosened. If she’d blinked she might not have seen it. Had that been . . . jealousy? Or disapproval? It made her doubt her decision to be this open with him. She took a deep breath. She was already in the middle. May as well cross to the other side.
“Anyway, a couple months later, I found out I was pregnant and I called to let him know.” She cringed internally when she thought about the hoops she’d had to jump through just to get a message to him. She’d honestly been surprised he called her back at all. Or remembered who she was. “He seemed rattled . . . all but hung up on me. I was scared. Alone. But I thought, well, he doesn’t want anything to do with this and so I’m on my own. Next thing I know, though, his wife—the girlfriend he said he’d broken up with, who he’d married the week before in some secret ceremony—is at my door. She kindly requested that I sign a non-disclosure agreement saying I would never make Royce’s paternity public and if I did so, I would be sued.”
“He sent his wife to confront you?”
Scarlett nodded. Yeah, that had been humiliating. Royce hadn’t even had the balls to come meet with her himself, to look her in the eyes, ask if she was okay. She would have signed the paperwork either way. She was capable of caring for her baby, even if it meant barely making ends meet. She wasn’t going to try to force him to acknowledge their child if he had no interest. Yeah, she would have signed the paperwork either way. She just might not have taken the money if it’d been him who came to see her.
She didn’t tell Camden about that though. She still felt such deep conflict on that subject. He might look at it as selling out her own daughter. And why shouldn’t he? Wasn’t that sort of what she’d done?
He was looking at her in that way again, but now she didn’t welcome it. Now she wanted to hide.
“Is that why you moved?”
“No. Royce and his wife live in New York City. I only met him because he was filming a movie in California. I wasn’t . . . you know . . . running away from him or anything.” Although in a small sense she’d done just that. She refused to even glance at tabloids in the grocery store, she no longer watched shows that included entertainment news, and she rarely went to