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‘He will want to have some part in your life, Thea. He’s your father, and you can’t blame him for not being around when he’s only just found out about you.’
‘That doesn’t give him any rights over me,’ Thea said stubbornly. ‘Believe me,’ she said with agonising certainty, ‘I’m quite an expert on this. Most of the kids at school have parents who are divorced, or about to be divorced—I listen to everything they say about it.’
‘But I’m not married to Damon.’
‘What difference does that make?’ Thea demanded.
‘I wanted to tell him as soon as I knew that I was pregnant with you, but I couldn’t—’
‘I don’t care,’ Thea declared, hugging Lizzie fiercely. ‘I only care about you. I don’t need anyone else,’ she blurted on the brink of tears, instantly on her mother’s side. ‘We’ve done all right together, haven’t we?’
‘Of course we have.’ Thea needed reassurance far more than she did, Lizzie thought as she dropped kisses on the top of Thea’s head. ‘And we’ll continue to do all right, you and me.’
‘Well, then…’ Thea said, pulling back and looking up. ‘Why does he have to be part of my life?’
Holding Thea so she could look into her daughter’s eyes, Lizzie said quietly, ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about—nothing—do you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ Thea said with absolute confidence.
This was not at all the way Lizzie had imagined things would turn out. Knowing Thea liked Damon, she had imagined Thea would be thrilled to learn Damon was her father. She had seemed thrilled, to begin with, but now Thea appeared to be more threatened than pleased by the news.
The important thing was that Thea understood that nothing would change between Thea and Lizzie because of these new circumstances.
‘Why don’t we meet him?’ Lizzie suggested. ‘You don’t have to worry because I’ll be there. You can get to know him slowly—in your own time. We both can, and then we’ll take it from there. The one thing I promise is that you will never have to do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘Does that mean I can stay with you?’ Thea blurted, her cheeks red and shiny with bottled-up emotion.
‘Of course you can!’ Lizzie drew Thea close.
‘Because some of the girls at school never get to see their other parent, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to be away from you. I love you!’ she exclaimed.
When Thea threw her arms around Lizzie, to give her the tightest hug ever, the dam finally broke and Lizzie cried.
He was waiting for Lizzie’s call. Take as much time as you need, he’d told her. He’d step in when Thea was ready to meet him, and then Lizzie and he would have a discussion as to how to proceed from there.
He was confident all the problems could be ironed out. All that mattered to him, and to Lizzie too, was Thea’s happiness. He did have one irritation to handle, and that was the media who were sniffing around. His people had contacted him to warn him.
Rumours always followed him. He was one of the richest unmarried men in the world, so he supposed media interest was inevitable. He’d told his team to downplay it.
‘If you do, they will,’ he’d said.
‘I doubt it, when Ms Montgomery has a dark-haired child who happens to be the spitting image of you and happens to be the child prodigy playing at your father’s birthday party,’ the head of his legal department had informed him.
‘What if she does look like me?’
He mapped Thea’s face in his mind. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t spotted the similarities between them before. He and Thea were obviously related, and that was a fact the press could hardly be expected to miss.
‘There’s bound to be speculation,’ his lawyer advised. ‘You’d do well to put the rumours to bed before they get out of control.’
‘It’s no one else’s business,’ Damon said coldly. ‘I’m entitled to a private life and I intend to keep it that way: private.’
‘You can’t allow emotion to blind you to what might be going on here, Damon.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Just that there are gold-diggers everywhere,’ his lawyer continued doggedly.
‘Are you referring to Ms Montgomery?’
‘She is her father’s daughter,’ his lawyer said smoothly.
Damon bunched his fists. He knew the lawyer was only doing his job, and Damon had never wanted yes-men around him to boost his ego. The lawyer couldn’t be faulted for braving his displeasure by giving him the plain truth.
‘I’ll give your advice some thought,’ he conceded. ‘In the meantime I expect you to keep the press off both Ms Montgomery’s and her daughter’s backs.’
‘And yours,’ his lawyer said.
‘And mine,’ Damon agreed wearily. If he didn’t give the man one concession, who knew where the lawyer’s enthusiasm for his job might lead?
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