The Marriage Agenda: The Marriage Conspiracy / The Billionaire's Baby Plan

Chapter 3

Joleen forgot all about Antonia’s distress. She could feel her blood pressure rising. So much for trying to make it work with the Atwoods.

She spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I could not have heard you right. You did not just offer to buy my baby from me—did you?”

Antonia squeaked. There was no other word for it, for that small, desperate, anguished sound. She squeaked and then she just stood there, wringing her hands.

Robert, however, had no trouble forming words. “Buy your baby? What an absurd suggestion. Of course, I’m not offering to buy Samuel. What I am offering you is a chance. A chance to do the right thing. For your child. And for yourself, as well.”

“The right thing?” Joleen echoed in sheer disbelief. “To sell you my baby is the right thing?”

Robert waved a hand, a gesture clearly intended to erase her question as if it had never been. “I know that you have never attended college—except for a year, wasn’t it, at some local trade school?”

“Who told you that?”

“I have my sources. Now you will be able to finish your education. You’ll be able to do more with your life than run a beauty shop.”

“I happen to like running a beauty shop.”

He looked vaguely outraged, as if she had just told an insulting and rude lie. “Please.”

“It’s true. I love the work that I do.”

He refused to believe such a thing. “I am offering you a future, Joleen. You are a young, healthy woman. You will have other children. My son only had one. Antonia and I want a chance to bring that one child up properly.”

“Meaning I won’t bring Sam up properly.”

“My dear Joleen, you are twisting what I’ve said.”

“I am not twisting anything. I am laying it right on the line. You don’t think I will bring my son up right, so you want to buy him from me.”

“You are overdramatizing.”

Joleen, who, since the loss of her kind and steady father a decade before, had always been the calmest person in her family, found it took all of her will not to start shrieking—not to grab the brass paperweight on her father’s desk and toss it right in Robert Atwood’s smug face.

“My offer is a good one,” Robert Atwood said.

Joleen gaped at him. “I beg your pardon. It is never a good offer when you try to buy someone’s child.”

“Joleen—”

“And what is the matter with you, anyway? Your ‘offer’ is bad enough all by itself. But couldn’t you have waited a day or two? Did you have to come at me on my sister’s wedding day?”

“Please…” croaked Antonia. She looked as if she might cry.

Robert put his arm around her—to steady her or to silence her, Joleen wasn’t sure which. He held his proud white head high. “Once we’d made the decision, the sooner the better was the way it seemed to me. Might as well make our position clear. Might as well get you thinking along the right track.”

A number of furious epithets rose to Joleen’s lips. She did not utter a one of them—but she would, if this man went on saying these awful things much longer.

This conversation can only go downhill, she thought. Better to end it now.

“Mr. Atwood, I’m afraid if you stay very much longer, I will say some things that I’ll be sorry for. I would like you to leave now.”

Antonia made another of those squeaky little noises. Robert squeezed her shoulder and said to Joleen, “I want you to think about what I’ve said.”

I am not going to start yelling at this man, she told herself silently. She said, “I do not have to think about it. The answer is no. You cannot have my child. Not at any price.”

Robert Atwood stood even taller, if that was possible. “My dear, I would advise you not to speak without thinking.”

“Stop calling me that. I am not your dear.”

“Joleen, I am trying to make certain that you understand your position here.”

Joleen blinked. This had to be a nightmare, didn’t it? It could not be real. “My position?”

“Yes. You are an unwed mother.”

Unwed mother. The old-fashioned phrase hurt. It made her sound cheap—and irresponsible, too. Not to mention a little bit stupid. Someone who hadn’t had sense enough to get a ring on her finger before she let a man into her bed.

Maybe, she admitted to herself, it hurt because it was all too true. She had not been smart when it came to Bobby Atwood. Which seemed funny, at that moment. Funny in a sharp and painful way. A tight laugh escaped her.

“Don’t try to make light of this, Joleen.”

The urge to laugh vanished as quickly as it had come. “I promise you, Mr. Atwood. I am not makin’ light. Not in the least.”

“Good. For child care, you rely on your family members, and they are not the kind of people who should be caring for my grandson.”

Joleen thought of that paperweight again—of how good it would feel to grab it and let it fly. “You better watch yourself, insultin’ my family.”

Robert Atwood shrugged. “I am merely stating facts. Your mother, from what I understand, and from what I witnessed today, is sexually promiscuous. Your younger sister has been in serious trouble at school and was arrested last year in a shoplifting incident. Your other sister has had some problems with the law, as well. None of those three—your mother or those sisters of yours, are the kind I would trust around my grandson. If it comes down to it, I will have little trouble convincing a judge that females like that aren’t fit caregivers for Samuel, that he would be much better off with Antonia and me.”

Joleen couldn’t help it. She raised her voice. “‘Females like that’?” she cried. “Just who do you think you are, to call my family females like that?”

“You are shouting,” said Robert Atwood.

“You’re darn right I am. I was warned about you and I should have listened. But I didn’t, and look what has happened.”

“Joleen—”

“That is all. That is it. You won’t get my baby, don’t think that you will. And I want you out of my mother’s house.”

Right then the door to the front hall swung inward. It was Dekker, all six foot three and 220, or so, very muscular pounds of him. “Joleen. Everything okay?”

The sight of her dear friend calmed her—at least a little. She said quietly, “Everything’s fine. The Atwoods were just leaving.”

“You’ll be hearing from my attorney,” Robert Atwood said.

“Fine. Just go. Now.”

Apparently, he’d said all he came to say. At last. With great dignity he guided his wife toward the door.

Which Dekker was blocking. “What’s this about a lawyer?” he demanded.

Robert Atwood spoke to Joleen. “Tell this thug to step out of my way.”

Joleen longed to tell Dekker just the opposite—to ask him if he would please break both of the Atwoods in two. But, no. It wouldn’t be right to kill the Atwoods. Not on DeDe’s wedding day, anyway.

“It’s okay, Dekker. Let them go.”

* * *

Dekker, who had a fair idea of what had been going on in Samuel’s study, stepped aside reluctantly. The Atwoods left the room. He followed them, just to make certain they got the hell out.

Once they went through the front door, he shut it firmly behind them. Then he returned to Joleen.

She was standing by her father’s desk, a pretty woman in a long dress that was not quite pink and not quite red. Her heart-shaped face was flushed, her full mouth tight. A frown had etched itself between those big brown DuFrayne eyes.

Dekker quietly closed the door.

Her mouth loosened enough to quiver a little. “Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

Just to make sure he had it figured out, he said, “They want to take Sam away from you.”

He hoped that maybe she would tell him it wasn’t so. But she didn’t. She picked up a brass paperweight of a Yankee soldier on a rearing horse from the edge of Samuel’s desk. “I thought about smashing Robert Atwood in the face with this.”

Dekker shook his head. “Bad idea. And, anyway, violence is not your style.”

“Right now I feel like it could be. I feel like I could do murder and never think twice.”

“You couldn’t.”

She clutched the brass figure against her body and looked at him with fury in her eyes. “He called my mother promiscuous, Dekker. He said Mama and DeDe and Niki weren’t fit to take care of Sam. He raised a shallow, sweet-talkin’ lowlife like Bobby—God forgive me for speakin’ ill of the dead—and he has the nerve to come in my mother’s house and say that my people are not good enough to do right by my child, that I am not good enough, that—”

In two long strides, he was at her side.

She looked at him with a kind of bewildered surprise—that he had moved so fast, or maybe that, in moving, he had distracted her from her rage. “What?”

“Better give me that.”

She only gripped the paperweight tighter. “He offered me money, Dekker. Money for my baby. Five hundred thousand dollars to let them have Sam.”

Dekker swore. “I’m sorry, Jo. You shouldn’t have had to listen to garbage like that.” He put his hand over hers. “Come on. Put this thing down.…”

She allowed him to pry her fingers open. He set the paperweight back in its place on the desk. Then he took her by the shoulders.

“What else?” he asked, when she finally met his eyes.

She swallowed, shook her head as if to clear it of so much hot, hurtful rage. “When I…when I told him no, that I wouldn’t take his money and he could not have my child, he started talkin’ lawsuits, how he would not have any trouble convincing a judge that Sam would be better off living with him and Antonia.”

Predictable, thought Dekker. He said, “Anything more?”

Those big eyes narrowed. “He knew. About how Niki got picked up for shoplifting last year. And he seemed to know about DeDe, about her little joyride in that stolen car.”

In fact, it was one of Niki’s friends from the bad-news crowd she’d been hanging around who’d actually tried to walk out of the department store with a cashmere sweater under her coat. But Niki had been there. She had known of the attempted theft and done nothing to stop it. And before that, there had been a series of incidents at school, bad grades and detentions, minor vandalism of school property and truancies, too.

As for DeDe, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, she had been a true wild child. She went out with bad boys, she drank, she experimented with drugs. She’d ended up before a judge after the incident with the car, when she’d hitched a ride with a boy she hardly knew. The boy had shared his bottle of tequila with her and taken her down I-35 at a hundred miles an hour.

She’d gotten off easy, because it was her first arrest and because she hadn’t known that the car was stolen and because, by some miracle, the judge had believed her when she swore she hadn’t known. But she’d come very close to doing some time. After that, she’d cleaned up her act.

The problem with Niki and DeDe, the way Dekker saw it, was losing their father—and not getting enough attention and supervision from their mother. Camilla loved her girls with all her heart, but she’d been sunk in desperate grief for the first year or two after Samuel’s death. And since then she was often distracted by all the boyfriends. She also worked long hours at the salon that she and Joleen now operated together.

Joleen had done her best to pick up the slack, to be there for her sisters, to offer attention and to provide discipline. She’d taken a lot of flack from both DeDe and Niki for her pains. They’d acted out their resentments on her; they’d fought her every time she tried to rein them in.

But recently things had started looking up. Niki had left the bad crowd behind. She took school seriously, was getting As and Bs rather than Ds and Fs. And DeDe had really settled down, as well. Joleen had dared to let herself think that the worst part of raising her own sisters was behind her.

Not that the reform of the Tilly girls would matter one damn bit to a self-righteous bastard like Robert Atwood.

“Oh, I cannot believe this is happening.” Joleen pulled away from Dekker’s grip and sank to one of the faded easy chairs. For a moment, she stared down at her lap, slim shoulders drooping. Then she pulled herself up straight again. “When I asked him how he knew those things about my sisters and my mother, he said he had his sources. Dekker, that man has had someone snooping around in our lives.” She said it as if it were some sort of surprise. “Why, I would not put it past him to have hired someone, some private detective…”

“You mean someone like me?”

She let out a small, guilty-sounding groan. “Oh, Dekker, no. I didn’t mean it that way.…”

“It’s okay. I did. I’m damn good at what I do. When I dig up the dirt on someone for a client, I get it all. I’m sure whoever Robert Atwood hired has done the same.”

She put up a hand to swipe a shiny golden-brown curl back from her forehead. “Dekker, it won’t work, will it? He couldn’t get Sam by claiming that my mother and sisters are unfit. Could he?”

Dekker wished he didn’t have to answer that one.

Joleen picked up his reluctance. “You think it could work, don’t you?” Her shoulders drooped again. “Oh, God…”

He dropped to a crouch at her feet. “Look. I’m only saying it might work. Your sisters and your mother all pitch in, to take care of Sam when you can’t.”

“So? Good child care costs plenty. If I had to hire someone, I couldn’t come close to affording the kind of care I can get from my family for free.” She leaned toward him in the chair, intent on convincing him of how right she was—though somewhere in the back of her mind, she had to realize she was preaching to the choir. “They are good with him, Dekker, you know that they are. And as for Niki and DeDe, it’s been a long time since there’s been any trouble from either of them. And Mama—well, all right. She likes men and she loves to go out. Is that a crime? I don’t know all her secrets, but I know she is not having affairs with all of them. She is no bed hopper. She loves the romance of it, that’s all. She loves getting flowers and going dancing. But then, after way too little time with each guy, she can’t pretend anymore. She admits to herself that the latest man is not my father. So she moves on to the next one—and what in the world does that have to do with how she is with Sam?”

“It’s got nothing to do with how she is with Sam. The truth is, Camilla is a fine grandma. You know it and I know it. But I’m trying to get you to see that it’s not the truth that matters here.”

She blinked. “Not the truth?”

“No, Jo,” he said patiently. “It’s the way things look. The way Robert Atwood and the lawyers he gets will make things look. It’s appearances. A war of words and insinuations. Atwood’s lawyers will take what your sisters have actually done and make it look a hundred times worse. They’ll leave out any extenuating circumstances, minimize things like recent good behavior. It will be their job to make it appear that DeDe and Nicole are a pair of hardened criminals. And they’ll make your mama look like some kind of—”

Joleen put up a hand. “Don’t say it, okay? She’s not. You know she’s not.”

“That’s right. I know. But my opinion doesn’t count for squat here. You have to come to grips with that.”

She just didn’t want to get it. So she launched into a renewed defense of Camilla and the girls. “They’re great with Sam, Dekker. All three of them. He is nuts about them, and they take wonderful care of him. They—”

“Joleen. Listen. The point is not what good care they take of Sam. The point is, what is a judge going to think?” He caught her hands, chafed them between his own. “If the Atwoods hired me to work up a negative report on Camilla and your sisters, I could get enough together to make them look pretty bad.”

She swallowed again and tugged her hands free of his. “Oh, I hate this.”

Should he have left it at that? Maybe. But he had to be sure she understood the true dimensions of the problem.

“Jo.”

She made a small, unwilling noise in her throat.

He laid it on her. “There’s also the little problem of Robert Atwood’s influence in this town. He has power, Joleen. Lots of it. You have to face that. He’s contributed to a hell of a lot of big-time political causes and campaigns, and he has supported the careers of a number of local judges.”

“What are you tellin’ me? That some judge is going to give my little boy to the Atwoods as payback on some political favor?”

“It could be a factor.”

“Well, that’s just plain wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s wrong.”

“But—”

“I keep trying to make you see. Right and wrong are not the issues here. It’s money, Joleen. Money and power. You can’t underestimate what big bucks and heavy-duty influence can do.”

She swiped that cute brown curl off her forehead again. “Oh, why didn’t I listen to you? I never should have called him. I never should have—”

“But you did. And even though I thought it was a bad idea, I do know that you did it for the right reasons. For Sam’s sake. And to give the Atwoods a chance to know their grandson.”

“It was also pride, Dekker,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve got…a problem with pride. I want to do right. I want to do right so bad, I get pigheaded about it. And I, well, it’s exactly what you said earlier. I’m ashamed. I was supposed to be the one with both of my feet on the ground in this family. But look at me…”

He couldn’t help reaching out and running a finger along her soft cheek. “You look just fine.”

She caught his hand, squeezed it, let it go. “You know what I mean. I ended up with a baby and no husband, got myself ‘in trouble,’ made the oldest mistake in the book. So when I called Robert Atwood, I was hopin’…to make up for that, somehow. To be bigger than the mess I got myself into. To get past my own bad judgment in falling for Bobby by reachin’ out to his folks in their hour of need. It was pride, Dekker. You were right. Just plain old pigheaded pride.”

“And now it’s over and done with. You need to let it go and move on.”

“How can I let it go when I am so furious at myself?”

“Look at it this way. It’s very likely, even if you hadn’t told them they had a grandson, that the Atwoods would have found out about Sam eventually. We may not travel in their circles. But word does get around.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah.” He rose to stand above her. “Now. Are you finished giving yourself hell?”

She blew out a long breath. “Oh, I guess.”

“Then we can start thinking about what to do, about how to fight what they’re going to be throwing at you. The main attack is going to be on the fitness of your child care, the way it looks now.”

She stared up at him. “What are you telling me?”

“I think you know.”

For an endless few moments, neither of them spoke. Noises from outside the study rose up to fill the quiet—a woman’s laughter beyond the high leaded-glass window that looked out on the side of the house, the music on Camilla’s stereo, something slow and bluesy and sweet.

“All right,” Joleen said at last. “I’ll find someone else to watch Sam when I’m working. It will be tight, but I’ll manage it.”

“Good.”

“And then somehow I will have to tell my mama and my sisters why they are suddenly not to be trusted with the little boy they all adore.”

“You don’t have to tell them anything tonight. You’ve got a little time to think it over. You’ll come up with a good approach.”