Michelle Celmer - Reunited...with Child / One Month with the Magnate - Reunited...with Child

Becca tried to talk in full sentences to Ty even though she wasn’t sure he always understood things. She kissed his soft forehead and felt such joy, love and comfort just from holding him. She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.

Her own mother had kept her father’s identity from Becca until Becca was eleven. But her father hadn’t been a very successful man, and it hadn’t been easy for Becca to locate him. In fact, she’d searched more than once for him but never found a trace.

And that had left an emptiness inside of her. Something no amount of soul-searching or club-joining could fill.

There had been other kids of divorced parents at her school, but she’d been the only one who hadn’t known her father. Heck, she never even knew his real name.

She didn’t want that for Ty. Not when she had an opportunity to give him a father—his real father. She’d have to do it, she thought.

She stood up and walked out the door with a purpose. Cam Stern was going to learn the truth about Ty today, and then she’d deal with the consequences because she wanted her son to have everything that she’d never had.

She wanted him to go to good schools and have new bikes and nice friends. But she also wanted him to have a father. To have a man who’d play catch with him and talk to him. And teach him to drive to someday. And she wasn’t going to find a better man than the one who had unknowingly sired him.

Cam was still on the phone when she came out of the bedroom but looked up at her when he saw them. He smiled and then wrapped up his conversation. And despite her determination to tell Cam the truth, her determination to ensure that Ty had a relationship with his father, she faltered. Because she knew that Cam would never again look at her the way he did right now once she told him the truth.

Cam finished up his call. There was no way that Ty wasn’t his child. He looked just like Nate and had the same cowlick that Cam himself had. But how was that possible? He wasn’t a man who left things like that to chance.

Becca came back into the room holding the baby, and Cam waited to see how she would proceed. He was angry that she’d kept his son from him, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

“I’m so glad our paths were brought back together. I felt like we had unfinished business after the way things ended,” Becca said. “In fact I have something important to talk to you about.”

“That sounds very cryptic.”

“I hope that once I tell you … there’s no easy way for me to say what I have to, Cam. I want you to know that the last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you.”

“I repeat—that sounds very cryptic,” he said. He glanced again at the boy.

“Oh, man, there is no easy way to say this.”

“Just do it,” he said.

“Yes. Um … sit down,” she said.

As soon as he sat down, she popped up and paced away from him.

She shoved her fingers into her hair and pulled. “You’re his father, Cam. I got pregnant when we were together.”

“What?” he asked.

“You are Ty’s father,” she said. There—it was out in the open, and now they could discuss it like two mature adults.

“I don’t believe it.”

“What’s not to believe?”

“We used condoms every time.”

“You know they aren’t one-hundred-percent reliable, right?”

“Of course I do. But this has never happened to me before, so don’t be snarky,” Cam said, getting to his feet. He was the determined businessman she’d first met two years ago. A man used to getting answers. A man used to getting his way.

“I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. I just have been struggling to tell you about Ty and it never occurred to me that you’d doubt he was yours.”

“That’s where you made your mistake. I’ve had another woman accuse me of being the father of her child.”

Becca put her hands up in the air. “I’m not going to argue with you about this.”

“Of course you aren’t,” he said. “I’m not sure I can believe that I have son, but I see the resemblance and I suspected …”

“You do have one. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him sooner but I never had any idea that you would care.”

He turned back toward her, and she’d never seen anyone look angrier than he did. She took a step away from him, but he didn’t walk toward her.

“How would you know that?” he asked.

“We weren’t in a relationship, Cam. Don’t you remember—my boss didn’t even know we’d slept together.” She’d been so overwhelmed by Cam that she’d hardly been able to think of what to do. Two years ago … she’d been twenty-five, and no matter how adult and mature she’d thought she was, well, she wasn’t. And Cam had made her feel … just feel. She’d had one other lover before him and it had been little more than a rushed coupling in a college dorm room. But Cam was a real man and he’d swept her away.

“Did you tell Russell?”

Becca felt horrified at the thought of her boss knowing she’d slept with one of his friends. She had kept that knowledge very close.

“No. Of course not. I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t think that Russell even knows I have a son. I told him I was leaving to start my own company. And he was my boss, not my confidant.”

Each question was tearing at her confidence. She briefly wondered if she should have just kept quiet after all, then dismissed the thought.

“I got really sick a month after I left Miami and at first I figured it was just the malaise of a broken heart. I didn’t realize I was pregnant until a few weeks after I got back home.”

Cam ran his fingers through his hair. He was still sorting out the logistics of how things happened. Answering his questions brought back all those feelings she’d had when she’d learned she was pregnant.

“I almost called you. I didn’t have any numbers for you but Russell’s secretary had your office number. Do you remember her? Lani?”

“Yes, I remember her,” Cam said.

“Then you will probably also recall that you were dating her cousin about that time,” Becca said. “And I wasn’t about to call you up and give you the news that you didn’t want. At that point I wouldn’t have been able to handle another rejection. It had seemed to me you had moved on.”

“I guess it would. I still deserved to know I had a son.”

“I know. I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you but I was in a pretty vulnerable state and you didn’t seem like a viable option for someone to lean on,” she said.

She crossed her arms around her waist and took a deep breath. “To be fair, back then we weren’t anything but lovers. We didn’t know about each other’s lives or really even care. We just met up each night and had hot sex.”

He looked over at her, his large blue eyes unreadable. He seemed so distant and so cold and she really didn’t know what he wanted from her. She had no idea what she should say to smooth over this moment.

“That is a fair assessment of who we were.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why did you decide to tell me now?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip and fought to find the right thing to say. “When I saw you last night, I realized I owe you the truth.”

She was in an indefensible position. She knew what she’d done was wrong and there was no way to spin this. No way to turn it into anything other than the painful truth.

“Now I’m not sure what I believe. But I’m going to take your word that Ty is my son because I can’t figure out why you’d make that up. Unless you thought you could get money from me?”

“Why would I need money from you?” she asked. Granted, she wasn’t a millionaire like Cam, but she owned her own home and her business was doing very well.