of her car. “Don’t push me, Griff.”
I follow, thinking of several things I could point out: I’m not going away, a boy needs his father, letting me see Jamie is only fair. She won’t care about any of that. That’s my boo-hoo bullshit. I’m a sales guy, so I know better than to expect that to matter to her. I might not be the top producer on the island—that distinction goes to my brother—but I run a fucking close second. What I have to tell her is how she’ll benefit if I become a part of our son’s life. Besides, of course, the fact I’m going to give her the most amazing pleasure for the rest of our days. She’s not ready to hear that.
“I can help you with him, Britta. You said it yourself; he’s growing fast. That stunt he pulled today might be the first, but it won’t be the last. He’ll need someone who understands what it’s like not to have a healthy fear of gravity and can anticipate when he might exercise his lack of common sense. I’ve got two decades of that experience. You’ve never had an incautious day in your life. I can talk to him, temper him, guide him. I—”
She’s already sliding into the driver’s seat and shutting the door. I hear it lock as she starts the engine.
Britta cracks the tinted window enough to look at me. “I’ll think about letting you see him again and advise you on Monday. Bye.”
Then she’s slinging her way out of her parking space and squealing across the lot, flashing taillights as she heads to the open road, taking my son and my potential for happiness with her.
Yeah, trying to open a dialogue, empathizing, and working through it like a reasonable guy didn’t go well. Fuck. Though Keeley put me in touch with my emotions, sometimes they frustrate me because they aren’t useful. But what I do know? Good strategy sometimes calls for relentlessness. Britta doesn’t yet know even half the persistence and liquid savagery running through my veins.
But she will.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Are you sure about this?” Maxon asks as we stand over Britta’s dining room table in the middle of my office. “She’s going to be pissed.”
“I have to do something.” After a mostly sleepless night, followed by an intense workout this morning, then an hour with my attorney friend, I’ve come to some hard realizations. “I’m not listed as the father on Jamie’s birth certificate, so legally Britta can cut me off at the balls where he’s concerned if she wants. I have absolutely no rights.”
“Now that you’re back in the picture, if you negotiate with her, she might fix that.”
“Voluntarily? I’m not holding my breath.”
“Normally I’d say you’re wrong, but…” Maxon frowns. “She has a lot of anger. What’s your recourse?”
I give him a cynical grunt. “Well, I could take her to court, force a paternity test, and have Jamie’s records altered. But if I do that, I’m almost guaranteed to pay child support for fifteen and a half years so she can resent the hell out of sharing our son with me every other weekend and during holidays. No thanks.”
Maxon concedes that point with a nod. “I hear you. I just don’t know how you change that.”
“I have to find a way to make Britta want to share Jamie with me.” I’d damn sure prefer to be tucking our son into his crib at night and then tumbling his mother into bed, rather than fighting with her about his custody while she’s Mrs. Somebody-Else. My desire dovetails nicely with the fact that, despite her fresh engagement, she will marry that banker over my dead body.
“Sure. But how?”
“In a word? Romance. I was going to wait to pursue Britta until after I secured my rights with Jamie. But that’s obviously not going to work, so I’m going to make us a fucking family now. I’m open to suggestions on sweeping her off her feet.”
“Do you really want ideas from me?” he jokes. “I’ve made my own clusterfuck. And what does any of this have to do with Britta’s dining room table?”
I laugh. “If I return it to her, she has to talk to me. If I can just spend time with her, show her who I am now, prove I simply want what’s best for Jamie—and for us—it might work out.” Even if the opportunity to woo her doesn’t pan out today, if I get to see my son, I’ll still consider it a win.
“Sneaky. I like it. But I’m telling you, she’s going to be pissed.”
I shrug. “Making Britta happy in the long run may require some short-term…discomfort until she realizes this will be best for us all.”
But I’m worried she may have buried the love she once felt for me so far under her resentment I’ll never be able to exhume it, much less breathe life into it again.
My brother shakes his head at me. “You’ve got balls, man.”
“And you don’t? It still amazes me you spent the night with Keeley, then asked her to seduce me the next morning.”
“What? It made sense at the time.”
I roll my eyes. “That kind of logic only works if you have balls.”
Maxon laughs. “Must run in the family. So, um…speaking of Keeley, did you talk to her last night?”
“Yep.” I don’t say more. I’m having fun with my older brother’s frustration. God knows he used to torment the shit out of me when we were kids.
“Don’t make me beat the conversation out of you. What did she say?”
When I hear his real anxiety, I let up. I know now what it’s like to love a woman you’ve wronged and be worried she’s never coming back.
“She mostly talked about her family. Phil’s birthday was yesterday. They went out to dinner.”
Apparently, he tried to talk her into job hunting in Phoenix. She browsed some Internet sites and drove around…but she had a feeling staying there would be wrong. The desert is all well and good, but she’s missing the ocean. And I think she’s missing Maxon, too.
“And?”
I shrug. “She’s still thinking.”
My brother looks like he’s ready to climb a wall. “It’s killing me to wait until Thursday to find out if she’s coming back.”
“Hang in there. You have a solid plan. Everything in place?”
That makes him smile. “Almost. If she returns to Maui and decides I’m the guy for her, I’ll make her so fucking happy.”
I understand that sentiment. “Fingers crossed, man. You ready to haul this?”
When Maxon nods, we each grab an end of the table and lift. We removed the leaf earlier—a necessity when my brother and his staff were using it as a conference table in their “war” room. Now it’s packed away in the back of my black Escalade.
In short order, the table is also stored in my vehicle and we’re heading to Kihei. Weekend traffic is heavier than I’d hoped, which means it will take longer to reach Britta and Jamie.
I’ve got to kill the time somehow… “Want to hear more of the music Keeley left me? I swiped the disc from my car.”
Maxon grips his thighs tightly. I understand wanting to know more about the woman you love and yet not wanting to know, in case it’s some indication she’s going to hate you forever. I went through that with Britta after the split. Burying my head in the sand was easier. Probably why I had no idea she was pregnant.
“Have you listened to more since we talked about it?”
I shake my head. “She’s trying to give me a message I’m not sure I want.”
He smiles fondly. “That’s Keeley. Go ahead. I’ll interpret if you need help.”
“You?” I raise a brow at him. “Mr. Sensitivity?”
Maxon scowls. “Play the damn CD already.”
I bark out a laugh as I pluck the disc off the dash. Maxon removes it from the plastic case and slides it into the player.
I forward through all I’ve already heard until I come to the new stuff. The next song has a distinctly country flavor. According to the case, it’s “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You” by Kellie Pickler. We listen in silence. I shift in my seat. Keeley definitely knows how to select music for maximum pain. As the lyrics roll on, she sings that she can’t get me out of her head, even though
I’ve left her alone in bed. She was fighting mad, vacillating between falling apart to not giving a damn… Jesus, I can almost feel how confused and decimated Britta must have been after the split.
It’s not as if I never considered her feelings. I guess…I figured that if she could betray me by helping my brother stab me in the back, she must not care about me anymore. But Keeley knows the mind of a woman way better than I ever will, and she’s sending me a message I can’t miss.
I was a dick and I crushed Britta’s heart.